Review: Vivien Horler

Two Sisters – Into the Syrian Jihad, by Asne Seierstad (Virago)

The awful news of a deathly attack on worshippers at the Malmesbury mosque on the penultimate night of Ramadaan – apparently by a Somali man – brings closer the world laid bare by Norwegian writer Asne Seierstad in this stark work.

We read the headlines about IS and the devastation of Syria every day, we hear of attacks and beheadings, we see Somali refugees on our streets, but rarely get a glimpse of the human stories behind the news.

Seierstad, a former Norwegian war correspondent whose book The Bookseller of Kabul sold more than two million copies, has detailed one family’s devastation in Two Sisters. It is her non-fiction account of how a pair of teenage sisters, of Somali descent but born and brought up in Oslo, left their family and travelled to Raqqa in Syria to join IS. Continue reading →

Review: Vivien Horler

My Father Died for This, by Lukhanyo and Abigail Calata (Tafelberg)

Imagine if you were a three-year-old and this was your first memory.

“Once at the gravesite I remember holding on to my mother’s dress, too afraid of letting go. The up-and-down stamping by toyi-toyiing mourners shook the ground under my feet. I had never felt anything like that before, and I remember being so afraid of the ground collapsing underneath me.”

Despite dredging his memory, Lukhanyo Calata cannot remember a single moment with the father who by all accounts doted on him. Fort Calata, one of the Cradock Four, was murdered by the South African security police in June 1985. His older daughter Dorothy was almost 10, Fort was three, and his younger daughter, Tumani, was not yet born. His wife, Nomonde, was just 26. Continue reading →

Review: Vivien Horler

Yes, Really! – A life, by Kate Turkington (Tafelberg)

If there is a message Kate Turkington would like to leave for posterity, it would probably be her mother Doris’s mantra: “Have a go!”

Turkington, an academic, TV presenter and veteran broadcaster, has done her mother proud – in her early 80s she’s still up for having a go, whether it be foreign travel, quadbike riding or praising the delights of multiple orgasms.

She has had two husbands, four children and multiple lovers; has lived in London, Ireland, Nigeria and South Africa, has taught English literature to thousands of Wits University students, presented TV programmes both here and in Ireland, and travelled the globe. Continue reading →

Review: Vivien Horler

A Guide to the Garden Route – fifth edition, updated by Grahame Thomson and Julie Carlisle (Jacana)

The stretch of coastline from Mossel Bay to the Tsitsikamma area has been regarded as a “garden route” for more than 150 years.

As far back as 1840 one R Gordon Cumming, a member of the Southern Cape Hunting Expedition, wrote: “The Garden Route – a vast and endless world of loveliness, unseen, unknown, untrodden save by those varied multitudes of stupendous, curious and beautiful quadrupeds, whose forefathers have roamed its mighty solitudes from primaeval ages, and with whom I afterwards became so intimately acquainted.”

Today no one could call the Garden Route “unseen, unknown, untrodden”, but it is still a world of loveliness which includes places of solitude, provided you know where to look.

And this guide is designed to show you just that.

The Garden Route lies within a global biodiversity hotspot, the Cape Floristic Region, one of the smallest but richest floral kingdoms in the world. In his foreword, former CEO of SANParks Dr Robbie Robinson points out that 70% of the 9 600 plant species in the Cape Floristic Kingdom are found nowhere else.

Last year, as this guide was being prepared and while the Knysna section of the Garden Route was in flames, Unesco declared the Garden Route South Africa’s ninth biosphere reserve. This is an important declaration – biosphere reserves are given international recognition due to their unique nature, history and culture.

In his introduction to this fifth edition author Grahame Thomson says the preservation of the natural world of the Garden Route must be considered “a fundamental national priority”.

The guide begins with sections on sea life, plants, trees and insects, land mammals, reptiles, birds and amphibians, to human history and the impact of humans.

It then has a series of maps of the areas covered, with attractions including museums in the various localities, cultural and historic sites, festivals and events, adventure tourism including boat trips and bungy jumping, and hiking trails including the famous Otter Trail, slack-packing trails, and guided and self-guided trails.

The Garden Route is a land of rivers and forests, and once teemed with game while its sea life was rich in diversity. The name Outeniqua comes from an ancient tribe of people who once roamed the area, and the word means “man laden with honey”.

As a result, say the authors, it is no surprise that humans have thrived here through the ages, starting with original modern man about 160 000 years ago, according to archaeological discoveries at the Pinnacle Point caves near Mossel Bay.

Published in a portable A5 format, the book is rich in gorgeous pictures of bays and estuaries, mountain passes and a wide variety of flora and fauna. It’s a wonderful resource for anyone heading to the Garden Route or living there.

It will help you, as Thomson says in his introduction, to “venture beyond the known tourism routes, listen to the silence, be amazed by the world we have been given.

“Choose the roads and paths less travelled, and you will find a world that will enrich your life forever.”

• A version of this review appeared in Weekend Argus on Sunday on May 27 2018

Review: Vivien Horler

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman (HarperCollins)

Eleanor Oliphant may think she’s fine, but she isn’t, not by a long chalk.

She works for a graphic design company in Glasgow, but is not one of the creatives: she works in accounts. She comes to work at 8.30am, takes an hour for lunch, and leaves at 5.30pm.

She listens to a radio serial while she eats her supper – always pasta with pesto and salad – and then either reads, does the crossword, or occasionally watches television. She goes to bed at 10pm. Every Wednesday she speaks to Mummy on the phone. Continue reading →

Reviews: Vivien Horler

The Alice Network, by Kate Quinn (William Morrow/ Harper Collins)

Everyone Brave is Forgiven, by Chris Cleave (Sceptre)

Wars that still echo down our history are slipping beyond human memory. No one alive remembers the Boer War, which continues to have a huge impact on South Africa today, nor World War I.

As for World War II, it ended literally a lifetime ago – 73 years ago this week – and there are fewer and fewer people who remember it.

Within a decade it will be gone from lived experience, and our only access to a conflagration that changed the world will be through novels that bring it alive.

Two absorbing war novels demonstrate the courage demanded by people who lived through the war, not all of them soldiers.

The Alice Network is a page-turner about women spies in France during World War I, and how their experiences in that war affect their lives during and just after World War II.

It is London in 1947, two years after World War II has ended, and Charlie St Clair is a wealthy young American whose mother has brought her to Europe for an abortion. Continue reading →