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Christy Weyer Reviews Halfborn Women by Colleen Higgs

by Jani on 11 Mar 2010   |   

Verdict: carrot

Colleen Higgs’s 2004 poetry collection, Halfborn Women makes a comeback in this dazzling review by Christy Weyer at LitNet. Grab one of the last available copies at the Book Lounge!

Although Colleen Higgs has been writing and publishing individual poems for many years, Halfborn Woman (Hands-on Books, 2004) is her first collection. The title, taken from Adrienne Rich’s poem “Upper Broadway” (in The Dream of a Common Language), an extract of which also serves as an epigraph to this collection, suggests the central theme of this book: a woman’s search for identity and the development of a whole self. This search is enacted through a poetic reflection and examination of her relationships, both familial and intimate.

In Halfborn Woman, Higgs’s project is thus an autobiographical one, as the opening poem of the collection, “autobiography”, makes explicit. In this poem, Higgs confesses that “[she] like[s] to turn back/ it’s a compulsion/ to look back with longing and regret”, and because she’s “been a writer since [she] was eight”, she “turn[s] back” in the form of writing (13). But despite her writing about “absence, loss, grief” which “ink[s]” these emotions and experiences “into [her] cells”, there is still a “relief [in] writing”, in being able “finally to speak the unspeakable/ exposing its pale naked tendrils” (13).

• Complete review at LitNet

Book Details

• Halfborn Women by Colleen Higgs
  EAN: 9780620319751
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Karen Ebersohn resenseer Sonde met die bure en Herrie op die ou tremspoor deur CJ Langenhoven

by Jani on 11 Mar 2010   |   

Uitspraak:wortel

’n Aangename, plesierige, genotvolle en verruklike leeservaring. Daar is sekerlik nie genoeg woorde om te beskryf hoeveel ure se vreugde ’n mens uit die legendariese skrywer C.J. Langenhoven se boeke put nie. En ’n mens wil nie graag soetsappig raak nie, maar Langenhoven verdien alle lof.

Sonde met die bure is die eerste boekie in die reeks van twee wat as een van sy satiriese verhale bestempel word. Die twee verhale is byna ’n eeu gelede, in 1921, en Herrie op die ou tremspoor, in 1925, geskryf, maar steeds kan jy nie anders as om in verwondering te staan voor Langenhoven se besonderse talent nie. Al twee verhale spreek vandag nog tot die leser. Die leser kan in die storie inklim en saam met die skrywer ervaar asof dit vandag is. Dit is seker een van die merkwaardigste prestasies waaraan Langenhoven se werke vandag gemeet kan word. Daar is dikwels oor hom gesê: Langenhoven skryf nie, maar hy praat. Die twee boeke beklemtoon dit. Sy aanslag, wat deurspek is van sarkasme en kwinkslae, laat ’n mens kraai van lekkerkry.

• Lees die volledige resensie

Boekbesonderhede

• Sonde met die bure deur CJ Langenhoven
  EAN: 978186993232
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• Herrie op die ou tremspoor deur CJ Langenhoven
  EAN: 9781869193270
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Carrots for Three from the Humour Section

by Sophy on 11 Mar 2010   |   

Verdict: carrot, carrot and carrot

Aubrey Paton reviews three local cartoon anthologies: Don’t Mess with the President’s Head, Strike While the Iron is Hot and More South African Insults. Her verdict is carrots all round!

Recent international incidents, not to mention events in the personal and political life of our President, an ordained man of the cloth himself, have rendered this hat trick of humour a little out of date but no less amusing.

We can chart Jacob Zuma’s popularity by the height at which Zapiro makes the dripping shower rosette [now firmly re-attached] hover irresolutely over the Presidential dome, while poor Lady Justice still has a hard time of it.

• Complete review in the Sunday Times

Book Details

• Don’t Mess with the President’s Head: Zapiro Annual 2009 by Zapiro
  EAN: 9781770097575
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• Strike While the Iron is Hot: Madam & Eve 2009 by Stephen Frances and Rico
  EAN: 9781770097797
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• More South African Insults by Sarah Britten
  EAN: 9780958489089
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Verushka Louw resenseer Daddy's Girl deur Margie Orford

by Jani on 10 Mar 2010   |   

Uitspraak: wortel

Mapstieks meisie, maar jy’t my laat naels kou!

Margie Orford se derde boek, waarin die raakvat-joernalis dr. Clare Hart verskyn, sny byna te na aan die been.

Die storie, soos die titel skimp, fokus op die verdwyning van jong meisies, meestal in die bende-geteisterde Kaapse Vlakte. Enige iemand wat gereeld na die sewe-uur-nuus kyk, het genoeg opgegaarde beelde van vermiste- kleinmeisiejie-skoolfoto’s, om Daddy’s Girlte sien as fiksie wat die werklikheid weerspieël

• Volledige resensie in Rapport

• Daddy’s Girl tuisblad

Boekbesonderhede

• Daddy’s Girl deur Margie Orford
  EAN: 9781868423262
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Blood Rose Notice in the UK Times

by Margie on 10 Mar 2010   |   

My second Clare Hart thriller, Blood Rose, appears alongside books by Scandinavian crime writers Jo Nesbø, Camilla Läckberg in the UK’s Times newspaper:

Margie Orford’s Blood Rose has an appealing heroine, the Cape Town-based criminal profiler Dr Clare Hart, and a lively, fast-moving plot set in Namibia — probably the first time that the sparsely populated country has featured in crime fiction. In Walvis Bay, the largest port, a serial killer is disposing of vulnerable teenage street-boys. Hart is asked to help, which she does with panache while dealing with her own emotional see-saws. Good dialogue and unfamiliar characters.

