Some
thoughts on Trapido's book: I came to it expecting to read an
illuminating tale of life in apartheid South Africa and was greatly
disappointed as this aspect, although undoubtedly there to some
degree, is completely overwhelmed by so much else. I could certainly
have done without most of the little girlie with her favourite doll
or dolls stuff and the endless, schoolgirl ramblings around best
friends, teachers, their pets and clothes etc. etc. The more it went
on, and on, the more it made each Kindle page cry out “Time to
abandon ship and spend time on something more rewarding.”
The
book is as clearly autobiographical as anything I have read that
claims to be something else. But it is also in some part a family
history, with largely irrelevant details about all the German
relatives, who then disappear off stage, plus a potted history of the
country after the arrival of Europeans, but especially in the
apartheid era. Add the parts together and what do you get? Definitely
not a coherent whole. Whatever it is, it's nothing I would call a
novel.
If
there is no plot – and there is
no plot – the writing must sparkle enough to maintain interest. The
author has indeed been praised at times for her fine prose. Hmmm.
Well, I found little to admire about her way with words in general,
whereas for me at any rate, there were some severe lapses that made
my tummy complain. When I read about men who had to bend their heads
in order to “affect an entry”, that “nobody else can take its
sequence on board”, that “her mum will have an absolute fit”
(what are absolute and non-absolute fits and is there something
between?), and when “cranial undulations” came along to crown it
all, there was not only a severe disturbance to my literary
digestion, but my poor innocent Kindle was placed in grave danger of
being tossed into the Californian wildfires. After that, though, I
could almost have forgiven the second sentence in Chapter eight for
being sixty-two words long. Almost.
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