Sara Pennypacker (text), Jon Klassen (illus), Pax, HarperCollins Australia, 4 April 2016, 275pp., $19.99 (hbk), ISBN: 9780008124090
This is a quest novel about loss and how you cope with it. It is a physical journey beautifully realised in carefully described settings and also, more importantly, an inner journey of discovery of what is true and what is important in life. Award winning author Jenny Pennypacker has created here an engrossing many-layered narrative high on emotional intensity.
In a heart-wrenching opening scene 12 year-old Peter is compelled by his father to abandon his pet fox, Pax, and live 300 miles away with his grumpy grandfather because his father has chosen to go to war. ‘It means sacrifices for everybody’ he says. But Peter is convinced that he did wrong to leave his pet, a tame animal that has only ever lived at home, to fend for himself in the woods. So he decides to run away and find his fox. Unfortunately early on in his travels he twists his foot and breaks a bone. He is cared for by a hermit woman, Vola, a former medic in the army who is now coping with PTSD. As she says to Peter: ‘you have to become strong in new ways’, (p76). She has forgotten what was true about herself and lives in the forest to find out what that is. Peter in abandoning his pet had acted against his true nature and is trying to make amends while Pax is always true to his instincts but is now learning what that involves.
The story of what happens to Pax is told in alternate chapters and his life in a peaceful, beautiful forest is an unspoken commentary on the war and desolation created by humans. He meets some other foxes, and while he misses Peter terribly, he cannot help but become involved in the lives of his new friends. He, like Peter, has to learn new ways, to move out of his comfort zone and meet unknown challenges. It is the strong bond between the boy and his fox that drives the narrative and pulls the reader along and how Pax lives and understands his life is a constant moving counterpoint to the war and destruction in the human lives in this story.
This is powerful stuff all contained in 275 pages of spare prose perfectly complemented by the atmospheric illustrations of Jon Klassen. I don’t think there is one unnecessary word but I would have like more illustrations. Read it and enjoy.
Reviewed by Mia Macrossan