Phalaina

by Alice Brie're-Haquet, Emma Ramadan (Translator)

Overview

AudioFile Earphones Award Winner

We discover a new species of life form every day.
But, every day,
a species also disappears.

The fly has 10 chromosomes,
the hamster 22, the rat 42, the human 46,
the chimpanzee 48, the cow 60,
and the butterfly 380.

London, 1881.

There’s something a little eerie about Manon – she’s not like the other girls at the orphanage. Maybe it’s her red eyes. Maybe it’s her silence. Maybe it’s the series of violent deaths that seem to follow her.

What we do know: someone is hot on her tail. And there’s a lot of money at stake in finding out where exactly she comes from – and what exactly she is.

Concurrent to Manon’s story are letters to Charles Darwin from Professor Humphrey, a scientist who has recently died under mysterious circumstances. Is it true that natural selection left humans at the top of the pyramid of life after all? Or in the process of evolution, was there something elemental that humans lost, something that connected us to the rest of life on earth? Who and what else is out there?

In order to stay alive, Manon must untangle the mystery of her origins, and perhaps the origins of humanity as well.

From French writer Alice Brière-Haquet and translated by PEN-award winning translator Emma Ramadan comes Phalaina – the middle grade historical sci fi thriller you won’t be able to put down.


P R A I S E

★ “Fiendishly clever…[Brière-Haquet's] clinically cool narrative voice injects gravitas into the evolutionary discussion while placing a buffer of emotional distance between the reader and some truly gruesome off-stage mayhem.”
—BCCB (starred)

★  “A luminous eco fable wrapped in an immersive, propulsive tale.”
—Foreword (starred)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646141821
Publisher:	Levine Querido
Publication date:	09/20/2022
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.95(w) x 8.55(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	10 - 18 Years

About the Author

Emma Ramadan translates books of all genres from French. She is the recipient of the PEN Translation Prize, the Albertine Prize, an NEA Fellowship, and a Fulbright for her work. Her recent translations include Abdellah Taïa's A Country for Dying, Kamel Daoud's Zabor, or the Psalms, and Anne Garréta's In Concrete.

Editorial Reviews

07/25/2022

At once beautiful and sinister, Brière-Haquet’s speculative historical novel combines Darwinist philosophy with the labyrinthine narrative of a hunted child in Victorian-era London. Cocooned by hundreds of butterflies after escaping the carriage wreck that killed her guardian, naturalist Professor Humphrey, young Manon emerges from the woods only to endure seven unpleasant years at an orphanage. The girl sticks out among her peers: she doesn’t speak; is afraid of fire; and has “large, red, tender eyes,” marble-white skin, and spectacularly fine hair. Escape lands her at the home of kindhearted poet Molly, who must soon fend off a tenacious homicide detective. Led by the late professor’s former secretary, two henchmen ruthlessly seek Manon in the name of nefarious science, an arc involving the startlingly violent aftermath of both torture and murder. Interspersed with Humphrey’s letters to fellow Beagle voyager Charles Darwin, elegantly rendered third-person chapters alternate among myriad peripheral perspectives, including of a pinned butterfly and a wise dog. Characterization dips into anti-fat bias, and the frequently changing lens sometimes slows the tale’s momentum, but luminous sentences offers a singular mixture of tense mystery and sharp rebuke of cruelty toward the natural world. Characters cue as white. Ages 10–up. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Absorbing.” — School Library Connection

“Passionate.” — Kirkus

“A novel of ideas cloaked in skulduggery and populated with textbook villains… an environmental message pertinent to the present.”— The Horn Book

“Young readers interested in evolutionary science will have much to ponder.” —Booklist

[STAR] “Brière-Haquet is fiendishly clever at looping subplots and timing clues in both the thriller and science plotlines, and her clinically cool narrative voice injects gravitas into the evolutionary discussion while placing a buffer of emotional distance between the reader and some truly gruesome off-stage mayhem." — Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred)

[STAR] "With its attentions to the natural world and to the menaces of humanity, Phalaina is a luminous ecofable wrapped in an immersive, propulsive tale." —Foreword Reviews (starred)

From the Publisher

2022-06-22
A British naturalist’s young daughter draws seekers benign and decidedly otherwise in this French import.

In a tale with a powerful premise despite notably ragged execution, Manon, who is mute and described as resembling people with albinism, spends seven years in a convent orphanage in London while both her father’s killer and her mother’s secretive folk search for her. Her name is based on a French pun that is pointed out twice but doesn’t work in English. As Manon’s true nature is gradually revealed through her father’s letters to his great friend Charles Darwin, the pursuit finally comes close enough to send her fleeing into the streets to take refuge with Molly, a bighearted street poet with a loyal and unusually intelligent dog. Readers are likely to feel whipsawed, as the barrage of very short chapters brings frequent changes in scene, point of view, and tone. Several victims are killed and mutilated in gruesomely explicit detail; Molly and even the dog also narrate, sometimes to comical effect. The thoroughly demonized bad guys—who want Manon as a scientific specimen and key to her father’s vast fortune—are pitted against pursuers who, due to parallel evolution, look human(ish) but have very different ancestors and intimate connections with the natural world. Brière-Haquet folds in some topical themes as she steers events to a soaring climax and forced but tidily happy ending. Both the omniscient narration and other characters use demeaning language in reference to Manon’s eyes and skin, and her characterization evokes common disability tropes. Everyone presents as White.

Passionate but patchy in execution. (Eco-fantasy. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews