Sons for the Return Home - Critical Response

This book deals well with the struggles of a Samoan family fitting in in New Zealand quite well for the most part. However, some parts I thought were too focused on sex (or ‘making love’ as it was called in the books, although I didn’t get the sense that the characters actually loved one another). I found the relationship between the male Samoan narrator and the papalagi (white) girlfriend too clinical – again, they seemed to be obsessed with sex, and trying to understand each other in ways that sometimes resulted in their own humiliation.

At the beginning, the story jumped around a bit – the book isn't told in chronological order – and I was a little confused, but as the story progressed, I began to see how it all fit and my confusion disappeared. 

Violence is talked about and described in a pretty casual way, similar to the relationship with the papalagi girl – he says he loves her but I, as the reader, don’t feel the supposed love he has for her. You have to read between the lines in some parts, especially when the papalagi girl gets pregnant and says she wants to have it, but the talks to the male protagonist’s mother and all of a sudden she doesn’t want it anymore. 

My favourite part of this book was the letters from the girl (she was in Australia at the time she chose to have the abortion, her boyfriend was in New Zealand) after she got rid of the baby. The way she described the need for something that isn’t there anymore, as if it should be but is lost, really made me feel her sorrow and regret over listening to his mother and not following her heart.

The characters were flat at the beginning of the book, but at the end, the two main protagonists (papalagi girl and Samoan boy) were three dimensional, and much better at the end of the book.

There was one scene on pages 78 & 79 where Wendt was describing the killing of a pig in such a way that I had to close the book because I felt physically sick.

I think 'Sons for the Return Home' is a great book, not just because of the way it deals with Samoan themes, but because its one main theme is something everyone can relate to - the fish out of water story. Everyone, at one point in their life, has been a fish out of water, so to speak, struggling to fit in with foreign surroundings - remember your first day of school?