Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms

Reader’s Review

This book by the celebrated author Katherine Rundell gets high praise online, but does not seem to live up to this praise. The writing is certainly beautiful and the sentences and language sophisticated enough for teens or older readers, but the storyline is disjointed and hard to believe. Will is a girl who lives wild in a Zimbabwe farm with her father. She is best friends with a boy and together they live rough with no rules. She is loved by those around her but referred to as wildcat or madman. But at the death of her father she is thrown out of her house and forced to go to a boarding school in London where she sticks out like a sore thumb. She refuses to shower or change her clothes or comb her hair and live like the other girls. She is unable to understand the classes, and eventually runs away, living on the streets until she meets a friend and his grandmother who eventually convince her to return.

To look out for

• Islamic Values: The main character chooses to live like a boy and prefers being called Will. Her best friend is a boy, and they talk about one day getting married.
• Language: ‘For Christ’s sake’ is used as is the word ‘dammit’
• Romance: A fatherly figure to Will who cares for her after her father’s death is attracted to a rich and conniving woman. They eventually get married.
• Violence: Will and Simon fight and bite each other regularly, like ‘leopard children’. Her father dies slowly of pneumonia. She is bullied and thrown into a bath by other girls (fully clothed). There are graphic descriptions of her surviving on the streets, a fight she gets into, and her injuries.