Woman Zone CT - Book Reviews

WELCOME TO THE WOMAN ZONE BOOK REVIEW PAGE.
This is where members of the WZ Book Club get to share their thoughts on titles seen on the shelves of our Women’s Library. All reviews are unsolicited and only those attending the WZBC may borrow and review books.
The Woman Zone Book Club meets on the 2nd Saturday of every month between 2pm and 4pm at The Women’s Library, ground floor, Artscape. All are welcome.

COVID19 ALERT! Please note that while the Women's Library is closed during lockdown, we welcome your reviews of women-authored books. Send between 200-500 words and cover pic if possible to info@womanzonect.co.za or hipzone@mweb and we will post it here!

The Gospel According to Wanda B Lazarus

2/2/2021

Title: The Gospel According to Wanda B Lazarus
Author: Lynn Joffe
Publisher: Modjaji Books
Reviewer: Ambre Nicolson

Hold on to you britches b*tches, Wanda is about to take you on a wild ride!
Wanda - an accidentally immortal being - is a heroine for our times (and in fact, all times). She is wicked, foul-mouthed, funny, kind hearted and occasionally criminal. In other words, flawed but irresistible.
On the surface of it author Lynn Joffe has created an energetic and entertaining tale that spans centuries and even other dimensions as we follow in Wanda’s footsteps. But make no mistake, this is also a serious business. Joffe has experimented with the form of the picaresque novel, turned the anti-Semitic trope of the Wandering Jew inside out and upside down and offered a tart-tongued feminist retort to the ways that history has curtailed womens’ choices. More than anything else though, Wanda is great fun and I dare you to be anything other than riveted as she shimmies, sashays and blasphemes her way through history, all while auditioning for the role of her many lifetimes.

Running in Heels

2/2/2021

Author: Zoë Scholtz
Publisher: Quickshift
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
Sometimes you enjoy a book because it is a beautiful story or because it’s beautifully crafted, elegantly written, because it’s exposed you to other worlds or ways of life. Then sometimes it’s because there’s a little message in there meant just for you. Running in Heels is not necessarily a beautiful book in all the above senses, but there are lots of messages. Certainly to do with health - as a reminder of its fragility, it’s loud and clear.

Then, and this is assuming that you’d want to, that within the space of three years, with the right mind set, training and strategy you can go from running a puffed out 3km in just over 30 minutes to smashing an ultramarathon in well under 6 hours.
In 2015 Zoë Scholtz, CFO for a small construction company becomes unaccountably very sick. A runaway infection leaves her in a coma. Reflecting back on what the neurologist told him, her husband Gerhard says there was ‘potentially going to be some sort of permanent damage to her brain….and you need to prepare for the worst.‘ Despite the ‘lucky to be alive’ outcome, and not being an acquiescent ‘typical patient’ – she decides that ‘quitting is not an option’ and starts coming to grips with the ‘lessons of gratitude and humility that I hadn’t realized I needed to learn.’
What follows is a journey through anger and resentment, determination and triumph. She has used the opportunity of the book to do some reflecting of her own, to key events in her life. In a chapter called ‘A walk becomes a run’ she looks at the concept of taking 21 days to build a new habit, or break an old one. And so, from being a kid who had a ‘love-hate’ (with a special hate for running) relationship with sport spending more time eating and sleeping and weighing in at 85kgs at matric, she transformed into a medal-winning marathon and ultra-marathon runner of note.
As she says, the ‘road was a great listener’ – but ultimately the book is about the role that running can play in your life – both physically and as a metaphor. It’s also about appreciating that what you put in is what you get out – and that it’s almost never just about you, but about the people by whom you are surrounded – and again, what you put in is what you get out.

The Death of Vivek Oji

1/31/2021

Author: Akwaeke Emezi
Publisher: Faber
Reviewer: Orielle Berry
Wherever you are in the world, parents are protective and want what they think is best for their children. And wherever you may be in the world, parents often do not see the truth that is dangled before their eyes. When children are different and battling with inner demons there is a sort of denial. A protective shield goes up.
In a small Nigerian market town, the

