I just finished reading Blue Gold, and it's the first time since becoming a book reviewer that a book has left me speechless and made a deep and lasting impression on me.

The book is very well written, and explores the different lives of 3 girls: Fiona in Canada, living some high school drama and cyber bullying, Laiping in China, working (being exploited) in an electronics manufacturing factory, and Sylvie, living in the middle of the war torn DRC, directly affected by rape, murder and corruption.

The writing is so vivid that you can picture what each of these girls faces on a daily basis. It's shocking, eye-opening and deeply disturbing. Even though this book is fictional, everything could, and does, happen every day.

I found the afterword very important, and am glad the author added it.

The first thing I did after reading the last page was to download the buycott.com app, and then write this review.
( )

I just finished reading Blue Gold, and it's the first time since becoming a book reviewer that a book has left me speechless and made a deep and lasting impression on me.

The book is very well written, and explores the different lives of 3 girls: Fiona in Canada, living some high school drama and cyber bullying, Laiping in China, working (being exploited) in an electronics manufacturing factory, and Sylvie, living in the middle of the war torn DRC, directly affected by rape, murder and corruption.

The writing is so vivid that you can picture what each of these girls faces on a daily basis. It's shocking, eye-opening and deeply disturbing. Even though this book is fictional, everything could, and does, happen every day.

I found the afterword very important, and am glad the author added it.

The first thing I did after reading the last page was to download the buycott.com app, and then write this review.
( )

I just finished reading Blue Gold, and it's the first time since becoming a book reviewer that a book has left me speechless and made a deep and lasting impression on me.

The book is very well written, and explores the different lives of 3 girls: Fiona in Canada, living some high school drama and cyber bullying, Laiping in China, working (being exploited) in an electronics manufacturing factory, and Sylvie, living in the middle of the war torn DRC, directly affected by rape, murder and corruption.

The writing is so vivid that you can picture what each of these girls faces on a daily basis. It's shocking, eye-opening and deeply disturbing. Even though this book is fictional, everything could, and does, happen every day.

I found the afterword very important, and am glad the author added it.

The first thing I did after reading the last page was to download the buycott.com app, and then write this review.
( )

The human price of digital technology is explored from the perspectives of three teen girls in this novel set in the present. Fiona, a middle-class Canadian makes an impulsive decision that haunts her virtually, and she learns a big lesson in digital responsibility. Sylvie is a Congolese refugee living in Tanzania. Her father was killed and she raped and disfigured by soldiers fighting over Coltan, a mineral used in technology that powers cell phones and computers. Laiping works in a factory assembling cell phones, enduring slave-like conditions that cause her fellow employees to develop serious medical problems and some to commit suicide. Though the problems of the three girls are resolved too neatly, Stewart offers readers a character-driven, absorbing narrative artfully blending insights into global politics and business ethics, and reveals the interconnectedness of the global economy. ( )

2-1/2

Warning. This book addresses topics that are heavy and graphic, including violence, rape and sweatshops, and is not appropriate for younger readers.

While I read this book in a fairly short period of time, I still had some problems with this one.

To be honest, some of my issues with it may not matter to anyone else. I struggled with the different point of views, and felt that the stories came together entirely too briefly, especially since the summary mentioned about the stories coming together. Yet, in the text of the book, this happened in the last dozen pages or so. When it is mentioned as prominent enough to be part of the summary, you would think it would play a larger role in the story.

Laiping, Fiona, and Sylvie all have interesting stories on their own, but when you put the stories side by side you see how one thing can have an effect on many, many people. Even when things go horribly in your life, those horrible things spread out like ripples in a pond.

The difficult topics were handled fairly tastefully, although the incident with Fiona, I think, was handled a little too casually for me to be comfortable.

These were heavy topics that really needed to be out there, I just wish that the way the three story lines came together would have been handled a little better. ( )

2-1/2

Warning. This book addresses topics that are heavy and graphic, including violence, rape and sweatshops, and is not appropriate for younger readers.

While I read this book in a fairly short period of time, I still had some problems with this one.

To be honest, some of my issues with it may not matter to anyone else. I struggled with the different point of views, and felt that the stories came together entirely too briefly, especially since the summary mentioned about the stories coming together. Yet, in the text of the book, this happened in the last dozen pages or so. When it is mentioned as prominent enough to be part of the summary, you would think it would play a larger role in the story.

