The Tiger Project

by Susanna van Essen

Bella woke with a strangled feeling of panic. She had been trapped in the glass specimen jar again. She fumbled for the switch on her reading light and told her racing heart to slow down. It was only a stupid dream. Bella breathed deeply and tried to relax her frowning face muscles and tense shoulders. That thylacine pup seemed to be haunting her.

Genres: Tasmania

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Colleen Stone · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been a while since I read any young adult fiction so when I found this book that ranged around some topics and themes that interest me, I put aside some time to read it. I'm glad I did. It was heartwarming.

This is a 'coming of age' story. Wheel chair bound Bella, per medium of a school project on the extinct Tasmanian Tiger, contemplates the ethics of cloning, genetic research, the nature/nurture debate, individuality, species diversity, habitat destruction and lots more.

There's none of your 'stereo-typical teenager' in Bella or her friends. They're well drawn, individual characters picking a pathway through adolescence as they come to terms with who they are and who they will eventually become. They're not facing insurmountable obstacles (except that when you're a teenager, your problems can seem that way). As we learn about their families we observe the role of 'nurture' in their character. In the school setting, we see their individual 'nature' emerging strongly and at times putting them at odds with their families and friends.

Against this backdrop, the reader is drawn to consider the ethics of genetic engineering, cloning etc. The question is raised whether trying to clone a thylacine (now extinct) from the genetic material of a pickled specimen is a sad and expensive sop to alleviate the guilt of having hunted the species to extinction or whether it is a valid and meaningful scientific endeavour. The major flaw in this book, in my opinion, is that we are never in doubt for a second of the author's opinion.

'The Tiger Project' is not the most dramatic young adult novel I've read, and certainly not the cleverest, but it possibly among the most thought provoking I've read.

[SBC · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very good, I really enjoyed it; I liked the narrator, Bella, and I liked the way the narrator being in a wheelchair was presented as perfectly normal for her and everyone else. The story was really interesting, with its themes of bodies and DNA, and nature vs nurture. Bella and her friends at school are doing a project on the Tasmanian tiger, and she is paired with her old friend, Sylvie, who has a crush on an older skater girl at the moment (who is hetero and who is a twin - Innis Adamson; sister Erin is bookish), a new friend named Claire, and Adrian, the class clown, who apparently does stupid things because he comes from a family of geniuses, and who starts liking Bella. I also loved Bella's home situation; her birth father ditched her and her mum shortly after she was born because he couldn't cope with an imperfect daughter in a wheelchair. Mum raised her and then they met Wolf (short for Wolfgang), who is a (Dutch? German?) DNA scientist (they meet him at a protest) and he is now a happy father of the toddler Johann, who is sweet, and a good father to Bella and husband to Alice. He now plays his violin for a living in an orchestra. Alice works as well. Bella befriends their elderly neighbour who knows a bit about science and drawing (Bella's hobby) and is a lesbian so is able to offer supportive advice to Sylvie. Bella also tries to contact her father who really writes to her through his wife (who gets the attitude for Bella's age a bit wrong), but she is able to correspond with her two half-sisters. It was really a lovely read. I enjoyed it a lot and the themes and issues were fascinating.