teenager Vivek Oji spends his days dreaming. He's from what could best be described as a comfortably-off family. His mother is over protective; his father largely absent.
Emezi is astoundingly adept at taking small family issues and describing them in a way that leaves you wanting for more. They may sound benign but they lead to a more significant picture. Parents beget children. Two people meet and fall in love. A man asks for the hand of another. A marriage happens and new children come into the world. Vivek is born the day his grandmother Ahunna dies.
Vivek is a young boy. Shirtless, he places necklaces on his small chest and clips his ears with gold earrings from his parents' jewelley box. His hair tumbles over his shoulders.
Enter Osita, his cousin. As tall as Vivek but with broader shoulders. His skin is described as the colour of loam, his mouth "full beyond belief". The two are like brothers. But more than that...
One savours the clever use of words, the sentences and the paragraphs that Emezi magnificently wields with her pen.
On one level we seen the unhingeing of the young Vivek. Coming of age, he straddles the world of a seemingly conservative family milieu. Back in his bedroom or on the streets during his evening walks he is more himself. But there are inevitable clashes as the family are unable to find the real boy/man.
Juxtaposed is the political and social malaise that is happening in the market town as unrest seethes and it becomes more and more urgent.
Vivek and Osita have to keep the secret of their love well-hidden both from the family and from the more threatening Nigerian society at large.
When a fire engulfs the market town - Vivek's body, enshrouded in a piece of traditional akwete material, is brought to the family's home. It's then that secrets tightly packaged are slowly are unwrapped and matters kept hidden beneath the surface, begin to emerge.
It would be an understatement to again reiterate what a superb read this is. One to be savoured. Emezi paints a fascinating picture of how a young boy with a gentle spirit touches all he comes into contact with. It is also a beautiful coming of age story subtly showing how life's expectations, disappointments - the optismism we hold as youth and the acceptance of ageing adulthood are all to be embraced.
*Go to www.akwaeke.com/biography to find out more about the author.

JWARA! Induna's Daughter

12/27/2020

Author: Joyce Notemba Piliso-Seroke
Publisher: Tafelberg
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
‘A riveting account of activism, courage and values’ is how former first lady Zanele Mbeki describes Joyce’s book on the cover. Notable is that these two women, both born in the 1930’s, come from a generation in which such attributes were nurtured – and essential.
The book starts with the respective stories of Joyce’s father Hannie Booi or H.B., the induna of the title and a proud member of the Jwara clan, and her mother, primary school teacher

Ethel Mvulazana. These chapters reveal the strong educated and cultural rootstock from which Joyce was born.
She then picks up the story of her early life, growing up in Crown Mines in a home where her father’s bowler hat, ‘worn only on special occasions’, sat conspicuously on top of the umbrella stand’, and where ‘the old-fashioned radiogram was switched on for news, weather reports and church services only’. Aside from herself and her five siblings, her parents fostered many other children, ‘from the Cape and other places’. The pictures she paints of this upbringing is of a caring, educated, conscious and conscientious home.
A pivotal stage in her own education was the move to Healdtown Institution where the school motto was ‘They will rise on wings like eagles.’ The path her life was to take seems to have been clearly marked from the outset. Healdtown was followed by the Methodist Kilnerton school where she passed her matric in 1952, ‘grateful to have had the opportunity to explore and acquire knowledge.’ After a brief interlude at Wits and St Francis College, she finally went on to graduate with a University Education Diploma at Fort Hare – the chapter on this iconic seat of learning is an education in itself – as are the chapters in The Teaching Years section.
Later, social work took the place of teaching in her heart and with a scholarship from the Institute of Race Relations she went to study further at Swansea University in Wales. But if her early path had been mapped out by parental influence, so to an extent, was her career when her mother insisted she come home following her graduation to take up a job at the YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) in Durban. She was to soar in this role however, moving on to join the national office in Johannesburg and eventually being elected to the World YWCA Executive Committee.
Lets not forget that all of this was set against the backdrop of crippling apartheid and in a chapter called Uprisings , Detentions and Bannings she describes her arrest in 1976 and an agonizing period of detention in the Women’s Jail – though not without humour. ‘Cecily and I, during lunch, while sipping water from our cups, would indulge in a fantasy of toasting each other with gin and tonic.’
After her release from prison she became vice-president of the World YWCA and her commitment to the organization was long and impressive – but in her view, also richly rewarded: ‘The training I received at the YWCA and my exposure through international visits and participating in World Council Meetings, gave me a deep understanding of advocacy.’ Equally her involvement with many other organisations, like the stokvel group The Be United Women’s Forum, the Maggie Magaba Trust and the Women’s Development Foundation gave her the skills and tools that made her an invaluable candidate for her later appointments, first to the Independent Electoral Commission, then the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and finally the Commission for Gender Equality. Again each dedicated chapter is a lesson, and a reminder.
By the time you reach the Retirement chapter, it’s hard to believe that one woman could have packed so much into a life. More astonishing still is the detail with which she has remembered it. In the acknowledgements she salutes Betty Wolpert for hatching the idea of writing a memoir and amongst many others who helped with the memories, Barney Pityana for his Foreword ‘honouring me with his analysis to enhance my stories.’
But Joyce’s stories need no enhancement – they are intimately detailed and entertaining. As a reader you can almost hear her voice relating each anecdote. And to have written them in her 80’s is beyond impressive chronicling as they do, so much of South Africa’s turbulent history with first-hand experience and insight.
If there were a criticism it would be that just as her life was intensely ‘a journey of conscious living’ to quote Zanele Mbeki – the book too is intense and my recommendation would be to allow a little time between each of the seven sections. Don’t be in a hurry because as Pityana says, Joyce Notemba Piliso-Seroke is ‘an encyclopaedia of life, politics and morality…she is among the dwindling generation of luminaries in whose reflected glory we have had the privilege to bask. South Africa is richer for her.’

