Completely shorn of verbiage— written as it is from the perspective of a five-year-old— even a slow reader can breeze through its 133 pages well within an hour and a half.

Many will vouch that even the most mundane of childhoods develops a charming, ethereal glow when one looks back upon it years later. Daniels has captured these childhood moments with finesse in her first novel— moments that made up one year in a little girl’s life.

As her nameless heroine articulates her precocious queries (“Mummy, was Jesus very sick? Did he have a heart attack... Then, why is he always dying on sticks?”) and sometimes merely reflects (“Why did grownups laugh at something that was very cute?” “What happens to Grasshoppers who fall sick?” “Why do people work?” “Does God have lots of nice toys in her house?”) and makes her own profound discoveries (“Being a ‘Good Girl’ meant having a very boring life.”) the author paints a picture of a regular little girl trying to make sense of a mostly adult world.

Daniels revels in pithy expressions either full of gentle humour or evoking pathos as the case may be. Much is said without being superfluous. (“I realised then that people come and people go. Nothing changes. Except that where they used to be, you now have holes in your heart.” “...And the saddest thing about partings were the things that were left unsaid.”)

There is a certain racy quality about her writing, saying what has to be said and moving on without dwelling on anything for too long. Economy of words, her biggest asset, could easily have become her gravest undoing if she had not infused her writing with the energy to evoke the right emotion at the right moment— humour, pathos, poignancy— and left so much unsaid that it didn’t make sense.

Ginger Soda Lemon Pop makes for very engaging reading and when the little girl ends the book with, “I prayed to Mrs God that I would only be a Big Girl and never be grown up”, you want to say “Amen”.

Ginger Soda Lemon Pop, Christina Daniels
Dronequill, Rs 225
pp 133