• Read more

Karina Magdalena Szczurek Reviews Counting Sleeping Beauties by Hazel Frankel

by Jani on 10 Mar 2010   |   

Verdict: stickn

Hazel Frankel’s debut novel, Counting Sleeping Beauties, was runner-up for the European Union Literary Award (SA) and the Telegraph First Book Award (UK) in 2007. One can easily see why it might have appealed to the judges. Frankel offers an assured, good prose, which lures one into her story. However, her novel is less convincing on other levels.

Counting Sleeping Beauties recounts the story of a family of Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants and their servants in Johannesburg in the late 1950s (continuing into the recent present in the last few chapters and the epilogue).

The story is told from the alternating perspectives of four women: Leah, her daughter, Susan, and her granddaughter, Hannah, as well as Sina, one of their Sotho servants.

• Complete review in The Sunday Independent

• Counting Sleeping Beauties homepage

Book Details

• Counting Sleeping Beauties by Hazel Frankel
  EAN: 9781770095441
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Zandra Bezuidenhout resenseer Bloot mens deur Jelleke Wierenga

by Carolyn on 09 Mar 2010   |   

Uitspraak: wortel

Jelleke Wierenga is ‘n wonderlike nuwe aankomeling op die Afrikaanse poësietoneel, met die “vernyn van ‘n steekvlieg”.

Só skryf Zandra Bezuidenhout in ‘n resensie van Wierenga se debuutbundel Bloot Mens op Die Burger se Boekeblok. Wierenga skep ‘n “herkenbare wêreld in algemene spreektaal” in haar poësie. “Die brandpunte is vir almal ter sake.”

Wierenga noem ‘n ding op sy naam en sy probeer nie paai nie. Die manier waarop sy sake verwoord is miskien ‘n bietjie te skerp en direk, maar tog is haar aanslag verfrissend.

en nog styf van bal en boud gegim / handel die geldbedeelde jongoumanne / koel forex-transaksies per bluetooth af / saam met opgeskerpte iPhone-vroutjies (“Lyflike”)

Liefhebbers van sagte vlinderpoësie mag Jelleke Wierenga se debuut nogal geniepsig vind, want sy dig met die venyn van ‘n steekvlieg. Tog, wanneer die spreker haar angeltjie terugvou, staan sy weerloos en naak; sy is “bloot mens” en “kaal” soos in die gedig “Kantwerk” – hoewel die uitdagende gezoem nie noodwendig bedaar nie. Danksy hierdie spel met teendele besit die bundel ‘n eiesoortige trefkrag.

• Volledige resensie in Die Burger

• Bloot mens tuisblad

Boekbesonderhede

• Bloot mens deur Jelleke Wierenga
  EAN: 9781869193119
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Debashine Thangevelo Reviews Maha, Ever After by Sumayya Lee

by Jani on 09 Mar 2010   |   

Verdict: carrot

AFTER savouring every melodramatic twist in Maha’s search for a suitable husband in The Story of Maha, I was eager for the sequel. Uproariously funny, its tongue-in-cheek tone underscores prickly issues of infidelity, tradition and the struggle for individuality in a world where being a Muslim female is on a par with subservience.

Maha is adjusting to life as Mrs Patel. Despite living in her in-laws’ grand home in Musgrave, Maha defiantly clings to her independence which, however, slowly ebbs away.

• Complete review at IOL Tonight

Book Details

• Maha, Ever After by Sumayya Lee
  EAN: 9780795702914
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Carol Brammage Reviews Jelly Dog Days by Erica Emdon

by Jani on 09 Mar 2010   |   

Verdict: carrot

THIS novel is the first-person narrative of young Theresa, known as Terry, who tells of her earliest memories of growing up in Johannesburg in the sixties and seventies through to adolescence. The story is essentially that of growing up in a dysfunctional family shaped in an apartheid South Africa.

The strength of telling a story through the eyes of a child is that the narrative has an intensity that is seemingly unmediated. Terry’s account is lively and her observations keen. Her self-centred, alcoholic mother, Lizette, and especially her stepfather, Piet, are brought to violent life, and her descriptions of Johannesburg streets and suburbs are graphic.

• Complete review in the Witness

• Jelly Dog Days homepage

Book Details

• Jelly Dog Days by Erica Emdon
  EAN: 9780143025108
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Gert Coetzee resenseer Begging to be Black deur Antjie Krog

by Jani on 08 Mar 2010   |   

Uitspraak: wortel

Elke boek deur Antjie Krog, een van Suid-Afrika se handjie vol internasionaal gerekende skrywers, is ’n happening.
Ook Begging to Be Black, ondanks die bohaai wat dit ná bekendstelling (om die verkeerde redes?) ontketen het.

Dit is die boek waarin sy haarself as ’n wit Suid-Afrikaan in die plek van ’n swart Suid-Afrikaan in ons land met sy veelbewoë rasverlede stel.

Dus, hoe vir ’n witte om jouself swart te verbeel, swart te probeer word.

• Lees die volledige resensie in Volksblad

Boekbesonderhede

• Begging to be Black deur Antjie Krog
  EAN: 9781770220706
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