Big Lies in a Small Town

12/21/2020

Author: Diane Chamberlain
Publisher: Pan MacMillan
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
It starts with a body…But if you think this is a thriller - think again. This is a story of connections, of discrimination and tragedy but with a satisfying ending. It is a story that shows how the power of an artist can tell a story without words. Across 80 years an act that caused heartbreak in a 1940s USA is revealed in the present day.
I was intrigued when I started reading this novel as it centred round the painting of a Post Office mural back in the 1940s. A project

initiated during the Great Depression in the USA to bring artist workers back into the market, a national competition was launched where artists submitted their ideas anonymously and were selected on merit. They were then sent to their designated town to paint their design.
Diane Chamberlain deftly brings this story to life in her compelling novel Big Lies in a Small Town. Anna Dale, a winner of this national competition in 1939, heads off from her native New York, to the sleepy, Southern States town of Edenton to paint the mural. It is 1940, Anna is 23 years old and has recently lost her beloved mother. Alone, except for her extraordinary talent and nothing to lose, she moves to this small, tight community, with its Southern bigotry. Controversy dogs her as the resident town artist did not win a commission plus women are expected to be mothers and housewives, not single, independent artists. She enlists the help of young people from the local school, one of whom shows extraordinary talent, but he is black and that has its own challenges in this small community which has much to hide.
Fast forward to 2018 and Morgan Christopher is serving a three year sentence for a crime she did not commit. An art student, her life has come completely apart; dysfunctional family, misplaced love, a criminal record and a bleak future. But when a stranger makes her an offer that will see her released immediately she jumps at the chance of freedom. Her assignment: to restore a Post Office mural in the sleepy Southern town of Edenton. What she finds when the art piece is finally uncovered is a painting that reveals evidence of madness, violence and cruelty - a painting that will inhabit Morgan’s emotions and drive her to find answers.
Her favourite artist, Jesse James Williams, who had recently passed, had specifically requested that Morgan handle the work. The mural is to hold pride of place in the gallery that is his legacy. While Morgan had never met the artist she loved his work and knew that during his successful lifetime he nurtured young talent - but why choose her? Under the guidance of curator Oliver, one of William’s protégés, Morgan tackles this mammoth task trying to decipher the weird messages that Anna Dale has left. Time is running out as there are conditions: The gallery must open on August 5 and there can be no postponement. Lisa, William’s feisty and impatient daughter pushes Morgan to the limit – there is so much at stake. As she works on this massive piece the tragedy is revealed but it is still up to Morgan to piece the story together and make the connections.
Chamberlain is an adept writer and this is a fascinating part of US history. I was left wondering if this was based on a true story as it is all too real. She evokes reaction in her reader and her characters are tantalising, frustrating and engaging. ‘You have to make peace with the past or you can never move into the future’ is a quote from the final pages – a sentence we could do well to remember.

The Tuscan Contessa

12/9/2020

IAuthor: Dinah Jeffries
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
In this book we are thrown back into wartime Italy and Jeffries produces a beautifully crafted novel while never forgetting the horrors of war. While this may not be termed the lightest of reads it is yet another story that reveals the bravery of ordinary people caught in the grip of war and what they will do to save the lives of those true to them. Tuscany in 1943 and Contessa Sofia de Corsi’s idyllic life is about to be disrupted as the Germans arrive in her beautiful village.

