Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

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From Witblits to Vuvuzelas

Marketing in the New South Africa

Dale Hefer

Zebra Press

by Amanda Patterson (www.itsallwrite.net)

She did this on a small budget with lots of common sense. She makes a convincing argument that marketing in the new South Africa is somewhat different.

If you want to succeed in this new era, you have to roll around in the target-market mud. Find out, in a tangible way, who your market is, and what they want. Designer furniture at an agricultural show doesn’t work.

The book is filled with personal anecdotes about the challenges of marketing in South Africa. Hefer writes economically with confidence and style. She is also funny.

If you have a business, or want to start a business, or if you simply want to find out what marketing really means, this book is perfect.

Actually, most marketing and advertising and PR staff from any company, anywhere should read it too. It may help them understand the concept of marketing beyond the 20th Century.

From Witblits to Vuvuzelas is based on years of practical experience with clients, and their targeted audiences. Hefer’s voice is authentic. Her book is made even more valuable by the input from local marketing legends and icons.

Highly recommended.

The Boy who Changed the World

Andy Andrews

Thomas Nelson

by Shirley Corder (www.ShirleyCorder.com)

This beautifully illustrated book is one of these children’s books which will also inspire and entertain the adult reader. The message revealed through this engaging tale is that every choice you make, whether good or bad, can make a difference. It illustrates the so-called “butterfly effect” in a way that even the youngest child will understand, yet will also engage the adult reader.

Andrews weaves together the stories of four little boys who each grew up wanting to make a difference to the world. Norman Borlaug, Henry Wallace, George Washington Carver and Moses Carver each played a key role in developing a special food that ultimately helped feed two billion people.

Each of the four stories is well told and the way each character influenced the other is clearly demonstrated. Instead of working forward chronologically, Andrews works backwards, and the adult reading the story may have to point out the significance of the names. Otherwise, an excellent book with a clear Christian message. I give it 4 out of 5 and look forward to passing it on to my grandchildren whom I know will love it.

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Finding Hope for Your Journey through Breast Cancer

60 Inspirational Readings

(Revised Edition)

Yvonne Ortega

Revell

by Shirley Corder (www.shirleycorder.com)

Cancer isn’t the last word. Hope is.

This is what Yvonne Ortega believes, and she should know. Finding Hope for Your Journey through Breast Cancer is the 2nd edition of her excellent book of inspirational readings for those caught up in the cancer journey.

In Finding Hope for Your Journey through Breast Cancer, Yvonne Ortega offers to walk alongside you with encouragement and compassion gleaned from God’s Word. She reminds you that even when it looks like you are alone, God is there every step of the way.

When cancer strikes, and you or those near to you face the roller coaster of treatment and side-effects, you will find encouragement and inspiration through the words of this book.

Each short chapter contains Scripture and a devotional message based on personal experience. Yvonne speaks from the heart, sharing her real feelings and reactions in a way that will cause you to say, “She understands.”

As a cancer survivor myself, I wish this book had been around when I needed it. Well done Yvonne! Thank you for allowing me to share a little of the journey with you.

The book is available through Amazon.com, Christianbook.com or your local bookseller. Or you can order an autographed copy from Yvonne’s website today.

A WRITER’S BOOK OF DAYS

A Spirited Companion And Lively Muse For The Writing Life

(Revised Edition)

JUDY REEVES

New World Library

by Amanda Patterson (www.itsallwrite.net)

I carry this book with me everywhere I go. I teach people how to write books – novels, memoirs and works of non-fiction. Even writing teachers need help, and Judy Reeves provides perfect content for a writer’s soul. I have found that most aspiring writers don’t write – or even have a daily writing routine. This book helps you establish one.

Filled with writing advice and writing insight, inspirational quotations and daily prompts, this is a book that every writer should own.

I have more than 300 books on writing. There are only three that I take with me when I travel and this is one of them.



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Spud

John van de Ruit

Penguin

Recommended Retail Price: R100

by Amanda Patterson (http://www.itsallwrite.net)

This is the book that every reader in South Africa has been waiting for. Will it be as good as the first one?

John Milton, aka Spud, returns to school. He approaches his 15th birthday, losing his girlfriend, The Mermaid, and acquiring another, Amanda. As if that isn’t enough, his mother decides that the family is emigrating. Van de Ruit writes about my favourite character – his almost senile grandmother, The Wombat, with compassion, humour and style.

The Crazy 8 torment the new boys, struggle with rugby and cricket matches and generally create mayhem. Mad Dog forces Spud on the hike from hell, and the Standard 6 oddball, Runt, stalks him. Fatty looms large in the book, as he eats his way to fame in boerewors roll and hot dog contests. Boggo has become his agent – nurturing him to become the most feared Eating Champion in South Africa.

The Guv, drinking his way into oblivion, continues to educate Spud with his favourite books. Cry the Beloved Country is his latest offering to the 14-year-old. Spud is also seriously depressed about the state of the drama department.

And any South African who has been to London will identify with the Miltons as they lurch from pub to Madame Tussauds to pub again.

However, Verne, and the 8th member of the group, Roger the cat, are the stars of this second book. I laughed out loud whilst my heart bled for him. The descriptions of Verne tearing his hair out and his antics on the rugby field are inspirational for any wannabe writers of comedy.

This book is more considered and more layered than the first. It’s more grown up – just like Spud is.  And yes, it is just as good as the first.

John van de Ruit is an actor, playwright and author who was educated at Michaelhouse and received an MA in Drama and Performance Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. His debut novel, Spud, was a publishing phenomenon in South Africa, smashing all local publishing records, and was awarded the Booksellers’ Choice Award in 2006.

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The Millennium Trilogy

Stieg Larsson

Maclehose Press

Series of 3 books

Recommended Retail Price: R120 per book

Fiction Series Overview

by Carl Hoepner

We start out with the thoughts of Mikael Blomkvist, deep, dark, not the best place to be. Soon afterwards we meet Lizbeth Salander and that is where the story really starts.

The three books deal with their stories and how their lives intertwine. In the first book, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, readers are introduced to the main characters, Mikael Blomkvist, journalist, publisher of his own magazine, with a busted reputation. Lizbeth Salander, delinquent, hacking genius, hiding away in her own little hole. Their lives come together by chance, after Mikael gets an opportunity to clear his name.

The story is intriguing and keeps you wanting to read the next line.