Laiping, Fiona, and Sylvie all have interesting stories on their own, but when you put the stories side by side you see how one thing can have an effect on many, many people. Even when things go horribly in your life, those horrible things spread out like ripples in a pond.

The difficult topics were handled fairly tastefully, although the incident with Fiona, I think, was handled a little too casually for me to be comfortable.

These were heavy topics that really needed to be out there, I just wish that the way the three story lines came together would have been handled a little better. ( )

Coincidentally, I read this book the same week that people across North America were lining up for the release of the latest smartphone. In Blue Gold, the lives of three teens are inextricably linked to the manufacture and production of these phones. Fiona is the daughter of a mining executive in Vancouver, Sylvie is a Congolese girl living in a Tanzanian refugee camp, and Laiping is a girl from rural China who has come to the city to work in an electronics factory.

Stewart has skillfully taken real-world situations and used fictional characters to illuminate the true human costs of the production and use of smartphones. For Sylvie the mining of Coltan in the Congo has cost her her Country and part of her family, and has exposed her to horrendous violence. For Laiping, assembly line work has cost her her right to self-determination as she feels trapped by inhuman employment practices. Back in Canada, Fiona’s family loyalty is tested when she pays the cost of using her smartphone to sext her boyfriend.

Hopefully teens will not find Blue Gold to be too didactic, but instead will be inspired to become conscientious consumers who think about the materials that go into the electronics they covet, and the lives of the people who make them. ( )

Elizabeth Stewart’s Blue Gold shifts from North America and Fiona, to Africa and Sylvie, to Asia and Laiping. Although the subject matter is markedly different, questions of identity and complications uniquely rooted in these girls’ coming-of-age are prominent in all three narratives.

Laiping’s chronicle of life as a “factory girl” in Shenzeng, overtly addresses the question of being “good”, obedient and complicit, in a way which might be unfamiliar to many readers. But each of the girls struggles to meet expectations of authority figures in their lives, whether in a workplace, a home, or a refugee camp.

And although the penalties for behaving outside these guidelines are different for each girl, the constant threat and vulnerability is something that they share as each struggles to respond to situations in which they feel powerless.

Sylvie’s experiences after fleeing the Democratic Republic of the Congo, inhabiting a refugee camp, are most egregious. This is presented in vague terms initially.

“But nobody talked about what tragedies they had endured there. It was taken for granted that everyone in the camp had lost someone they loved—a child, a spouse, sometimes a whole family. Talking about it was too painful. It seemed to Sylvie that everyone here was waiting for pain to end and for life to begin again.”

But Sylvie shares more of her story when an aid worker gains her trust and in time readers hear those details too. This is difficult to read about, but readers are shielded because neither Sylvie nor her listener dare to delve too deeply into the young girl’s memories at that time (and, indeed, there are aspects of Sylvie’s experience which are not disclosed until near the end of the novel).

Sylvie’s narrative is vitally important because it provides the anchor for the other girls’ stories. Her homeland is the region which is being mined for “the blue-black nuggets of columbite-tantalite ore that was plentiful in the high-lands surrounding their valley…blue gold”.

The coltan is shipped to factories like the one in which Laiping works and is a vital component in the cell phones which play a significant role in fuelling the cyber-bullying which Fiona faces.

The link between the narratives is evident within a few chapters of the novel, but the threads are not overtly tied until specific plot events unfold and, even then, the web is not tightly drawn.

This is appropriate because although the connections are undeniably true, these are not ties which are immediately evident. The back of the book lists additional resources for readers whose curiosity about human rights violations and environmental stewardship has been piqued.

Katherine, Fiona, Sylvie and Laiping embody stories that many readers of all ages will find compelling.

This book about three separate storylines that all converge on a singular plotline is midline, at best, although I found it rather boring. I just think for such sensitive subjects (such as child rape) there are better books out there who present the subject matter in a manner more fitting for a young adult audience. Stewart is rather cold about it. ( )

Three girls on three different continents are connected ultimately through cell phone production. This tale tells of their lives and struggles.

A crisp, factual narrative guides the reader through each girl's tale; however, the tales are interwoven which aids in showing how their lives are connected.

Characters are flawed, authentic, emotional, and passionate.

Overall, a enjoyable read. ( )