Rain is a homeless teen living with her father in the woods outside Seattle, near a community of other homeless people called the Winterfolk. She finds safety and sanctuary in this hidden world – until the day that safety is shattered when she learns the city plans to clear the woods of everyone who lives there. Now she’s forced to confront Seattle, which is full of strange sights, sounds, people – and memories…
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Winterfolk
Janel Kolby
Winterfolk has an extremely unique premise as we follow homeless girl Rain, her father and her best friend. Rain has lived out in the ‘jungle’ in the outskirts of Seattle for as long as she can remember, which means she has no education and strangely lacks any kind of street smarts. She is an… interesting narrator? Maybe unreliable would be the better word? She was so completely naive to the world around her that it was a real struggle to follow her around Seattle. She never seemed to think about what she was doing, she disobeyed directions when people were trying to help her and she just didn’t seem to understand how the world works.
When I initially read the synopsis, I expected Rain to actually go into Seattle and fight for hers and the Winterfolks rights to live on the land. This isn’t what happens at all. The plot doesn’t really have a plot with a climax and ending. The book ends very abruptly, and you really question if anything of note actually happens. Rain doesn’t actively do anything. Her main role is to react to things that happen to or around her. And because she’s so naive and young it brings in a different perspective, even though there’s no action.
This book does however bring forward questions for social discussions about homeless people. Which I guess was the authors point? There’s a very clear point of the Winterfolk being vermin being exterminated from the ‘jungle’. Rain also has a very existential question of why no one seems to see her. She’s a ghost, a no one and she’s overlooked by everyone. Even the other Winterfolk try not to look at Rain (although I’m still unsure why?).
The character that does fight for the Winterfolk is someone from Seattle who feels moved by Rain at the start, she starts to write all over the city about the Winterfolk to start a movement. Although this is technically started by Rain, Rain didn’t know what she was doing, and this again makes me believe she’s an unreliable narrator. We can’t quite see what real life is like because she can’t grasp whats going on.
So I pretty much didn’t enjoy the book. It wasn’t bad but it just wasn’t going anywhere and felt pointless. It had the opportunity to bring light to homelessness and problems around that topic but it missed the mark. The main character was hard to follow, and couldn’t articulate the needs of the homeless for this discussion.
POSITIVES
+ Unique premise
+ Social discussion
NEGATIVES
– Unreliable narrator?
– MC doesn’t actively do anything
I received Winterfolk by Janel Kolby from the publisher via Edelweiss. This is an unbiased and honest review