The second book, The Girl Who Played With Fire, skips a year in the lives of our two heroes. Mikael Blomkvist is in a better place after book one – Lisbeth Salander is suddenly wealthy. This time, the journey takes a turn into the past of Lisbeth Salander, with the secrets in the first novel finally being revealed.

A thrilling read, intense and surprising. The reader is kept guessing, but well within the bounds of reality. The book’s ending is like a siren’s call to continue into the next volume.

The final book, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest, picks up the plot where we left Lisbeth at the end of book two. The plot is wonderfully crafted to keep you nailed to the pages. The author keeps you turning the pages, urging you deeper into the story. The climax is unsuspected yet believable.

An absolutely thrilling read, this trilogy is well written, with all the right elements. The characters develop beautifully and the storylines are entwined just enough to keep the reader guessing. The books are translated from Swedish and there are occasional grammar errors, however these are hardly noticeable, and do not distract from the reading pleasure.

These were the first and only novels from the pen of Stieg Larson. Born in 1954, Larson was a journalist by trade and editor-in-chief of Expo magazine. Expert at anti-democratic, right-wing extremist and Nazi organizations, he was often consulted in that regard. Dying from a heart attack shortly after delivering the manuscripts for the trilogy to his publisher, Larson did not live to see the worldwide phenomenon that his work has become, selling more than 3 million copies in Sweden alone.

Sample Chapter: Book One

Sourced from BookDaily.com

Chapter One

A Friday in November

It happened every year, was almost a ritual. And this was his eighty-second birthday. When, as usual, the flower was delivered, he took off the wrapping paper and then picked up the telephone to call Detective Superintendent Morell who, when he retired, had moved to Lake Siljan in Dalarna. They were not only the same age, they had been born on the same day–which was something of an irony under the circumstances. The old policeman was sitting with his coffee, waiting, expecting the call.

“It arrived.”

“What is it this year?”

“I don’t know what kind it is. I’ll have to get someone to tell me what it is. It’s white.”

“No letter, I suppose.”

“Just the flower. The frame is the same kind as last year. One of those do-it-yourself ones.”

“Postmark?”

“Stockholm.”

“Handwriting?”

“Same as always, all in capitals. Upright, neat lettering.”

With that, the subject was exhausted, and not another word was exchanged for almost a minute. The retired policeman leaned back in his kitchen chair and drew on his pipe. He knew he was no longer expected to come up with a pithy comment or any sharp question which would shed a new light on the case. Those days had long since passed, and the exchange between the two men seemed like a ritual attaching to a mystery which no-one else in the whole world had the least interest in unravelling.

The Latin name was Leptospermum (Myrtaceae) rubinette. It was a plant about ten centimetres high with small, heather-like foliage and a white flower with five petals about two centimetres across.

The plant was native to the Australian bush and uplands, where it was to be found among tussocks of grass. There it was called Desert Snow. Someone at the botanical gardens in Uppsala would later confirm that it was a plant seldom cultivated in Sweden. The botanist wrote in her report that it was related to the tea tree and that it was sometimes confused with its more common cousin Leptospermum scoparium, which grew in abundance in New Zealand. What distinguished them, she pointed out, was that rubinette had a small number of microscopic pink dots at the tips of the petals, giving the flower a faint pinkish tinge.

Rubinette was altogether an unpretentious flower. It had no known medicinal properties, and it could not induce hallucinatory experiences. It was neither edible, nor had a use in the manufacture of plant dyes. On the other hand, the aboriginal people of Australia regarded as sacred the region and the flora around Ayers Rock.

The botanist said that she herself had never seen one before, but after consulting her colleagues she was to report that attempts had been made to introduce the plant at a nursery in Göteborg, and that it might, of course, be cultivated by amateur botanists. It was difficult to grow in Sweden because it thrived in a dry climate and had to remain indoors half of the year. It would not thrive in calcareous soil and it had to be watered from below. It needed pampering.

The fact of its being so rare a flower ought to have made it easier to trace the source of this particular specimen, but in practice it was an impossible task. There was no registry to look it up in, no licences to explore. Anywhere from a handful to a few hundred enthusiasts could have had access to seeds or plants. And those could have changed hands between friends or been bought by mail order from anywhere in Europe, anywhere in the Antipodes.

But it was only one in the series of mystifying flowers that each year arrived by post on the first day of November. They were always beautiful and for the most part rare flowers, always pressed, mounted on watercolour paper in a simple frame measuring 15cm by 28cm.

The strange story of the flowers had never been reported in the press; only a very few people knew of it. Thirty years ago the regular arrival of the flower was the object of much scrutiny–at the National Forensic Laboratory, among fingerprint experts, graphologists, criminal investigators, and one or two relatives and friends of the recipient. Now the actors in the drama were but three: the elderly birthday boy, the retired police detective, and the person who had posted the flower. The first two at least had reached such an age that the group of interested parties would soon be further diminished.

The policeman was a hardened veteran. He would never forget his first case, in which he had had to take into custody a violent and appallingly drunk worker at an electrical substation before he caused others harm. During his career he had brought in poachers, wife beaters, con men, car thieves, and drunk drivers. He had dealt with burglars, drug dealers, rapists, and one deranged bomber. He had been involved in nine murder or manslaughter cases. In five of these the murderer had called the police himself and, full of remorse, confessed to having killed his wife or brother or some other relative. Two others were solved within a few days. Another required the assistance of the National Criminal Police and took two years.

The ninth case was solved to the police’s satisfaction, which is to say that they knew who the murderer was, but because the evidence was so insubstantial the public prosecutor decided not to proceed with the case. To the detective superintendent’s dismay, the statute of limitations eventually put an end to the matter. But all in all he could look back on an impressive career.

He was anything but pleased.

For the detective, the “Case of the Pressed Flowers” had been nagging at him for years–his last, unsolved and frustrating case. The situation was doubly absurd because after spending literally thousands of hours brooding, on duty and off, he could not say beyond doubt that a crime had indeed been committed.

The two men knew that whoever had mounted the flowers would have worn gloves, that there would be no fingerprints on the frame or the glass. The frame could have been bought in camera shops or stationery stores the world over. There was, quite simply, no lead to follow. Most often the parcel was posted in Stockholm, but three times from London, twice from Paris, twice from Copenhagen, once from Madrid, once from Bonn, and once from Pensacola, Florida. The detective superintendent had had to look it up in an atlas.

