No Place Like Home in Aussie Readers

Jul 23, 2013 Shelleyrae at Book'd Out rated it really liked it

Shelves: aussie-author, provided-by-publisher, arc-are, netgalley-reviews

No Place Like Home is the fifth novel by award winning Australian journalist Caroline Overington. On an ordinary weekday morning, a young man walks into a shopping centre in the heart of Bondi. No one takes much notice of him, until he begins to run. Months later, former priest and police chaplain, Paul Doherty reflects on the events of that day and all that he has learned since.

The compelling narrative reveals the story of Ali Khan and how he came to be locked in a lingerie store with a bomb ch ...more

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Sep 30, 2013 Marg rated it really liked it

Shelves: aww2013

I hadn't actually read any of author Caroline Overington's books before I read No Place Like Home. What I knew of her was that she had a journalistic background, that she likes to write about current topics, and that I know several people that really like her books. You can now add me to the list of her admirers.

In the case of No Place Like Home the topic that Overington has chosen to explore is the fate of refugees when they come to a developing country like Australia - a country that prides it
I hadn't actually read any of author Caroline Overington's books before I read No Place Like Home. What I knew of her was that she had a journalistic background, that she likes to write about current topics, and that I know several people that really like her books. You can now add me to the list of her admirers.

In the case of No Place Like Home the topic that Overington has chosen to explore is the fate of refugees when they come to a developing country like Australia - a country that prides itself on multiculturalism. Like many other countries around the world, Australia has been grappling with the issues of how to protect our borders, whilst still allowing genuine refugees the chance of a new life. It is a highly emotive and divisive issue that has been manipulated by politicians for political gain for a long time now often with a great deal of misinformation to the public. Currently our Prime Minister is trying to implement a plan to send all refugees to Papua New Guinea with the effect that even if they are found to be genuine refugees that they will not be allowed to come here. I am not sure that as a wealthy country we do enough for those who are in genuine need.

The central character in the book is Ali Khan. He is a young man from a village in Tanzania who has been shunned by his own people because he is albino and therefore is seen as evil. In the refugee camp that he is in, he is kept locked up in a cage. There an Australian aid worker finds him and goes through the process of getting him the necessary documentation so he can make a new life for himself in his new home country as a legal citizen.

The story begins when Ali Khan enters a Sydney shopping centre early one weekday morning. He begins behaving erratically and soon draws attention of security. In a moment of confusion, a young girl pulls him in to the lingerie shop that she works in thinking that she is helping him escape from another person who is causing all the fuss. Security use the opportunity to isolate him by locking him in the shop with the young girl and the three other people who also ended up in the store. They are the shop assistant who goes by the name Mouse, a young boy named Mitchell who comes from a poor family but has won a scholarship to a nearby prestigious college, a slimy real estate agent by the name of Roger and a young woman named Kimmi who works in a nearby store.

The police are quickly on the scene, working to identify who each of the people in the store are, but also most importantly, to identify what exactly the threat is. Who exactly is Ali Khan? What are his demands? Why does he look as scared as the hostages? Why hasn't he said a single word since this whole drama began? Does he really have a bomb strapped around his neck? Is this a potential terrorist attack?

To read more of my thoughts about this book head to

http://www.theintrepidreader.com/2013... ...more

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Nov 19, 2013 Robin rated it really liked it

I started off on the wrong foot with this book, as the back cover blurb made it sound like a psychological suspense novel, which it is, but because of that I also expected it to be a fast-paced, on the edge of your seat kind of novel, which it isn’t.

It’s the story of a young man, Ali Khan, who walks into a shopping centre with a bomb around his neck and becomes trapped in a store with four innocent bystanders, while the police try to ascertain why he is there, what he wants (which is difficult ...more

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Sep 30, 2013 Bree T rated it really liked it

Shelves: arc, australian, cultural, issues, netgalley, kindle-version, aww2013, refugees

