by Lindsay on May 16th, 2012
Verdict: carrot
The premise of the South African writer Ivan Vladislavic’s genre-blending collection The Loss Library sounds fairly simple at first – to write a personal book about the stories he could not write, with thoughts on what prevented him.
In theory, this book would be perhaps 50 per cent creative non-fiction, an autobiographical look back through old notebooks that form, among other things, a chronicle of the writer’s past ambitions. Fiction could be included by giving readers snippets of the unfinished stories, which Vladislavic does, and if the book sheds new light on the modern writer’s craft and avoids looking like a bunch of old fragments published for fun or profit, it might yield good results.
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by Carolyn on May 16th, 2012
Uitspraak: wortel
Die titel en die kragtige bandontwerp (’n kunswerk deur Christiaan Diedericks, Death of the Inside Warrior) roep die aflegging van aspekte van die self op.
In “Skielik skemer” word die titel van toepassing gemaak op die digter John Berryman, wat in 1972 selfmoord gepleeg het, maar dit word deurgetrek met betrekking tot die liriese spreker in verskeie verse en van toepassing gemaak op die korpus van De Lange se vorige bundels.
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by Luso on May 16th, 2012
Verdict: a carrot for Mighty Be Our Powers and a stick for This Child Will Be Great
The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to three women, Towakkol Karman of Yemen, Leymah Gbowee and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, both from Liberia, “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.” In 2011, Gbowee published Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer and Sex Changed a Nation at War. Johnson, now current President of Liberia, published her memoir, This Child Will Be Great in 2008. Both women are formidable Liberians who worked to end thirteen years of civil war and to bring more power and education to the women of Liberia. I read both memoirs and found each compelling for different reasons. However, I am left with different (contrary, in fact) opinions of each book. Gbowee’s story is heart-wrenching and full of personal detail, leaving one with the impression of having stood by her side throughout her journey. Johnson’s narrative feels more like a laundry list of her good deeds and justification for some of her more questionable ones.
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by Carolyn on May 16th, 2012
Uitspraak: wortel
Die kamer langsaan is ‘n besondere roman wat ligvoets tussen erns en luim, tussen die tragiese en die romantiese beweeg. Dit sorg vir afwisseling en balans in die leser se ervaring. In die hoofkarakter is dieselfde tweeledigheid te bespeur. Sy wissel tussen speelse sensualiteit en diep hartseer, met ‘n gesonde skoot woede en opstand tussenin. Sy is ‘n karakter waarmee ‘n mens kan identifiseer, iemand wat jy graag sou wou ken.
Die verhaal binne ‘n verhaal herinner ‘n mens aan Eleanor Baker se Verbeelde werklikheid, een van my groot gunstelinge. Die hoofkarakter beleef haar eie verhaal terwyl sy dié van ‘n ander karakter opteken. En uiteindelik word verbeelding en werklikheid so inmekaar gevleg dat die leser nie meer heeltemal seker is waar die een ophou of die ander begin nie.
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by Lindsay on May 16th, 2012
Verdict: stick
If writer Lesego Rampolokeng was given to overt off-stage narcissism, he would probably compare himself to a Johnny Dyani bassline. In a country in which populist guitarist Jimmy Dludlu just took a South African Music Award for best jazz album, Rampolokeng’s increasing obscurity is nothing if not symbolic.
In 2007 the journal Chimurenga put out its 11th issue, Conversations with Poets Who Refuse to Speak. Had that volume been released this year, Rampolokeng would have featured in its pages, reiterating his “difficulty” with being thought of as a “performance poet” while throwing in some caustic humour about bards who sell petrol and body lotion.
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by Lindsay on May 15th, 2012
Verdict: Ryan Bubear gives it a carrot and Peter Taylor walks the fence
When the 13-chapter SuperVan & I landed on my desk with a reassuringly solid thud, I casually opened it to a random page and began scanning. The words “utter crap”, “ball of shit”, “pielkop”, “moer”, and “p*es” (this last one appeared twice, without the asterisk, for good measure) stood out. All on one page.
Lacking in colour, SuperVan & I most certainly is not.
In his acknowledgements in Supervan and I, a book that is modestly subtitled “The memoir of South Africa’s greatest driver and his alter ego”, Sarel van der Merwe says: “I suppose I should apologise to all the people who might be insulted, threatened, hurt, defamed or just generally pissed off by this book. Not that I give a s** t, but it just seems like the right thing to do.”
This is Van der Merwe to a T.
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by Carolyn on May 15th, 2012
Uitspraak: wortel
Na twee digbundels, Die vloedbos sal weer vlieg (2006) en Woud van nege en negentig vlerke (2009), verskyn Wildvreemd (2011) as Carina Stander se eerste roman. Die roman vertel die verhaal van ’n vrou wat alleen in die oerbos in die Waterberg woon. Sy boer met bye en gaan net op vaste tye dorp toe om haar heuning en die kerse wat sy self maak te verkoop. Hierdie vrou is stom, sy het ’n erge letsel aan haar nek en sy beskryf haarself soos volg: “Ek is stilte. Stilte is ek.” In ’n onderhoud met Bibi Slippers (op Litnet) vertel Carina Stander dan ook dat die roman gegroei het uit die volgende sin: “Stilte is ’n oergeluid.”
