Shivaun Plozza, Summer of Shipwrecks, University of Queensland Press, September 2024, 240 pp., RRP $16.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780702268373
Sid is dealing with a lot of big and overwhelming changes in her life, and she’s been looking forward all year to the annual camping trip to the Shipwreck Coast and two weeks with her best friend Lou. But Sid is in for a shock when she gets to the campgrounds – Lou has brought another girl, Hailey, with her, and Lou seems much more interested now in boys and clothes and gossip than she is in hunting for shipwrecked treasure with Sid. Sid is left feeling very much on the outside of things.
The central theme of Summer of Shipwrecks is change. Shivaun Plozza writes convincingly of the complicated dynamics that can happen within friendships at that age. Sid, Lou and Hailey are all dealing with the physical changes that go along with puberty, and changes to their families and their friendships. There are parallels in the way things are changing in the town of Penlee Point. The town, the Penlee Museum, and going camping has been a constant for Sid every year. With all the changes going on in her personal life, Sid struggles to deal with these more concrete changes. The choices she makes in trying to hold onto things are not always wise or safe.
This links to the threads of friendship, listening, and consequences that Shivaun Plozza ties in to Sid’s story. There are complicated things going on for all of the characters, and while everything is told from Sid’s perspective, Plozza deftly hints at Lou and Hailey’s own internal struggles.
Plozza touches on questions of divorce, bullying and peer pressure. Sid makes several poor choices in trying to win back Lou’s friendship, including one that could have had disastrous consequences. The aftermath of those choices, however, do lead Sid to reflect on what type of person she really wants to be, and what values she holds to be important. Each of the characters reacts differently to the consequences of the choices they make.
There is change going on in the tiny beach town they’ve been staying at every year since they were little, and there is big change going on in their friendships. Shivaun Plozza conveys beautifully the sense of the big and often overwhelming shifts that happen in the later primary school and early secondary school years, and fans of Nova Weetman and Emily Gale’s books are going to find a lot to relate to in Summer of Shipwrecks.
Reviewed by Emily Clarke