Just after 9:30am a young man walks into a shopping centre in Bondi in Sydney. It’s still early, so the shopping centre is relatively quiet and although he is noticed, he doesn’t attract any attention until he reaches the fourth floor. His odd behaviour alerts security but as they are on their way up to perhaps apprehend him and see what he’s up to, he trips outside a lingerie store, knocking down a young worker from the manicure place next door. A 12yo schoolboy trips over them and the worker f Just after 9:30am a young man walks into a shopping centre in Bondi in Sydney. It’s still early, so the shopping centre is relatively quiet and although he is noticed, he doesn’t attract any attention until he reaches the fourth floor. His odd behaviour alerts security but as they are on their way up to perhaps apprehend him and see what he’s up to, he trips outside a lingerie store, knocking down a young worker from the manicure place next door. A 12yo schoolboy trips over them and the worker from the lingerie store scoops them all inside, perhaps thinking she’s doing the right thing, seeing what’s going on and if they’re ok. Security monitoring the floor immediately lockdown the lingerie store, locking them inside and it is then that the woman working there realises that the young man who knocked the manicurist over has something chained around his neck, underneath his oversized hoodie: a bomb.

Paul is a former parish priest now working as the police chaplain. He is called to the scene by the officer in charge after they arrive on the fourth floor and have cleared the area. There is a bad feeling about the situation – four people (later discovered to be five) locked inside a lingerie store, one of the people with a crude homemade bomb around his neck. Technology these days makes it relatively easy to identify everyone at the scene and it isn’t long before they have names, next of kin and almost the entire life story of those that are trapped.

The young man with the bomb is Ali Khan, an Australian citizen who was plucked from a refugee camp in Africa. They are unable to determine what he wants – he won’t speak to them, he doesn’t appear to even understand them. He hasn’t uttered a single word the entire time. This situation doesn’t appear to be going to end well – it’s hard to negotiate with someone who won’t – or can’t – tell you what the problem is, what they want and how it can be resolved.

The minutes tick by and those watching hold their breath as someone within the shop makes an attempt to reach out. Can the situation be diffused by someone untrained, simply by caring or will it all end in tragedy?

It seems like this, Caroline Overington’s fifth book couldn’t come at a more politically relevant time. As the country settles into a new government, the topic of asylum seekers aka “boat people” remains a contentious one. Since the days of John Howard, there’s been a steady build up against those coming to this country by boat and the average person seems to believe we’ll be inundated by millions of them at any given moment, sweeping in to take our houses, jobs and all of the country’s money. In this novel, Ali Khan is was a refugee. He was granted Australian citizenship after being declared at risk in his native country of Tanzania due to being an albino black person. The culture describes such people as evil, devil spirits and they are persecuted, beaten and often killed for black magic as some witchdoctors claim their bones, ground down to a powder, cure AIDS.

What happened to Ali Khan when he arrived in Australia isn’t hard to imagine. He had no kin to greet him. Others of his culture feared and even loathed him. The relevant authorities and groups simply had no idea what to do with him. He didn’t speak and had little idea how to adapt to life in his new country, so different from the wire cage he was kept in at the refugee camp that hosted 40,000 people. He was bounced from home stay to a hotel and finally to a detention centre where he languished for years, despite being a citizen, despite never having actually done anything wrong.

Told in a simple fashion by Paul, the police chaplain, this book introduces all of the key people and explains how they came to be there on that day at that time and how their lives propelled them towards this precise moment. The story of Ali Khan that unfolds is so desperately sad and shows how one person can slip through the cracks of various organisations, who don’t know what to do with them. In being granted a new life in Australia, he should’ve left persecution, heartbreak, pain and suffering behind but instead he experienced just as much, if not more in his new life. It made me wonder just what do we do with people that come here, alone? Where do they go? How do they find places to live, English courses, jobs, etc? The one person they organised to come and help Ali Khan couldn’t even be in the same room as him because of the stigma his condition/appearance carried. But no one else was organised to really help him, to be kind to him, to show him the new ways of life that we take for granted here. He had never seen a shower before, didn’t know how to use one. He lasted a very short amount of time in home stay because his landlord was ill equipped for the role, something that hadn’t been noticed despite her string of failures taking in overseas paying students.

This is a sad book on so many levels. Sad because what happened could have and should have been avoided. There were so many things involved in driving the events forward until they reached that horrible conclusion that were a breakdown of responsibilities by so many people and departments. It shows the judgement he faced, before officers knew the full story and even after, in the media and just in the general public. Once again Caroline Overington has taken a subject and an issue and spun a story around it that encourages the reader to see beyond what is so often portrayed, to see the people inside the story and behind it. And it’s done very well. ...more

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