Category Archives: Reviews of new books

This category has reviews of the latest books

Is it magic – or just something we don’t understand yet?

Review: Vivien Horler

The Life Impossible, by Matt Haig (Canongate)

Matt Haig is an enormously successful British writer who has sold untold numbers of novels, notably The Midnight Library, which is in the genre of magic realism, not one I particularly like.

At one point in this new novel I thought he’d obviously eaten all the mushrooms, because some weird stuff happens.

What the two books seem to have in common – and I haven’t read The Midnight Library – is that they both deal with conflicted women who have an experience that enables them to introspect, as the ANC puts it, consider the trajectory of their lives and how they can do better. Continue reading

How do you solve a murder when everyone has a motive?

Review: Vivien Horler

Close to Death, by Anthony Horowitz (Century/ Penguin Random House)

In his acknowledgements Anthony Horowitz writes: “This was quite a complicated novel to write….”

I thought it was quite a complicated novel to read – and I’m still not sure who the baddy was.

But I thoroughly enjoyed the process.

Until last month I’m not sure I’d read Horowitz before, or certainly not his Hawthorne novels.

In these murder thrillers Horowitz becomes a fictional alter ego in his own books, working as a writer alongside Daniel Hawthorne, a former top detective who left the police under a cloud (an accused in handcuffs slipped down the stairs, and Hawthorne was right behind him) and is called in as a freelancer to help solve tricky cases.

My first Hawthorne novel – read just last month – was The Sentence is Death, published in 2018, a tale about a divorce lawyer bludgeoned to death in his London home.

Hawthorne is seconded to the case, and Horowitz, who has a three-book contract to write about Hawthorne, stumbles along behind him, trying to figure out what’s going on. Hawthorne doesn’t think much of Horowitz’s detection abilities. It was a great read on a long flight. Continue reading

Don’t let the title put you off – this is an entirely satisfying novella

Review: Archie Henderson

The English Understand Wool, by Helen DeWitt (Storybook ND)

The title was enough to deter me, but the size and the cover did appeal (yes, you can sometimes judge a book by those!) Wool, it turned out, is a warm, comforting read.

DeWitt is best known for her debut novel, The Last Samurai. It was her 50th completed manuscript, which she finally handed in to a publisher in 1998, hitting the shelves in 2000. Then began a runaround for the author after the publisher went belly up, leading to what appears to have been terrible exploitation of DeWitt.

Behind the enervating attempt to be published and what followed must lie a story: a difficult relationship with publishers. Is Wool her revenge? It certainly is not a good optic for publishing and all who sail in it, from agents, to lawyers and all the rest of that crew. Continue reading

If you’re taking only one bird field guide, this is the one

Review: Lyn Mair

Birds of Greater Southern Africa, by Keith Barnes, Terry Stevenson and John Fanshaw; illustrated by John Gale and Brian Small, with Faansie Peacock illustrating the lark complex (Helm Field Guides)

This importan and ambitious new field guide to the birds of greater Southern Africa offers much more than a quick ID with distribution maps.

It covers a huge area from the southern tip of Africa to the entire countries of Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa with Lesotho and Eswatini.

Also included are the waters of the Mozambique Channel with Europa Island, and the African part of the Southern Ocean with its many islands including Gough, the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, and Marion and Prince Edward islands. Continue reading

Books always add magic

Review: Beryl Eichenberger

The Bookshop Ladies, by Faith Hogan (Head of Zeus)

Anything with “book” in the title is an immediate attraction and so far I have not been disappointed. There is always a magic released when books are involved.

The Bookshop Ladies by Faith Hogan is a delightful book club read. Its easy narrative sweeps you along, the twists surprising, the outcomes fairly predictable but all in all, it held my attention.

