Review: Vivien Horler

One Life at a Time – a doctor’s memoir of AIDS in Botswana (Picador Africa)

DANIEL BAXTER

The night before Dr Daniel Baxter, medical director of a downtown community health centre in Manhattan, left for Botswana in 2002, he had dinner with a famous American cardiothoracic surgeon.

The surgeon was interested in Baxter’s decision to work for Botswana’s newly launched HIV/AIDS Treatment Programme and asked him why he was doing it.

For years Baxter had wanted to work in a developing country and help people less fortunate than he was. A little stung that the surgeon wasn’t impressed by his selfless plans, he stuttered that the people of Botswana had the same hopes and fears as Americans, and he wanted to experience the universitality of these feelings. Continue reading →

Spire, by Fiona Snyckers (Clockwork Books)

Years ago I discovered Modesty Blaise. Not the comic strip, the books by Peter O’Donnell. They were tales of derring-do, with Modesty and her sidekick Willie Garvin tackling and beating baddies all over the world.

They would get into terrible scrapes, so that you wondered how they could possibly save themselves (you knew they would save themselves). Occasionally, when O’Donnell had written himself into a corner, he would use the “with one bound he was free” solution.

Once Willie, who had been thrown out of a plane without a parachute over a snowy landscape, tracked towards a heap of snow that turned out to be covering a small flock of sheep. His landing didn’t do the sheep any good, but Willie made it.

The stories were absurd, but there was something about Modesty and Willie, their utter loyalty to each other (he always called her Princess), their bravery, their resourcefulness, that kept you reading. Continue reading →

Review by Vivien Horler

In the Days of Rain (4^th Estate/ Jonathan Ball)

Rebecca Stott

If you read through the list of the books historian and novelist Rebecca Stott has written you’ll find two about Darwin: Darwin and the Barnacle and Darwin’s Ghosts: In search of the first evolutionists.

Her interest in Darwin is remarkable because – or perhaps in spite of – the fact that she grew up in England in a fundamentalist Christian cult called the Exclusive Brethren who deny evolution. They also deny their children the right to study science at school.

They deny a lot of other things too, like women’s right to work or speak at the regular “meetings”, people’s right to join unions or professional associations, members’ right to any relationship with non-members, including relatives. Members cannot eat with non-members, cannot go to university, cannot watch TV or movies, cannot listen to the radio or read newspapers, and can read only approved books. Brethren live in a bubble within society of which they are not part Continue reading →

Review by Vivien Horler

A Book of American Martyrs (4^th Estate)

Joyce Carol Oates

The perfect martyr is a suicide. This is the view of one of the minor characters in this often searing novel of life in 21^st century America.

It was published earlier this year, as Donald Trump was sworn in as president, but it is set between 1999 and 2012, around the time Barak Obama became the chief resident of the White House.

And the novel pits two families against each other: one who would have voted for Trump, and one who would have voted for Obama.

They are the Dunphys, a right-wing Christian fundamentalist family from Muskegee Falls, Ohio, and the left-wing Voorheeses, from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Luther Dunphy is a carpenter and roofer, Gus Voorhees is a doctor who works at women’s clinics where he performs abortions Continue reading →

As By Fire – The end of the South African University (Tafelberg)

Jonathan Jansen

As the eldest daughter of a white middle class family, I went to Rhodes University, the first of my family to go to university.

It was not a given – my mother said she saw no point in going to university unless there was a specific career motivation.But  I had a supportive English teacher who approached my parents, and Rhodes was about to launch a three-year journalism degree course.

My dad’s employers lent him money for my fees, to be repaid over six years. I was given what seemed to me to be a very small amount of pocket money, from which I was supposed to buy my clothes and pay for my entertainment, but I went off each term with a bag full of toiletries and other necessities.

My parents covered my transport to and from Grahamstown – by train; I lived in a university residence, so my accommodation and food was covered; and I had accounts at the local bookshop and chemist.

All that was expected of me was to pass each year. I graduated three years later with no debt. There was no question of my repaying my parents, or helping them or my three younger siblings financially when I started working for the Cape Argus as a junior reporter. Continue reading →