Hierdie eerste hoofstuk van die roman stel die toonaard van die hele teks vas. Die skrywer werk met die basiese dinge soos stilte, water en vuur en met teenstellings soos lewe en dood, lig en donker, stilstand en vloei, oerbos en menslike gemeenskap. Die leser sal agterkom dat die verhaal werk met die elemente in die natuur en met argetipiese dinge. Dit is ook duidelik dat die skrywer tot hierdie onderlaag van die menslike psige aangetrokke is en in terme daarvan dink. Hierdie waarneming word versterk deur die motto wat kom uit Clarissa Pinkola Estes se “Women who run with the wolves” (1992) en die meer gekompliseerde Jungiaanse assosiasies (in die vorm van duidelike vroulike argetipes soos die wilde vrou, die wyse ou vrou, die jaloerse vrou, die oermoeder). Die hoofkarakter leef dan ook deurentyd na aan die natuur, in die bos en langs die rivier; sy werk met plante, met groente en kruie; maar sy is ook altyd bewus van diere en insekte, die hiëna (die wolf), die bye en die insekversameling.
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by Lindsay on May 15th, 2012
Verdict: carrot
Conservation areas cover about 7.5% of South Africa’s total land area. This field guide, organised by province, provides an overview of 43 of the country’s most popular parks, reserves and wilderness areas. It is definitely going to tour with me in future!
The history, location, geology, vegetation, fauna and flora of each park get comprehensive coverage. Interesting wildlife facts are highlighted in informational panels, as are the various facilities and activities offered by each park. Detailed maps, as well as vegetation maps and notes on climate, ensure that the visitor is well prepared.
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by Luso on May 15th, 2012
Verdict: carrot
A few pages into Imraan Coovadia’s new novel, The Institute for Taxi Poetry (Umuzi), and after briefly being tricked into swallowing its preposterous thesis, I upbraided myself for being insufficiently observant of Cape Town’s taxi life.
I visit the city often enough, so how had I missed the poems inscribed on the taxis that Coovadia writes about? I also wondered why this cerebral development had not wandered up north to Johannesburg. Coovadia’s fourth novel is set in the city whose “cod-liver-oil sky” could signal “the possibility of rain in 10 minutes or blazing sun”.
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by Luso on May 15th, 2012
By Keith Miller for The Daily Telegraph:
The first thing to say about John Lanchester is that his journalism explained roughly what was going on when the banking system went south in the late 2000s. Even a humanities graduate had the opportunity to understand what was going on. Lanchester’s was an intelligent, humorous and eminently reasonable voice among all the gibbering.
Capital attempts an allegorical portrait of London during those turbulent times. Squeezing a bafflingly diverse city of more than 70million into even quite a thick book without letting a good portion of the diversity slide is a tall order. But the book is a more or less unimpeachably plausible portrait of one (fictional) street in Clapham, where a spacious but fairly hideous Victorian house can command a price approaching a hundred times the UK’s median annual income.
The denizens of this none too mean street include Roger Yount, a nice-but-dim investment banker and his ghastly wife, Arabella; a newsagent, Ahmed Kamal, and Rohinka, “his delicious one”; a Senegalese footballing prodigy; and the octogenarian Petunia Howe, the only aboriginal resident, contemplating death in the house in which she was born.
The richer inhabitants attract the professional attentions of, variously, a lawyer, a Polish builder, a squadron of childcare workers and a Zimbabwean traffic warden. They also have the normal human appurtenances in the way of families, friends, colleagues, lovers etc.
From the outset, there is trouble in Paradise. A scene-setting prologue renders the houses in the street as old gods from an HP Lovecraft horror story, sucking the life out of generations of Londoners, throbbing with malign intent. Then we zoom abruptly down to the humans within. It is almost Christmas 2007.
Gently, slowly, Lanchester tightens the screws, alternating hope and despair, flitting between protagonists neatly and dexterously.
There is a reticence, an austerity about the book that I very much liked. The obvious-seeming parallels with Charles Dickens should not be inked in too heavily.
A more credible parallel is with Honoré de Balzac: like Balzac, Lanchester has the brains to relate the particular to the general; the ruthlessness to make bad things happen to good people; the steadiness of hand to draw unpalatable conclusions and, crucially, the courage to bore his readers a little, at times, rather than leave them under-informed.
This impulse to inform also tends to inoculate Lanchester from the realist writer’s urge to moralise. Yet some of the book’s “lessons” seem a shade limited, limiting, even.
This is not, of course, the first large book to be so entitled. But Lanchester is not really doing “analysis” in the Marxist sense.
The noises we hear emanating from the world of money are not directly responsible for the bad things that happen to our characters; they are the result of personal wickedness, arcane coincidence, institutional stupidity (the book is at its most overtly political in its treatment of the post-9/11 criminal justice system) or, realistically enough, dumb luck.
Books brought to you in association with Exclusives.co.za
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