The Closest Thing To Flying by Gill Lewis
Published by Oxford University Press

I’VE been meaning to read this book for a long time and it’s only when I took the time to sit down with it that I found something I constantly long for in whatever novel I pick up. I simply wasn’t able to put it down.

Any book particularly directed at children and young people, should be able to hold your attention straight through to the end and while many of them do, it remains a rare and glorious occurrence when you’re able to get through over half of a story in one sitting.

With only around 240 pages it doesn’t have to be too time consuming to make the impact that it does, on the way teaching lessons about family, friendship and finding comfort in all of the little things.

There are so many important themes packed in including abuse, women’s suffrage in the late 1800s and early 1900s and animal cruelty, none of which is ever out of place.

This story has two main characters at its core, and the first of which we are introduced to is Semira. After fleeing Eritrea with her mother at seven, Semira is now 12-years-old and remembers little about her life before England. All she knows are the troubles she faces every day now.

Neither Semira or her mother have any money and must rely on Robel, the man pretending to be her father to keep them in the country, for food and shelter but he uses this power not to protect them, but rather to control them.

Living with this treatment along with having to move around so regularly that real friends are few and far between means that any small comfort or luxury is incredibly valuable to Semira.

It is perhaps this that explains why after seeing an oddly familiar stuffed green bird on a Victorian hat at market she spent the last of her money on it and made a peculiar find. Hidden in the hat box that came with it was a diary from 1890 by Henrietta, the 12-year-old daughter of a man who made hats with stuffed birds and their feathers. Through reading about Hen’s conflicts with her family’s business and secretly joining a bird protection society as well as an ever-growing desire for a future where she can vote, Semira forms a deep connection to Hen and their shared newfound love of cycling as the “closest thing to flying”.

What makes this book easy to enjoy are the clear links between Henriett and Semira. They may be over 100 years apart but there’s this certainty that if they’d had the chance to know each other they’d be friends, and reading it almost feels like befriending them yourself.

Both of the girls are trapped in their own way, in a world that underestimates them, whether it’s with a wealthy family that doesn’t understand a desire to keep thousands of birds from slaughter or with a man claiming to be a father, but offering abuse instead of support.

They are linked by their troubles but also by their endless hope, by their desire to fly away, and in finding a little piece of this in moments of refuge with bicycles. The Closest Thing To Flying is a story I wish I’d written, but am simply glad I got the chance to read.