The Wall

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Joshua is a troubled boy who lives with his mother and stepfather in a divided city, where a wall and soldiers separate two communities, and the rubble-strewn residue of their broken world gives hints of the old life before the wall was built. Joshua discovers a manhole, which leads to a tunnel, which leads in pitch darkness under the wall and across to the other side. Forbidden territory, dangerous territory, violent territory, which a boy like him - visibly different - shouldn't stray into. An act of kindness from a girl saves his life, but leads to a brutal act of cruelty and a terrible debt he's determined to repay. And no one, no one must find out that he's been there - or the consequences will be unbearable.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Thirteen-year old Joshua's circumscribed life in the newly developed and carefully guarded town of Amarias changes when a search for his soccer ball takes him over The Wall. This barrier separates his people from those on the other side, who are, according to his stepfather, "Terrorists! People who want to kill us!" Joshua's discovery of a bulldozed house, a tunnel, and a town so different from his-both in its liveliness and its poverty-along with an act of friendship from a supposed enemy challenge this perspective. Narrating in first-person present tense, Joshua shares his internal struggles and corresponding actions as his growing awareness of contrasting social realities awaken him to a world of nuance, political complexity, and ethical dilemmas. For example, a request from his new friends to water their orchard on his side of The Wall leads Joshua to defy parental limits and government strictures. Throughout this riveting story, which parallels the conflict on Israel's West Bank, adult author Sutcliffe conveys a sense of the moral imperative to bear witness and risk failure in pursuit of justice. Ages 12-up. Agent: Felicity Rubinstein, Lutyens & Rubinstein. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

The towering Wall is a central reality of 13-year-old Joshua's life. It separates his town Amarias from another settlement, which is accessed only through a heavily fortified checkpoint. Or so Joshua thinks until one day, attempting to retrieve a lost soccer ball, he finds a tunnel. Unable to resist, he crawls through it and discovers that he has passed under the Wall and is in that forbidden settlement on its other side. What and who he finds there will change his life in ways he couldn't have imagined. The vividly realized but nonspecific setting for this novel is clearly intended to evoke the West Bank, while the two settlements epitomize the antagonistic relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, an antagonism that is mirrored in the fraught relationship between Joshua and his religiously conservative stepfather, who is rabidly opposed to the settlement on the far side of the Wall. Don't expect subtlety in this novel of intolerance and segregation; the clearly pro-Palestinian story is too visceral for that. But do expect strong writing and serious discussion both in and outside the classroom.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist

Horn Book Review

Thirteen-year-old Joshua lives with his depressed mother and his abusive, fanatical stepfather in Amarias, a newly built walled settlement, comfortable but sterile. One day, searching for his errant soccer ball, he discovers a tunnel that goes under "the wall." He crawls through the tunnel and finds himself in the community that he lives adjacent to but has never visited, a community both "enticingly alive and strangely depressing." He is set upon by a gang of boys and rescued by a schoolgirl, and thus begins a highly pitched adventure story in which Joshua's increasing tension with his stepfather and the secrets he is keeping about his relationship to a family on the other side of the wall twine together in a story of physical courage, disillusionment, and conflicting loyalties. It is a mark of Sutcliffe's skill that he can make the resuscitation of an olive grove as nail-biting as an attack by soldiers at a checkpoint. Amarias is a fictional town, but it would be disingenuous not to see the parallels to Israeli settlements on the West Bank. History and politics make up the ever-present soundtrack of this novel, but they never overwhelm the story of a particular boy and his painful moral awakening. sarah ellis (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus Book Review

An Israeli settlement in the occupied territories forms the thinly disguised setting of a tale inappropriately introduced with an epigraph from the Gospels. Thirteen-year-old Joshua lives in Amarias with his mother and despised stepfather, Liev. He hates Amarias, where his once-joyful mother covers her hair and defers to Liev, but he doesn't much think about The Wall, the checkpoints and the soldiers he's told protect him from "the people who live on the other side." Joshua finds a tunnel that takes him under The Wall, where he's rescued by a girl. Joshua's new social consciousness--worry for the girl and wondering how his observations correspond to what he's been told--is tangled up in his consistently degrading relationship with Liev. Every time Joshua breaks his frustrated passivity in order to help the girl and her family, he worsens the situation for them. Despite the novel's subtitle, this is wholly realistic fiction detailing a boy's coming-of-age in a real-life political situation. Unfortunately, in the absence of proper nouns or other clues (Israelis and Palestinians distinguished by "my language" and "harsh, guttural words I can't understand"; "people like me" and "everyone else"; "us" and "the people who used to live there"), the tale lacks context; without knowledge of the setting, it reads like a dystopian novel inexplicably featuring "American TV" and a "Japanese sedan." The book might be effective in a classroom setting; it's likely to be confusing unmediated. (Fiction. 11-13)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.