After putting down the telephone the eighty-two-year-old birthday boy sat for a long time looking at the pretty but meaningless flower whose name he did not yet know. Then he looked up at the wall above his desk. There hung forty-three pressed flowers in their frames. Four rows of ten, and one at the bottom with four. In the top row one was missing from the ninth slot. Desert Snow would be number forty-four.

Without warning he began to weep. He surprised himself with this sudden burst of emotion after almost forty years.

Friday, December 20

The trial was irretrievably over; everything that could be said had been said, but he had never doubted that he would lose. The written verdict was handed down at 10:00 on Friday morning, and all that remained was a summing up from the reporters waiting in the corridor outside the district court.

Carl Mikael Blomkvist saw them through the doorway and slowed his step. He had no wish to discuss the verdict, but questions were unavoidable, and he—of all people—knew that they had to be asked and answered. This is how it is to be a criminal, he thought. On the other side of the microphone. He straightened up and tried to smile. The reporters gave him friendly, almost embarrassed greetings.

“Let’s see . . . Aftonbladet, Expressen, TT wire service, TV4, and . . . where are you from? . . . ah yes, Dagens Nyheter. I must be a celebrity,” Blomkvist said.

“Give us a sound bite, Kalle Blomkvist.” It was a reporter from one of the evening papers.

Blomkvist, hearing the nickname, forced himself as always not to roll his eyes. Once, when he was twenty-three and had just started his first summer job as a journalist, Blomkvist had chanced upon a gang which had pulled off five bank robberies over the past two years. There was no doubt that it was the same gang in every instance. Their trademark was to hold up two banks at a time with military precision. They wore masks from Disney World, so inevitably police logic dubbed them the Donald Duck Gang. The newspapers renamed them the Bear Gang, which sounded more sinister, more appropriate to the fact that on two occasions they had recklessly fired warning shots and threatened curious passersby.

Their sixth outing was at a bank in Östergötland at the height of the holiday season. A reporter from the local radio station happened to be in the bank at the time. As soon as the robbers were gone he went to a public telephone and dictated his story for live broadcast.

Blomkvist was spending several days with a girlfriend at her parents’ summer cabin near Katrineholm. Exactly why he made the connection he could not explain, even to the police, but as he was listening to the news report he remembered a group of four men in a summer cabin a few hundred feet down the road. He had seen them playing badminton out in the yard: four blond, athletic types in shorts with their shirts off. They were obviously bodybuilders, and there had been something about them that had made him look twice—maybe it was because the game was being played in blazing sunshine with what he recognised as intensely focused energy.

There had been no good reason to suspect them of being the bank robbers, but nevertheless he had gone to a hill overlooking their cabin. It seemed empty. It was about forty minutes before a Volvo drove up and parked in the yard. The young men got out, in a hurry, and were each carrying a sports bag, so they might have been doing nothing more than coming back from a swim. But one of them returned to the car and took out from the boot something which he hurriedly covered with his jacket. Even from Blomkvist’s relatively distant observation post he could tell that it was a good old AK4, the rifle that had been his constant companion for the year of his military service.

He called the police and that was the start of a three-day siege of the cabin, blanket coverage by the media, with Blomkvist in a front-row seat and collecting a gratifyingly large fee from an evening paper. The police set up their headquarters in a caravan in the garden of the cabin where Blomkvist was staying.

The fall of the Bear Gang gave him the star billing that launched him as a young journalist. The downside of his celebrity was that the other evening newspaper could not resist using the headline “Kalle Blomkvist solves the case.” The tongue-in-cheek story was written by an older female columnist and contained references to the young detective in Astrid Lindgren’s books for children. To make matters worse, the paper had run the story with a grainy photograph of Blomkvist with his mouth half open even as he raised an index finger to point.

It made no difference that Blomkvist had never in life used the name Carl. From that moment on, to his dismay, he was nicknamed Kalle Blomkvist by his peers—an epithet employed with taunting provocation, not unfriendly but not really friendly either. In spite of his respect for Astrid Lindgren—whose books he loved—he detested the nickname. It took him several years and far weightier journalistic successes before the nickname began to fade, but he still cringed if ever the name was used in his hearing.

Right now he achieved a placid smile and said to the reporter from the evening paper:

“Oh come on, think of something yourself. You usually do.”

His tone was not unpleasant. They all knew each other, more or less, and Blomkvist’s most vicious critics had not come that morning. One of the journalists there had at one time worked with him. And at a party some years ago he had nearly succeeded in picking up one of the reporters—the woman from She on TV4.

“You took a real hit in there today,” said the one from Dagens Nyheter, clearly a young part-timer. “How does it feel?”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, neither Blomkvist nor the older journalists could help smiling. He exchanged glances with TV4. How does it feel? The half-witted sports reporter shoves his microphone in the face of the Breathless Athlete on the finishing line.

“I can only regret that the court did not come to a different conclusion,” he said a bit stuffily.

“Three months in gaol and 150,000 kronor damages. That’s pretty severe,” said She from TV4.

“I’ll survive.”

“Are you going to apologise to Wennerström? Shake his hand?”

“I think not.”

“So you still would say that he’s a crook?” Dagens Nyheter.

The court had just ruled that Blomkvist had libelled and defamed the financier Hans-Erik Wennerström. The trial was over and he had no plans to appeal. So what would happen if he repeated his claim on the courthouse steps? Blomkvist decided that he did not want to find out.

“I thought I had good reason to publish the information that was in my possession. The court has ruled otherwise, and I must accept that the judicial process has taken its course. Those of us on the editorial staff will have to discuss the judgement before we decide what we’re going to do. I have no more to add.”

“But how did you come to forget that journalists actually have to back up their assertions?” She from TV4. Her expression was neutral, but Blomkvist thought he saw a hint of disappointed repudiation in her eyes.

The reporters on site, apart from the boy from Dagens Nyheter, were all veterans in the business. For them the answer to that question was beyond the conceivable. “I have nothing to add,” he repeated, but when the others had accepted this TV4 stood him against the doors to the courthouse and asked her questions in front of the camera. She was kinder than he deserved, and there were enough clear answers to satisfy all the reporters still standing behind her. The story would be in the headlines but he reminded himself that they were not dealing with the media event of the year here. The reporters had what they needed and headed back to their respective newsrooms.