She agrees to shelter a wounded British Radio operator unbeknown to her husband, putting all their lives at risk. But it is the feisty (with red hair to match) Italian/American resistance fighter Maxine who appears on Sofia’s doorstep and draws her into the underground fight that is at the core of the book. There are no middle paths during war and this is emphasised in the risks and secrets that enter their lives. Heart stopping moments, palpable fear and the romance of the ill-fated conspire to bring the warmth of Italy into your lounge and the acid taste of a world gone mad.

All the Devil's are Here

12/9/2020

Author: Louise Penny
Publisher: Sphere
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
A Chief Inspector Gamache mystery
A quote from Shakespeare ‘Hell is Empty and All the Devils are Here’ is not only the inspiration for the title but opens this, the 16th Chief Inspector Gamache murder mystery as he and his godfather , nonagenarian Stephen Horowitz, catch a few quiet minutes in the garden of the Musée Rodin in Paris. It is a favourite quote of Horowitz and one that is about to become all too real.

Louise Penny has created an empathetic, intelligent character in the Sûreté du Quebec, CI Armand Gamache and he is endearing in his patience, intelligence, culture and passion. He is a compassionate and loving man but not without his own devils.
It is no wonder that Penny is continually on the best seller list and ‘All the Devils are Here’ is yet another success. Clear, concise writing and a calmness that belies the content vie with intriguing, cleverly constructed plots with no shortage of imagination. But realism is at the helm and she takes contemporary situations to bring a story that oh, so resonates.
Set this time in Paris, not in their normal locale of Three Pines in Quebec, the family are gathered for the birth of a new grandchild from daughter Annie married to Gamache’s former second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir, now settled in a job in Paris. Son Daniel and his family are also living in the City of Light and, with his wife Reine- Marie and Horowitz a family dinner is a treat Gamache is looking forward to. As they stroll back to their respective residences a driver ploughs into the frail old man and Gamache is sure this is not an accident. A strange key in Stephen’s possession starts a search for truth which involves and threatens the whole family.
It turns out to be not only a race against time but also a race across Paris from the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and into the bowels of the Paris Archives where Reine-Maire, takes a leading role. Penny sets the scene of the back streets and beloved monuments of this magical city, which this time is revealing its devils; devils of human making as trust turns to suspicion to deception, and there is almost no place to turn.
Billionaire Horowitz is the master of manipulation, of finding and whistleblowing on corruption. But what is it that he has been up to that has caused this mayhem? As he lies critically injured it is up to Gamache to unravel the mystery that surrounds the engineering company where his son-in-law works and of who his godfather really is.
Penny is masterful in using suspense and relationships to continually make you ask who can be trusted? Is old friend Préfect Claude Dessault really to be trusted, what is the cause of Gamache and Daniel’s estrangement, on whose side is the haughty Sevérine Arbour? The family and their dynamics play a crucial role as from side to side we are hurled; and always under the hovering hand of truth-seeker Horowitz.
It is a fast moving plot but with a depth that takes it beyond many other thrillers. Although i have not read all of Penny’s books I enjoy the intricacy and clarity with which she writes. I always read the acknowledgements when i finish a book as i think they can be very revealing; Penny tells another beautiful story which underlines her love of Paris. An absorbing read and one that will make you an Inspector Gamache fan.

Wine, Women & Good Hope

12/2/2020

TITLE: Wine, Women and Good Hope: A History of Scandalous Behaviour in the Cape
AUTHOR: June McKinnon
PUBLISHER: Zebra Press (Imprint of Penguin Random House SA)
REVIEWER: Nadia Kamies
When Europeans first arrived at the Cape, coffee and tea were luxury items and so alcohol, especially wine became the beverage of choice, greedily consumed in fancy homes and disorderly taverns and soon produced locally. Along with alcohol went prostitution, adultery and general merry-making and what McKinnon calls “three centuries of high

