Suha Tariq

Jael Richardson, Gutter Child

Toronto: HarperCollins, 2021. $19.99.

Few books have ever left an impact quite like Jael Richardson’s novel, Gutter Child. It tells a captivating story about a young girl named Elimina Dubois as she is forced to navigate a cruel and unjust world. Readers are in for an unforgettable journey as they witness just a fraction of the trials and tribulations faced by the indigenous Sossi people, such as Elimina, at the hands of the cruel Mainlander colonizers. Set in a dystopian alternate reality, Richardson weaves a story that feels so recognizable, you can almost taste the truth and real-life experiences that guide the book’s plot. All you can do is clutch desperately at the pages and hope that this time, there’s a happy ending.
Spoiler alert: Happy endings are never that easy nor that simple. Especially not for Elimina, who is stuck navigating a nation unjustly divided by the colour of its people’s skin. There is the Gutter, a tiny, heavily policed island on which the native Sossi people live with an impossible debt that is incurred upon birth. On the other side of the Dead Man’s Bridge is the rich and privileged Mainland, filled with colonizers who overtook Sossi land and forced its people to move to the Gutter until their debt is paid off and they may be considered free people.
Elimina is one of a hundred children taken for the Gutter Enhancement Project and adopted by a Mainlander. She is sent to live with them as a child, never knowing her true heritage. Everything changes when her adoptive mother dies and Elimina must return to the Gutter System and begin repaying her Gutter debt. At Livingstone Academy, where Gutter children are sent to acquire useful skills for future employment, Elimina is surrounded by people that look like her for the very first time. There, she meets kids who will change her life, time and time again, and who will become her found family in a world she entered alone and has lived in alone for as long as she can remember.
From the moment I picked up Gutter Child, I knew it would be a story like no other. Richardson’s characters are so beautifully written, it’s as if she has breathed a soul into each and every one of them. The novel itself is written from a perspective I so rarely come across and is so fulfilling and enriching to read: every twist and bend in the narrative is told through dialogue. Everywhere Elimina goes, people tell her stories.
Stories are the way of the Sossi people, and in this book, you will read fascinating conversations between each of the characters as they reveal their own stories and the mystery of Elimina’s past. In the book, we hear one character tell Elimina, “...stories, baby girl, stories are life. They are on our tongues. They are with us now.” Elimina, only a teenager, lives many lives and faces many difficult decisions over the course of the book, and stories are the one thing that help her reconnect with her roots and find her stolen sense of identity. Each one made me brim with joy, awe, despair and wonder as I learned about the intricacies of a life of servitude, in a system built to oppress and isolate until every ounce of hope is extinguished.
Alas, what Richardson shows us in this novel is that a people’s hope can never die as long as a sense of community, a place of belonging and a kinship born from a shared heritage is alive and well. The Gutter may be a kind of prison for some, but for others, it is the birthplace of their ancestors—it is home. It is both a beacon of hope and a symbol of all the racism and discrimination that is perpetuated against them.
In a note from the author at the beginning of Gutter Child, Richardson writes, “Take care with your heart and mind as you read. Pause and rest as required. These are difficult times.” I didn’t quite understand what she meant when I began reading. About eight chapters in, I smoothed my bookmark in between the pages of her book and wept. I cried for a while and had to put the book down for the rest of the day, and when I came back to it, I understood why she wrote that note. Richardson was gracious in offering a reprieve from the disparities we witness in her ingenious novel, but it’s a weary sort of relief. In the moments after I finished the last chapter and closed the book, the first thought I had was that there is no relief for the Sossi people. There is no ‘break’ for marginalized people around the world, here and now, from the injustices they face. To offer a reprieve from the difficult times that Richardson herself has faced all her life, that is a kindness and a courage we see emulated through her book and it is the very thread that intertwines all her characters into a story that is sure to break your heart and change your life.
I cannot sing enough praise for this book. It is a reflection of the difficult times we live in, a portal of sorts that we can use to look into the future and see what may become of our society if we do not fight for what we believe in and change our ways of living to center community instead of profit. This book was in no small way life-changing, and I am forever grateful to Jael Richardson for writing a story so incredibly humbling—yet so exhilarating.

SUHA TARIQ

is a Canadian writer and editor who was born in Pakistan and spent her childhood in Saudi Arabia. She now resides in Milton, Ontario. Suha is the Publishing & Web Intern for The Ampersand Review of Writing & Publishing. She is a fourth year student in the Creative Writing and Publishing program at Sheridan College and works as a ghostwriter for The Urban Writers. Suha writes mostly shorter non-fiction works, however, she plans to author her own fiction novels in the upcoming years. She was also featured on Canada One News for their “Students In A Pandemic” special.