The arrival of the Americans in the text takes this to a whole new level and at the time of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter lays bare the roots of current racist issues today-in a word Colonial exploitation. It is a story that carries within it a goal which is, according to the back jacket sleeve, to bring into the world a story that the author was missing whilst growing up, a story that resembled 'her steamy, tropical home in Manila'. The pages fly as you hold your breath, watching Samran take the lessons of his elders and try to use them to make sense of the death, destruction, and lies that shape the American soliders' interactions with the Bontok people.

It is set during the time of the American Invasion of 1899 and is written with breathtaking sensitivity and skill. A bad omen at a preritual prompts a reading that reveals a provision: Samkad’s soul is tied to Kinyo’s, the son of a family friend the same age who was given to his aunt outside the village in infancy. These are all evident in the dialogues she has with Samkad implying that, even girls or women, can fight for the people and the place they love.

The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here. The horror comes not from the death rituals of the Bontok people, or from the animal sacrifices, or from the tree of bones, but from the monstrosities carried out by the American soldiers. Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A Filipino boy on the verge of manhood in 1899 must face mortal enemies, colonial brutality and his own headstrong, immature self to help save his remote village from annihilation.

Bone Talk was received well by critics and has been shortlisted for many awards, including the Costa Book Awards 2018 and the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2019. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Just so that it felt like I had immersed myself into the book in the same fashion as to how I immersed myself in the previous one.I left Facebook last Christmas and it has really helped me keep my writing at the centre of the day. The Philippines is a volatile place – not just because of politics but because our geography means natural disasters (earthquakes, super storms) are a common occurrence. I adored the relationship Samkad had with his father, his best friend and the elders of the community.

Candy Gourlay is a master storyteller, capable of transporting her readers competelyinto her world … Bone Talk is a richly wrought novel that feels cinematic in scope.

This sumptuously realised, age-old story of colonisation transports in time, culture, landscape and history.

In the same way, Gourlay told of the clan wars between the neighbouring villages - letting the reader experience not only racial war but tribal too. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. However, when he captures, then loses, one of the Mangili, the Bontok’s sworn enemy, he puts the lives of all of his peers at risk.I just didn't have any connection with this book or any of the characters, and considering I read it just over a week ago, I barely remember what happened in it.