SuitabookThe Things We Leave Behind
Clare Furniss
- Reading
- Consider reading alongside the young person rather than rushing through the most distressing sections. Pause after major changes in Clem’s circumstances, check how the alternating timelines are landing, and leave space to discuss the ending afterwards.
- Themes
- Family care under pressure: Clem travels with and cares for her half-sister Billie while adult family relationships are disrupted and uncertain. The book presents this favourably.
- Authoritarian power and belonging: A growing authoritarian regime uses surveillance, identity controls, deportation and ancestry-based exclusion, affecting Clem’s family and wider society. The regime is shown through injustice, fear, family rupture and danger rather than as a desirable social order.
- Storytelling, memory and truth: Clem writes stories for Billie and recounts events through memories while staying in a dormitory with other people who have no homes. Storytelling appears caring and protective, but Clem’s account is presented as potentially incomplete or shaped by what she can face.
- Worth knowing
- Prepare for material involving parental loss, a stepmother being taken away, terrorism, refugee experiences, surveillance, deportation and civil unrest. The journey is repeatedly described as treacherous, harrowing and desperate.