From the Hardcover edition.

(Continues…)

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Little Ice Cream Boy A Novel

Jacques Pauw

Penguin SA

Recommended Retail Price: R194

by David J. Ferreira

Gideon is in prison for a very long time— three consecutive life sentences at the Medium Security Section of Pretoria Central Prison, or as it’s called, “The Bomb”. And so far he’s only seen fourteen years of his sentence aboard “Bomb airlines on a flight to eternity.” It gives prisoners much time to think, locked away in a cell no bigger than a king-size bed, surrounded by murderers, rapists, robbers and habitual crooks. And that is exactly what G J Goosen, 2745534, is forced to do; reflect on his life.

He was once his mother’s innocent little ice cream boy: The son of a famed racist police officer, attending school, playing with his friends, watching his father beat his mother and drink and philander the days away. That is, until little Gideon finds a new crowd of friends across the railway line in Randfontein. His mentally-challenged brother hangs himself, and his alcoholic father puts him in hospital. Things turn for the worse rapidly, and a life of drugs, alcohol and sex becomes his playing field. But the culmination of his destruction would come in the form of a “sweetmeat he had scraped off the pavement” called Sharné—the mother of his fourteen-year-old daughter. Or was it the murder of an anti-apartheid activist in his driveway that turned the color of his life from blue to black?

But there is a recent gleam of hope in that dark hole; a gentle woman by the name of Debbie du Preez. She visits him every week, writes passionate love letters and even sees to the welfare of his elderly mother and estranged daughter. But could the old saying be true that when something looks too good to be true, it usually is?

Little Ice Cream Boy is an intensely explicit depiction of one of South Africa’s most notorious gangsters. Set against the final years of apartheid, Pauw writes in a first person perspective, giving the reader an autobiographical tunnel-vision of the events leading up to Gideon Goosen’s incarceration in 1994, and it certainly takes you deep into the heart of horrors of a gangster’s universe. This book is not for sensitive readers. In fact, if literature had age restrictions, it would be labeled 18SLNV. The literary device employed by the author might be effective, considering the nature of the plot, but at times it seems a bit excessive, even to the point of needless depravity. Even the author’s mother declared the book, “vulgar, obscene and unfit for publication.”

Jacques Pauw is an award winning South-African journalist and TV documentary producer, with three non-fiction books published under his name. This is his first work of fiction.

Love Lies

Adele Parks

Penguin

505pp.

Recommended Retail Price: R150

by David J. Ferreira

Fern is staring her thirtieth birthday right in the face. She had expected more of her life by the time she hit the big 30. She is still unmarried, living in a small two-bedroom flat in Clapham (not the posh bit) with her boyfriend of several years, Adam, and her best friend, Jess. The romance has ebbed away to nights in front of the television and grocery shopping, and she has almost accepted it. But with Adam seemingly stagnating in his career, and because of his inability to slip a sparkling rock on her finger, she is forced to look at her life in a new light. Until one night, after too much wine and a ghastly fight, she gives her partner an ultimatum—propose before her birthday, or she walks.

Enter Scottie Taylor, bad-boy rock star. After a whirlwind few days, Fern is sipping champagne on a first-class flight to LA, engaged to marry one of Europe’s biggest superstars, with Adam leaving hate-mail on her cell. But will she adapt to his public lifestyle of paparazzi and fame, while his assistants hog all of Scott’s time, and her wedding planners arrange designer shoe-fittings? Will she be transformed from middle-class lass, to rock star’s wife?

Beneath it all, there is a lingering feeling that tells a different story than what Fern so desperately wants to believe. Why is this Cinderella suddenly missing her two-bedroom apartment in Clapham? Can it all be just more love lies?

Love Lies is the newest fiction from Adele Parks’ pen, offering a mixture of romance, human emotion and comedy, but also graphic descriptions of lust and sex. It delivers an entrancing tale in the chick-lit genre of a woman who suddenly has it all—and it also has a nasty, unexpected twist at the end. Character growth is somewhat lacking, and some scenes were unnecessarily stretched, slowing the pace of the book. However, Parks writes well, and successfully explores the protagonist’s internal struggles at having to sacrifice everything she believes in for the celebrity lifestyle, and the reader really comes to know Fern.

Adele Parks is the author of eight best-selling novels, published in twenty countries. Two of her books are optioned as major motion pictures, and her articles appear regularly in magazines and newspapers in the UK. She lives in Guildford with her husband and son, where she is currently working on another novel and a screenplay.

Sample Chapter

Sourced from AdeleParks.com

Scott

‘Do I smell, Mark?’

‘No.’

‘You’d tell me if they did, right?’

‘I would.’

‘Is my hair line receding?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure I’m not going bald.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think I’ll lose my teeth?’

‘Only if someone punches you.’

‘My Nan got gum disease.’

‘We’ve got great dentists. Scott, you are coming down and this is just another one of your irrational worry sessions. We can waste a lot of time doing this, mate.’

‘Mark, do you think I’ll end up broke. You know, blow it all.’

‘No, we’ve sorted out your finances. You’re never going to suffer from poverty – other than poverty of spirit. No matter how many TVs you throw out of hotel windows.’

Fern

Chapter 1

I have taken a bullet. I live an ordinary life. I’ve almost accepted it. Almost.

I ought to clarify I don’t always go around thinking big, profound thoughts like that. Quite a lot of the time I amuse my brain cells by thinking about which movie star is sh-gging which other movie star (and do they have better s-x than us mere mortals), or whether I can get away with not washing my hair if I’m inventive enough with my up-do (thus securing an extra thirty minutes in bed in the morning). My idea of deep is wondering whether organic food is worth the huge price tag or whether it’s all just a ghastly marketing con. But, today I am twenty nine years, eleven months and three weeks old. I can no longer keep the big thoughts at bay.

Let me clarify, when I say ordinary, I mean normal, average, run of the mill, common place. Mundane. Clear?

I know, I know. I should be grateful. Ordinary has its up-side. I could be some human mutant with skin stretchy enough to be able to wrap my lower lip over the top of my head, or an uber fertile woman prone to giving birth to sextets and now be a proud mother of thirty-six indistinguishable, media loving brats or someone who really does train spot. Then my life would be considerably worse than the one I am leading but even knowing this is not as much comfort as it should be.

