26 Books

Books 4 and 5 are still in draft, sorry!

While you are all enjoying the afternoon in Brockley, I am at work, but wanted to add this post soon, since its a book I borrowed from a friend in Raskelf, North Yorkshire and I need to post it back to her.

I’m usually reluctant to read about books set in South Africa, still too many confusions about what it is to be a white Southern African woman in the latter part of the 20th century.  However, this is one I am so very glad I picked up.

Just the kind of writing I enjoy: lyrical, emotional, engaging in plot and character.  It helped that I know and love cape Town, like other writers I have reviewed, Finuala Dowling makes no concessions to the reader who is unfamiliar with her cultural references and use of not only the vernacular, but also a different language (the Afrikaans remains untranslated).  But the writing is good enough and the contextualisation detailed enough that I think this enhances any reader’s experience rather than making it a book only with meaning for people from that region.

She is a poet, and the story is about a poet and the book is full of poetry.  What interested me – something I believe non-Cape Tonians would respond to and enjoy – was that the reader is exposed in this way to the many ways that South Africans of all types express themselves poetically.  This feels completely natural (ie not as if there were a list she was going through and ticking off) because the protaganist is editing an issue of a poetry journal and necessarily is required to read and consider a range of poetry.

The love story is central to the form of the book (which is made up of diary entries that are being posted to the woman the poet loves) but it isn’t an over-riding element and the other people and their stories are as important and as fascinating.

I have often read reviews that comment on how well a male writer has conveyed a female character, and because one of the themes of the novel is gender and the multiplicity of options that are available to men and women in working out their own gender issues, I think it is valid to point out that I think she captures the voice of the poet very well, and that it is a convincing portrayal of a man (albeit not a typical South African man oops shoot me down in flames!!)

This is one of those books that you can’t bear to end.  I loved it

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