It starts in Paris, a retirement party for an acclaimed gallerist and art dealer, a drive home that ends in tragedy and a revelation that sets in motion a ricocheting chain of events event – changing lives, settling scores, but ultimately leaving everyone in their rightful places. And with the background of a bookstore – well, what could go wrong? Continue reading

The long shadow cast by war and how three generations of women in a German family try to cope

Review: Vivien Horler

The Silence in Between, by Josie Ferguson (Doubleday)

Imagine: you live in Claremont in Cape Town and one night you allow your eight-year-old daughter to have a sleepover with her cousin in Bellville. The next day you wake up to discover the city has been divided, and you can’t reach her or get her back.

It seems a ridiculous notion, but it happened in Berlin in August 1961, when the Soviets fenced off the sector of the city over which they had control, dividing thousands of families for nearly 30 years.

This is part of the premise of The Silence in Between, a work of page-turning historical fiction based on true events. Continue reading

An honest and satisfying memoir of negotiating life’s hurdles

Exit Wounds – A story of love, loss and occasional wars, by Peter Godwin (Picador Africa)

Peter Godwin has lived away from Rhodesia/Zimbabwe for a long time, well over 20 years, and yet it continues to define him. Or maybe it’s just that our childhoods do that to all of us.

He grew up in the Chimanimani Mountains, where his British-born mother was a doctor and his Polish-born father an engineer. He had an older sister and a younger sister, but the older one, Jain, died in an ambush, along with her fiancé, shortly after the outbreak of the Rhodesian war.

This memoir is dedicated to his sisters: “Georgina, who lived through so much of this with me. And Jain, who didn’t get to.” Continue reading

Spy novel fails to live up to early promise

Review: Archie Henderson

Beirut Station: Two lives of a spy, by Paul Vidich (Pegasus/No Exit Press)

With the devastation in Gaza and the prospect of another war breaking out in Lebanon (did the last one ever end?), this novel seemed like a good idea – if it could explain some of the complexities of Middle East politics. It fell short.

This is a shame since Paul Vidich’s The Matchmaker about West Berlin shortly before the Wall came down was an entertaining spy novel and praised for its “casual elegance” by the New York Times. Vidich strives for that kind of elegance in Beirut Station, but fails to achieve it.

The first problem is the main character. Analise Assad is a Lebanese-American who speaks fluent Arabic. She should be a convincing CIA operative in a hotbed of international intrigue, but she comes across as someone from whom the agency would run a mile before hiring, let alone parachuting into a war zone. Continue reading

Heart-breaking but hopeful memoir of a life that became voiceless

Review: Beryl Eichenberger

Hot Tea and Apricots, by Kim Ballantine (Self-published)

When I saw the title of this memoir, I was immediately eager to read it. I mean, Hot Tea and Apricots – where would you find a title like that? And within moments the explanation was there as part of the author’s note setting the tone for the book.

Because Kim’s story is unlike any I have read. And the title reveals so much in terms of coping, taking those steps towards conquering the mountains that faced Kim.

Hot tea and apricots is a sherpa’s response to climbing a high peak, a response to that loss of faith when you think you won’t make it, a response of hope and finding the strength to move on. Continue reading

New insights into the Cape’s slavery heritage

Review: Vivien Horler

The Truth about Cape Slavery – The foundations of colonial South Africa, by Patric Tariq Mellet (Tafelberg)

In 1808 an enslaved man, Louis van Mauritius, led an armed uprising of 346 fellow enslaved and Khoe farm labourers from the Malmesbury, Swartland and Durbanville districts.

It took them three days to get to Cape Town, where they planned to take over the Castle, then the seat of government. This did not turn out well.

The governor of the Cape at the time, Lord Caledon, sent a regiment of Dragoons to meet the attackers as they crossed the Salt River estuary.

In what Patric Tariq Mellet calls the largest treason trial in SA history, 52 leaders were put in the dock, while 292 others were tried separately. A total of 16 were put to death and others were sent to Robben Island for life.

This was known as the Jij Rebellion, because white slave owners considered it insolent if their “property” addressed them as jij and sij. Continue reading