I live my ordinary life with Adam. My boyfriend of four years. I hesitate to refer to him as my partner because that would suggest some sort of equality or responsibility in the relationship and, frankly, both things are notably lacking. I organize the paying of all the bills (although he does cough up his share when prompted). I buy groceries, cook, clean, remember the birthdays of his family members, buy wedding gifts for our friends, arrange travel and accommodation if we ever do manage to grab a weekend away, I even put the pizza delivery people’s number on speed dial. Adam alphabetically arranges his CDs and vinyls in neat rows, all the way along our sitting room shelves.

Yes, we do share a flat. A two bedroom flat in Clapham. Not the posh bit of Clapham, sadly. The bit where the neighbours think old pee stained mattresses and settees, spurting their cheap foam innards, are acceptable alternatives to rose bushes in the front garden. Despite sharing a flat, I also hesitate to refer to Adam as my live-in-lover because that would suggest an element of passion and that’s notably lacking too, of late. Our relationship is more prose than poetry. It wasn’t always that way.

We used to be wild about each other. We used to swing from chandeliers, or as good as. There was a time when we couldn’t keep our hands off one another. Which led to some, err, shall we say interesting situations. I’m not trying to brag. I just want to paint a fair picture. We are certified members of the mile high club and we have made love under canvas, in a swimming pool and once in a botanic garden (Kew). We made love frequently and in many, many different ways; slowly and carefully, fast and needy. In the past we often came at the same time. Now, it’s unusual if we both are in the room at the same time.

I used to think we were going somewhere. It looks like we’ve arrived. This is my stop. I have to get off the train and take a long hard look at the station. It’s not one with hanging baskets full of cascading begonia and there isn’t one of those lovely large clocks with Roman numerals. There’s nothing romantic or pretty about my station at all. My station is littered with discarded polystyrene cups and spotted with blobs of chewing gum.

Frankly, it’s depressing.

We don’t own our flat. We don’t even have an exclusive flat share. My best friend, Jess, also rents with us. Normally, I acknowledge that this is no bad thing. She is (largely) single and so we are each other’s on-tap company on those nights when she doesn’t have a date and Adam is at work.

Adam is in the music business. Don’t get excited. He’s not a rock star, or a manager, or producer, or anything remotely glamorous and promising. He’s a rigger; which, if I’ve understood things correctly is one step up from the coach driver on a tour but not as important as the people who work in catering. He freelances and while he must be quite good at his job (offers of employment are regular) it’s clear he’s never going to be a millionaire. For that matter, he’s never going to have so much as a savings account.

This didn’t used to bother me. I’m a florist and work in someone else’s shop; Ben’s Bunches and Bouquets or Ben’s B&B for short. Ben, who is as camp as glow in the dark feather duster, is an absolute angel of a boss but I only earn a modest wage. Jess works in a book shop and, after thirteen years service, she has just reached the dizzy heights of store manager. We’re not the type of people to be motivated by money (one of my other great friends, Lisa, is married to a city lawyer and he’s rich but we think he’s nice despite that). I don’t resent Adam’s lack of cash. I resent his lack of …oh what’s the word?

Commitment.

His inability to grow up. To move on. It is Adam who has jammed our breaks at the ordinary station because he’s a settler. He lacks ambition. When challenged, he says he’s content and throws me a look of bewilderment that’s vaguely critical. He thinks I’m unreasonable because I yearn for more than a tiny two bedroom flat share, (all we can afford despite working endless, incompatible hours). I long for something more than Monday to Wednesday evenings in front of the TV, Thursday nights at the supermarket, Friday and Saturday nights at the local and Sundays (our one day a week off together) sleeping off a hangover.

Recently, I’ve been overwhelmed with despair as I’ve come to understand that not only do I currently have very little in my life to feel energized about but with the exception of hoping my lottery numbers come up, I have absolutely nothing to look forward to in the future. This is it for me. The sum total.

When I was a tiny kid I once saw a deeply unsuitable sci-fi TV show where the goodies were trapped in a room and the walls were closing in on them, about to crush them to death. The same menace was used in Star Wars Episode IV but Princess Leia had it really bad because she was knee deep in garbage too. I found the concept truly horrifying and suffered from nightmares for months. Lately, as I watch the (supposedly) best years of my life amble off into the dim distance I’ve started to experience the same nightmare again. I wake up sweating with the taste of fear in my mouth. I’m going to be squashed to death by the walls of a tiny room.

Welcome to our very first set of Friday Book Reviews.

For the first few weeks we are returning to the classics, with books that made an impact in South Africa in 2010 in some way or another. Today, we start with a very popular, if not best-selling South African novel, and a famous collection of bone-chilling short stories. These books made an impact in South Africa in 2010. Without any further delays, let’s get to it.

Oh yes, one more thing… If you think you have the stuff to be a books critic, send us an email with a short description of why you think you are qualified to be a book reviewer for the Readers Society of South Africa. We’re always on the lookout for gifted writers with a passion for literature. And we know you love to read… otherwise you wouldn’t have subscribed to this newsletter… and that is a very good start.

This Week’s Reviews Was Sponsored By Christell Kotze Attorneys
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Ways of Staying

Kevin Bloom

Picador Africa (Imprint of Pan Macmillan)

228pp.

Recommended Retail Price: R189

by David J. Ferreira

Actor and fashion designer, Brett Goldin and Richard Bloom, were abducted and murdered by a Cape Flats gang, their bodies discovered beside the M5 highway in Cape Town. The story made national news headlines.

On a Monday morning, summer of 2007, Kevin Bloom is parked on Anderson Street, waiting for Themba Jacky Koketi, a man living in a disintegrating factory building with no running water or electricity, while he studies for his honors in psychology. 6 March 2007, Kevin Bloom is doing an article for Maverick, exploring the symbolism of the murder of the world-famous historian, David Rattray, at an historical landmark. The last Saturday in January of 2006, Lisa Solomon enters the kitchen at 5:30AM to find a man with a knife in her dining room. What do all of these incidents have to do with the brutal murder and ongoing trial of Kevin’s cousin? How do all of these seemingly unrelated stories piece together to form an intricate portrait of our political environment?

