A Novel By R.D. Stevens
If you have a sibling, you have probably experienced the love-hate relationship that most siblings have. But they are part of your world, you grew up together, through the hard times and the good, and like it or not, the bond is solid, to the point you would do whatever it takes to protect them, even if it meant going to the other side of the world if they got lost.
This is exactly what Ethan Willis, an 18 years old boy from England, does for his older sister, Charlotte: he packs his stuff and goes searching for his missing sister in Cambodia.
When they were kids, Ethan worshipped his sister like no one else. She was the one holding the key to life’s toughest questions, and the corresponding aphoristic answers, that she wrote down on anything: her journal, mostly, but also pieces of scrap paper. She was everything and more for Ethan, until the day she wasn’t there anymore. Towards the end of her university years, Charlotte leaves for Cambodia, looking for herself, even though her parents weren’t exactly supportive of her decision. She was absolutely resolute in finding answers to very important questions, and it was vital that her parents didn’t interfere with her search by asking her to come back home. She did send them handwritten letters every now and then, but she kept in touch more regularly with her brother, emailing roughly every fortnight. At a certain point, though, these emails stop and while Ethan doesn’t immediately get concerned, when more days go by and there is no word from Charlotte, he knows something’s wrong. First thing he does is telling his parents, but it takes them a while to actually listen to him, a bit longer to inform the police and even longer to have Charlotte reported as a missing person.
Hurt, concerned and confused, Ethan leaves for Cambodia himself, trying his best to piece together Charlotte’s movements. Last thing he knows is that she found an advert to teach English in an orphanage, an advert she noticed on a cafe window. There is only one problem: there is about a million of cafes with posters on their windows in Phnom Phen. Which one is the right one?
Eventually Ethan will find it by a stroke of luck and, accompanied by a girl he met at the hostel he is staying at, he will trace back Charlotte’s steps. The journey he takes is both geographical, philosophical and spiritual, leading Ethan towards new knowledge, mindfulness and leaving him with even more questions than when he started.
‘The Journal’ is a touching, powerful coming-of-age novel with the power to transform you. Reading it will change you as much as Ethan’s journey from Cambodia to Thailand changed him: it will make you feel open and vulnerable but also strong and capable and ready for whatever life throws at you. The narrative is simply superb, the right balance of descriptions, dialogues and philosophy, with vivid characters that you would expect to find sitting on the sofa with you. It’s a book that forces you to re-evaluate all your convictions about life, no matter if you are 18 or 80, and decide for yourself what you actually want to keep with you and what you want to get rid of, from the comfort of your favourite reading spot. A book to read again and again and again, as if it was the first time.
‘The Journal’ is available for purchase at: https://amzn.to/3BxBku1
