Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on April 4, 2023 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.
Funeral Songs for Dying Girls is the most recent young adult novel by Métis author Cherie Dimaline. Dimaline is most known for her young adult novel The Marrow Thieves, featuring a dystopian future in which indigenous people are hunted for their ability to dream, and has written a bunch of other adult and YA novels, all of which feature indigenous protagonists of some sort. I've really enjoyed at least parts of all of Dimaline's works - they're often powerful in themes, rarely subtle, and even when I think they miss they do so in interesting ways. So I was very interested to try this latest YA novel of hers, which sounded in description like a bit more small scale YA novel than some of her other works.
The good news is that Funeral Songs for Dying Girls is a well crafted young adult novel, which will certainly work for a lot of the young adult audience. The novel follows Winifred, a 16 year old half-Métis girl who lives in an apartment above the cemetery office where her father works, as she deals with both the normal struggles with growing up as a girl who doesn't quite fit in, has OCD, feels pressure to have sex, and struggles severely with loneliness....as well as the more particular struggles of living in a cemetery with a father who hasn't gotten over the woman who died birthing her. Oh and in the process of it all, Winifred both prompts a con artist ghost tour company to come to the cemetery and meets a real ghost in Phil, a girl she grows more and more to care about. It's a story that deals with YA themes even as it gets very tropey at times, but it's also one that well, wasn't one that quite matched my own experiences as a teen and thus wasn't quite FOR this adult reader. That's not necessarily a problem with the book of course - as I'll detail below, that's part of the peril of being an adult reading YA.
Plot Summary:
Winifred Blight has lived her whole sixteen years with her father in an apartment that sits above the office of a local cemetery. Her mother died in childbirth, and as such she's grown up with no one other than her white father and her beloved Métis aunt Roberta as family...except her aunt passed away a few years ago and her father has always seemed to be grieving and praying for the ghost of Winifred's mother to come back. Meanwhile, Winifred has largely been an outcast among her school classmates ever since they learned she lived in the cemetery...and her one friend, a geeky boy named Jack, is suddenly growing more mature and appealing looking...and is gaining the attention of other girls. And so when an attempt to use Jack to lose her virginity at 16 goes awry, Winifred feels lost and alone...a feeling that is only made worse by the news that her father and her may soon have to leave the only home she's ever known as the cemetery is losing too much business to keep her father on as an employee.
But then something unthinkable happens: Winifred encounters a real ghost, an indigenous girl named Phil, in a ravine inside the cemetery. And Phil keeps appearing to Winifred...and soon becomes able to converse with her and tell her story, and soon Winifred doesn't feel quite so alone. But when several sightings of Winifred in distress in the cemetery make people believe that the cemetery is haunted, the cemetery becomes host to a con-artist's ghost tour scheme...one which is latched onto by Winifred's jerk of a cousin Penny. And while the ghost tours might help the cemetery and save Winifred and her father's chances of staying in the only place she's ever known, it soon becomes clear that the presence of so many people will only hurt Phil...and Winifred is soon forced to choose between the unthinkable: the only "home" she's ever known or the dead girl who's the only one who can help cure her loneliness.....
Funeral Songs for Dying Girls is told from the first person perspective of Winifred, with the story jumping back and forth in time at times as Winifred flashes back to her past, largely the stories she heard from her Aunt, and on occasion to the story of the ghost girl Phil's life as she tells in it parts to Winifred. The story is, to some extent, pretty YA tropey in a certain stereotypical way - Winifred is ostracized by cliqs at school, she makes friends with the geeky outsider boy as a young girl only for that boy to grow into a handsome and now non-outcast who doesn't realize he's leaving her behind, and feels pressure to lose her virginity upon her 16th Birthday, etc. It's the type of Young Adult tropeyness that may appeal to young adult teen readers who have gone through similar circumstances, but to be honest, it's so much so in a way that never really would've spoken to me, who didn't really feel any pressure to have sex as a kid or teen (and yes I realize that's probably more unusual on my part, but it affects my perspective here). Add in the awkwardness when Winifred is rejected by that geeky friend Jack, and well, it's a lot of stuff that makes me cringe and makes this book not quite for me, even if there's nothing wrong with it and it will work for other actual young adult readers.
That said, there's a lot here despite that that really works with both Winifred as a character and the book's themes of grief, loneliness, and what really makes a "home." Even ignoring the YA tropeyness I mentioned above, Winifred is an easy person to care for as she deals with a whole host of problems - she has to deal with being only half-Métis and not really having an indigenous community to call home (she lives with her White dad and her beloved indigenous Aunt died a few years back), she has to deal with being outcast from school just for not fitting in and for the random circumstance of living above a cemetery, and has to deal with her father being too absorbed in his grief a lot of the time to seemingly help and care for her. She's got OCD tendencies that have her count whenever she's in discomfort, which is done well here, and well, she feels tremendously alone. And so when the last thing she thinks she has, the ties to the cemetery she grew up in and kind of plays in, is in jeopardy, she takes a desperate action at making a dumb deal with her cousin Penny to try and use the ghost tours to save those ties and what she thinks is a home. It almost leads to disaster when those same tours and cousin almost jeopardize a new relationship (with Phil) that provides her with much needed warmth, but it's an understandable disaster.
And the book touches on some very solid YA and non-YA themes in terms of family, grief, and what it means for something to be a home. Winifred's whole life has been overshadowed by her mother's death - not only do they live in a cemetery that contains half her ashes, but Winifred's birth resulted in her mom's death and her father has clearly been grieving all this time. Her father never takes out that grief upon Winifred in anger, but it clearly distracts him from being able to pay proper attention to her, even when she's suffering, which leaves her all the more alone. And Winifred herself kind of grieves not knowing her mom, as well as the Aunt Roberta who basically served as her mother figure. The two of them being shaken by events into moving forward, through Winifred's reactions are a big part of this book and it works well. And then there's the issue of what it means to be "home", which we see through both Winifred, who thinks of the cemetery as "home" even as it really has nothing for her other than memories, and through Phil's story, and how things went so wrong as to lead to her death. Through these stories the book argues that "home" isn't necessarily a place, but rather the people whose hearts matter to us, something that leads to a change in Winifred to the better in the end.
So all in all, you have a pretty solid YA book here, albeit one whose YA tropes really didn't work for me, but for other people, especially YA readers, this may work a lot better. So worth a look for YA readers for sure.
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