“This is a vanishingly rare achievement,” comments Rian Malan on Bloom’s first publication, which tells the reader much more about the gravity of this book than any review. Bloom employs a unique writing style that is almost rigid and periodical, but after a few pages the eyes grow accustomed to its effectiveness, and the non-fictional account of one journalist who braves the subterraneous truths of South Africa’s unspoken history, reads like a novel. “…it is a layered story of love and stubborn allegiance to ideals by the nuanced characters, black and white, who have decided that South Africa is their only home,” writes Mandla Langa, one of SA’s most respected authors and cultural commentators. From my perception, it’s an honest account of our recent past. It exposes many of the hushed elements of racial and religious evils that are always trailing, refusing to fade away, yet never fully recognized or acknowledged.  But more fundamentally, it is a work of literature that portrays who we are as South Africans, regardless of how scarred or mutated by international headlines. This is a great political read, worth thorough discussion.

Ways of Staying is Kevin Bloom’s first book, compiled “as a Writing Fellow at the Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research (WISER) in Johannesburg.” As an award winning journalist, Bloom has written for many of South Africa’s mainstream publications, and worked as editor at three magazines.

Say You’re One of Them

Uwem Akpan

Abacus

289 pp.

Recommended Retail Price: R135.00

by David J. Ferreira

-I am Jigana, the oldest son in our family, living in Kenya on a street corrupted by poverty. My sister, Maisha sells herself at night to bring food home. And when she doesn’t return, my mother gives us glue or Kabire to sniff, to stave off hunger. They want me to go to school—to make something of my life. But too many people are doing horrible things to pay for my school fees.

-My name is Kotchikpa, and my baby sister is Yewa, but the people who are trying to sell us, want us to call ourselves Pascal and Mary. We live in Benin, with Uncle Fofo, and these people say they’re our godparents and NGO workers—good people— and they’re sending medicine to our parents back at the village. I don’t think I believe Uncle. I won’t go. I’d rather drown in the sea than go to Gabon!

-My best friend is Selam, and she’s a Muslim, and I’m Hadiya, a Christian. That doesn’t matter to us. But our parents would keep us apart. Then, suddenly, one day the street grew quiet, and the kids stopped flying their kites. The buildings were burnt black, but not ours. What happened? Mommy keeps me inside, to be safe. I miss my best friend, and as I stand on the balcony I wait for her to emerge from her charred block of flats and wave to me. But she doesn’t.

-My Uncle André is hammering at the front door, and as I go to open, I see many men clawing at the barred windows, stabbing their knives and axes, trying to get in. My mother has gone out, dressed in her finest, like the ‘bad women’, as she calls them. Papa hasn’t yet come home either, and I am alone, tending to my baby brother. Mamma told me not to put on the lights or answer the door for anybody. Nobody is home! “Poor, sweet thing, don’t be afraid,” Tonton André says, his voice calm and deep, as always. “They’re gone now. Your papa is here with me.”

Adjectives that best describe Akpan’s novel of Africa’s dark sufferings include, ‘horrifying, brutal, real and at the same time, utterly consuming and imposing’.

The above characters are four of the five children who take the reader on unique, yet correlative journeys through the shapeless evil across Africa, which is largely chosen to be ignored and forgotten. Such malice is veiled through the innocent eyes of the young narrators, and the execrable is told in an honest, yet emotionally intrusive voice that marks Akpan as an author of notable skill. Superb writing and literary timing make it easy to be immersed in the book, becoming a part of their world, each child forming shape in your consciousness with eyes that touch the very core of your being.

A negative element emerges at times when the dialogue becomes thick with accents and mixed French, making it difficult to read at the same pace as the developing story, forcing you to slow down. Also, the two novellas, in my opinion could have been trimmed, to keep them as gripping as the rest.

Say You’re One of Them will become a benchmark novel for future writers, on both levels of prose and technique. It is especially, ‘My Parent’s Bedroom’ that is praiseworthy, and is fittingly the last story in the book. This is a crowning achievement that every South African should read.

Sample Chapters

Sourced from BookDaily.com

Say You’re One of Them

> Chapter One > An Ex-mas Feast

Now that my eldest sister, Maisha, was twelve, none of us knew how to relate to her anymore. She had never forgiven our parents for not being rich enough to send her to school. She had been behaving like a cat that was going feral: she came home less and less frequently, staying only to change her clothes and give me some money to pass on to our parents. When home, she avoided them as best she could, as if their presence reminded her of too many things in our lives that needed money. Though she would snap at Baba occasionally, she never said anything to Mama. Sometimes Mama went out of her way to provoke her. “Malaya! Wh*re! You don’t even have breasts yet!” she’d say. Maisha would ignore her.

Maisha shared her thoughts with Naema, our ten-year-old sister, more than she did with the rest of us combined, mostly talking about the dos and don’ts of a street girl. Maisha let Naema try on her high heels, showed her how to doll up her face, how to use toothpaste and a brush. She told her to run away from any man who beat her, no matter how much money he offered her, and that she would treat Naema like Mama if she grew up to have too many children. She told Naema that it was better to starve to death than go out with any man without a condom.

When she was at work, though, she ignored Naema, perhaps because Naema reminded her of home or because she didn’t want Naema to see that her big sister wasn’t as cool and chic as she made herself out to be. She tolerated me more outside than inside. I could chat her up on the pavement no matter what rags I was wearing. An eight-year-old boy wouldn’t get in the way when she was waiting for a customer. We knew how to pretend we were strangers-just a street kid and a prostitute talking.

Yet our machokosh family was lucky. Unlike most, our street family had stayed together-at least until that Ex-mas season.

The sun had gone down on Ex-mas evening. Bad weather had stormed the seasons out of order, and Nairobi sat in a low flood, the light December rain droning on our tarpaulin roof. I was sitting on the floor of our shack, which stood on a cement slab at the end of an alley, leaning against the back of an old brick shop. Occasional winds swelled the brown polythene walls. The floor was nested with cushions that I had scavenged from a dump on Biashara Street. At night, we rolled up the edge of the tarpaulin to let in the glow of the shop’s security lights. A board, which served as our door, lay by the shop wall.

A clap of thunder woke Mama. She got up sluggishly, pulling her hands away from Maisha’s trunk, which she had held on to while she slept. It was navy blue, with brass linings and rollers, and it took up a good part of our living space. Panicking, Mama groped her way from wall to wall, frisking my two-year-old twin brother and sister, Otieno and Atieno, and Baba; all three were sleeping, tangled together like puppies. She was looking for Baby. Mama’s white T-shirt, which she had been given three months back, when she delivered Baby, had a pair of milk stains on the front. Then she must have remembered that he was with Maisha and Naema. She relaxed and stretched in a yawn, hitting a rafter of cork. One of the stones that weighted our roof fell down outside.

Now Mama put her hands under her shuka and retied the strings of the money purse around her waist; sleep and alcohol had swung it out of place. She dug through our family carton, scooping out clothes, shoes, and my new school uniform, wrapped in useless documents that Baba had picked from people’s pockets. Mama dug on, and the contents of the carton piled up on Baba and the twins. Then she unearthed a tin of New Suntan shoe glue. The glue was our Ex-mas gift from the children of a machokosh that lived nearby.

Mama smiled at the glue and winked at me, pushing her tongue through the holes left by her missing teeth. She snapped the tin’s top expertly, and the shack swelled with the smell of a shoemaker’s stall. I watched her decant the kabire into my plastic “feeding bottle.” It glowed warm and yellow in the dull light. Though she still appeared drunk from last night’s party, her hands were so steady that her large tinsel Ex-mas bangles, a gift from a church Ex-mas party, did not even sway. When she had poured enough, she cut the flow of the glue by tilting the tin up. The last stream of the gum entering the bottle weakened and braided itself before tapering in midair like an icicle. She covered the plastic with her palm, to retain the glue’s power. Sniffing it would kill my hunger in case Maisha did not return with an Ex-mas feast for us.

Mama turned to Baba, shoving his body with her foot. “Wake up, you never work for days!” Baba turned and groaned. His feet were poking outside the shack, under the waterproof wall. His toes had broken free of his wet tennis shoes. Mama shoved him again, and he began to wriggle his legs as if he were walking in his sleep.

Our dog growled outside. Mama snapped her fingers, and the dog came in, her ripe pregnancy swaying like heavy wash in the wind. For a month and a half, Mama, who was good at spotting dog pregnancies, had baited her with tenderness and food until she became ours; Mama hoped to sell the puppies to raise money for my textbooks. Now the dog licked Atieno’s face. Mama probed the dog’s stomach with crooked fingers, like a native midwife. “Oh, Simba, childbirth is chasing you,” she whispered into her ears. “Like school is chasing my son.” She pushed the dog outside. Simba lay down, covering Baba’s feet with her warmth. Occasionally, she barked to keep the other dogs from tampering with our mobile kitchen, which was leaning against the wall of the store.

“Jigana, did you do well last night with Baby?” Mama asked me suddenly.

“I made a bit,” I assured her, and passed her a handful of coins and notes. She pushed the money under her shuka; the zip of the purse released two crisp farts.

Though people were more generous to beggars at Ex-mas, our real bait was Baby. We took turns pushing him in the faces of passersby.

“Aii! Son, you never see Ex-mas like this year.” Her face widened in a grin. “We shall pay school fees next year. No more randameandering around. No more chomaring your brain with glue, boy. You going back to school! Did the rain beat you and Baby?”

“Rain caught me here,” I said.

“And Baby? Who is carrying him?”

“Naema,” I said.

“And Maisha? Where is she to do her time with the child?”

“Mama, she is very angry.”

“That gal is beat-beating my head. Three months now she is not greeting me. What insects are eating her brain?” Sometimes Mama’s words came out like a yawn because the holes between her teeth were wide. “Eh, now that she shakes-shakes her body to moneymen, she thinks she has passed me? Tell me, why did she refuse to stay with Baby?”

“She says it’s child abuse.”

“Child abuse? Is she now NGO worker? She likes being a prostitute better than begging with Baby?”

“Me, I don’t know. She just went with the ma-men tourists. Today, real white people, musungu. With monkey.”

Mama spat through the doorway. “Puu, those ones are useless. I know them. They don’t ever pay the Ex-mas rate-and then they even let their ma-monkey f*ck her. Jigana, talk with that gal. Or don’t you want to complete school? She can’t just give you uniform only.”

I nodded. I had already tried on the uniform eight times in two days, anxious to resume school. The green- and- white-checked shirt and olive-green shorts had become wrinkled. Now I reached into the carton and stroked a piece of the uniform that stuck out of the jumble.

“Why are you messing with this beautiful uniform?” Mama said. “Patience, boy. School is just around the corner.” She dug to the bottom of the carton and buried the package. “Maisha likes your face,” she whispered. “Please, Jigana, tell her you need more-shoes, PTA fee, prep fee. We must to save all Ex-mas rate to educate you, first son. Tell her she must stop buying those fuunny fuunny designer clothes, those clothes smelling of dead white people, and give us the money.”

As she said this, she started to pound angrily on the trunk. The trunk was a big obstruction. It was the only piece of furniture we had with a solid and definite shape. Maisha had brought it home a year ago and always ordered us to leave the shack before she would open it. None of us knew what its secret contents were, except for a lingering perfume. It held for us both suspense and consolation, and these feelings grew each time Maisha came back with new things. Sometimes, when Maisha did not come back for a long time, our anxiety turned the trunk into an assurance of her return.

“Malaya! Prostitute! She doesn’t come and I break the box tonight,” Mama hissed, spitting on the combination lock and shaking the trunk until we could hear its contents knocking about. She always took her anger out on the trunk in Maisha’s absence. I reached out to grab her hands.

“You pimp!” she growled. “You support the malaya.”

“It’s not her fault. It’s musungu tourists.”

“You better begin school before she runs away.”

“I must to report you to her.”

“I must to bury you and your motormouth in this box.”

We struggled. Her long nails slashed my forehead, and blood trickled down. But she was still shaking the trunk. Turning around, I charged at her and bit her right thigh. I could not draw blood because I had lost my front milk teeth. She let go and reeled into the bodies of our sleeping family. Atieno let out one short, eerie scream, as if in a nightmare, then went back to sleep. Baba groaned and said he did not like his family members fighting during Ex-mas. “You bite my wife because of that wh*re?” he groaned. “The cane will discipline you in the morning. I must to personally ask your headmaster to get a big cane for you.”

A welt had fruited up on Mama’s thigh. She rolled up her dress and started massaging it, her lips moving in silent curses. Then, to punish me, she took the kabire she had poured for me and applied it to the swelling. She pushed the mouth of the bottle against it, expecting the fumes to ease the hurt.

When Mama had finished nursing herself, she returned the bottle to me. Since it was still potent kabire, I did not sniff it straight but put my lips around the mouth of the bottle and smoked slowly, as if it were an oversized joint of bhang, Indian hemp. First it felt as if I had no saliva in my mouth, and then the fumes began to numb my tongue. The heat climbed steadily into my throat, tickling my nostrils like an aborted sneeze. I cooled off a bit and blew away the vapor. Then I sucked at it again and swallowed. My eyes watered, my head began to spin, and I dropped the bottle.

When I looked up, Mama had poured some kabire for herself and was sniffing it. She and Baba hardly ever took kabire. “Kabire is for children only,” Baba’s late father used to admonish them whenever he caught them eyeing our glue. This Ex-mas we were not too desperate for food. In addition to the money that begging with Baby had brought us, Baba had managed to steal some wrapped gifts from a party given for machokosh families by an NGO whose organizers were so stingy that they served fruit juice like shots of hard liquor. He had dashed to another charity party and traded in the useless gifts-plastic cutlery, picture frames, paperweights, insecticide-for three cups of rice and zebra intestines, which a tourist hotel had donated. We’d had these for dinner on Ex-mas Eve.

“Happee, happee Ex-mas, tarling!” Mama toasted me after a while, rubbing my head.

“You too, Mama.”

“Now, where are these daughters? Don’t they want to do Exmas prayer?” She sniffed the bottle until her eyes receded, her face pinched like the face of a mad cow. “And the govament banned this sweet thing. Say thanks to the neighbors, boy. Where did they find this hunger killer?” Sometimes she released her lips from the bottle with a smacking sound. As the night thickened, her face began to swell, and she kept pouting and biting her lips to check the numbness. They turned red-they looked like Maisha’s when she had on lipstick-and puffed up.

“Mama? So, what can we give the neighbors for Ex-mas?” I asked, remembering that we had not bought anything for our friends.

My question jerked her back. “Petrol … we will buy them a half liter of petrol,” she said, and belched. Her breath smelled of carbide, then of sour wine. When she looked up again, our eyes met, and I lowered mine in embarrassment. In our machokosh culture, petrol was not as valuable as glue. Any self- respecting street kid should always have his own stock of kabire. “OK, son, next year … we get better things. I don’t want police business this year-so don’t start having ideas.”

We heard two drunks stumbling toward our home. Mama hid the bottle. They stood outside announcing that they had come to wish us a merry Ex-mas. “My husband is not here!” Mama lied. I recognized the voices. It was Bwana Marcos Wako and his wife, Cecilia. Baba had owed them money for four years. They came whenever they smelled money, then Baba had to take off for a few days. When Baby was born, we pawned three-quarters of his clothing to defray the debts. A week before Ex-mas, the couple had raided us, confiscating Baba’s work clothes in the name of debt servicing.

I quickly covered the trunk with rags and reached into my pocket, tightening my grip around the rusty penknife I carried about.

Mama and I stood by the door. Bwana Wako wore his trousers belted across his forehead; the legs, flailing behind him, were tied in knots and stuffed with ugali flour, which he must have gotten from a street party. Cecilia wore only her jacket and her rain boots.

“Ah, Mama Jigana-ni Ex-mas!” the husband said. “Forget the money. Happee Ex-mas!”

“We hear Jigana is going to school,” the wife said.

“Who told you?” Mama said warily. “Me, I don’t like rumors.”

They turned to me. “Happee to resume school, boy?”

“Me am not going to school,” I lied, to spare my tuition money.

“Kai, like mama like son!” the wife said. “You must to know you are the hope of your family.”

“Mama Jigana, listen,” the man said. “Maisha came to us last week. Good, responsible gal. She begged us to let bygone be bygone so Jigana can go to school. We say forget the money-our Ex-mas gift to your family.”

“You must to go far with education, Jigana,” the wife said, handing me a new pen and pencil. “Mpaka university!”

Mama laughed, jumping into the flooded alley. She hugged them and allowed them to come closer to our shack. They staggered to our door, swaying like masqueraders on stilts.

“Asante sana!” I thanked them. I uncorked the pen and wrote all over my palms and smelled the tart scent of the Hero HB pencil. Mama wedged herself between them and the shack to ensure that they did not pull it down. Baba whispered to us from inside, ready to slip away, “Ha, they told me the same thing last year. You watch and see, tomorrow they come looking for me. Make them sign paper this time.” Mama quickly got them some paper and they signed, using my back as a table. Then they staggered away, the stuffed trousers bouncing along behind them.

Mama began to sing Maisha’s praises and promised never to pound on her trunk again. Recently, Maisha had taken the twins to the barber, and Baby to Kenyatta National Hospital for a checkup. Now she had gotten our debt canceled. I felt like running out to search for her in the streets. I wanted to hug her and laugh until the moon dissolved. I wanted to buy her Coke and chapati, for sometimes she forgot to eat. But when Mama saw me combing my hair, she said nobody was allowed to leave until we had finished saying the Ex-mas prayer.

I hung out with Maisha some nights on the street, and we talked about fine cars and lovely Nairobi suburbs. We’d imagine what it would be like to visit the Masai Mara Game Reserve or to eat roasted ostrich or crocodile at the Carnivore, like tourists.

“You beautiful!” I had told Maisha one night on Koinange Street, months before that fateful Ex-mas.

“Ah, no, me am not.” She laughed, straightening her jean miniskirt. “Stop lying.”

“See your face?”

“Kai, who sent you?”

“And you bounce like models.”

“Yah, yah, yah. Not tall. Nose? Too short and big. No lean face or full lips. No firsthand designer clothes. Not daring or beautiful like Naema. Perfume and mascara are not everything.”

“Haki, you? Beautiful woman,” I said, snapping my fingers. “You will be tall tomorrow.”

“You are asking me out?” she said in jest, and struck a pose. She made faces as if she were playing with the twins and said, “Be a man, do it the right way.” I shrugged and laughed.

“Me, I have no shilling, big gal.”

“I will discount you, guy.”

“Stop it.”

“Oh, come on,” she said, and pulled me into a hug.

Giggling, we began walking, our strides softened by laughter. Everything became funny. We couldn’t stop laughing at ourselves, at the people around us. When my sides began to ache and I stopped, she tickled my ribs.

(Continues…)

Soon, there will be numerous book reviews for you to read, before heading out to your local book store to invest in a quality book!

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