jinx and mayhem”. Alcohol was used to control workers, not only with the notorious tot system on the farms but also with servants in towns where one’s position in the domestic hierarchy was in direct proportion to the ration of alcohol one was given. It was to lay the foundation for a system of alcohol abuse and dependency that persists to this day.
In the preface McKinnon, a genealogist, says that she often deals with families who are dismayed by the exploits of their ancestors and she was motivated to write this book both as a way of educating and encouraging them to look beneath the supposedly perfect surface and as a source of entertainment.
It is certainly entertaining but at the same time reveals a past that the apartheid government was determined to keep hidden. With the rise of Afrikaner nationalism at the beginning of the 20th century this immoral and disgraceful behaviour was something that white Afrikaners wished to distance themselves from and this behaviour became entrenched as stereotypes attached to those who were not white.
All the while I was reading, I was conscious of my grandmother’s voice and wonder what she would say if she were alive. Respectability was an important way of ordering society in coloured and African communities and many of us were raised on the mantra of “what will people say?” and there were strict rules on how one should behave so as not to bring shame on one’s family and community. I am sure that she would have been shocked at these shenanigans.
People have not changed much in subsequent years and the stories in this book would not be out of place in today’s tabloids. There are skeletons falling out of many closets in this work which draws on books and journals, archival material, SA library, newspapers and magazines.
McKinnon is also the author of A Tapestry of Lives: Women of The Cape in the 17th Century published in 2004 and Criminals, Corruption and Crazy Critters with illustrations by Tony Grogan in 2019.
INSTAGRAM: @nadiakamieswriter

Magic Lessons

11/30/2020

Title: Magic Lessons
Author: Alice Hoffman
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
This long awaited prequel Practical Magic is a journey into the world of magic and mayhem and a time when anyone seen as practising the ‘Unnamed Arts’ feared for their lives. What I loved about this novel is the ease with which the author takes the reader
back into the late 1600s bringing a place and time so instantly to life that you are part of it. Emotional, gut wrenching and brilliantly

imaginative this is where we learn of the origin of Owen’s family curse - that any man who loves an Owens woman will die. Maria is a foundling abandoned in a snowy England field who is taken in by the solitary Hannah Owens, a woman who recognises that Maria has ‘the gift’, as she herself has. She teaches the child what she herself knows and finds a talented and responsible student. Abandoned by the man she loves Maria invokes the curse that will haunt the Owen’s women for centuries. This is an enchanting book (no pun intended) captivating in its realism and invoking all that spells, familiars (meet Cadin the crow) and healing remedies conjure up. Hoffman’s inspirational writing is a joy and you’ll recognise many of the remedies and sayings that our own mothers invoked when we were children. And they weren’t witches! From a dark England to the island of Curacao and finally on to Salem, Massachusetts and the horrific tortures of the ‘witches of Salem’ the book is an adventure in itself leaving you breathless as Hoffman blends history and magic seamlessly. And learn this last lesson: ‘Know that love is the only answer.’ A wonderful holiday read.

This Mournable Body

11/8/2020

Author: Tsitsi Dangaembga
Publisher: Jacana
Reviewer: Beryl Eicheberger
As a Zimbabwean novelist, playwright, and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga is a powerhouse in her field and an articulate commentator on the social issues of Zimbabwe. Her debut novel, Nervous Conditions (1988) was named by the BBC in 2018 as one of the top 100 books that have shaped the world as the first to be written in English by a Black woman from Zimbabwe. The sequel, ‘The Book of Not ‘ was published in 2006, and now her 2018 novel, ‘This

Mournable Body’, which brings to a close the Tambudzai trilogy, is shortlisted for the 2020 Booker prize. Outspoken and fearless, Dangarembga is also an activist, arrested in August 2020 for anti-corruption protests and now currently out on bail.
I had not read the previous two novels in the trilogy, so I had no pre conceptions about the writing or the story. The novel is set in the 90s after Zimbabwean independence and when the economy is crumbling and the fractured minds and bodies are still all too apparent. This is a soulful yet sad testament to a woman’s life in an African patriarchal country, where colonisation has left its indelible stamp. Gritty and harsh, it chronicles a suffering city and its peoples.
That Dangaremmbga is influenced by what is happening around her is apparent. She says ‘If I hadn't engaged with the bleakness of life in contemporary Zimbabwe in This Mournable Body, I might not have been moved to demonstrate and speak out.”
She has given African women a strong and provocative voice, exposing their plight and asking difficult questions. Her writing conjures up the dusty, unkempt streets of Harare, a city that has gone from Sunshine City to Shadow City, “The decay of the city mirrors the decay of the human beings in the novel. I'm fascinated by how we manifest the inner in the outer. ” She says.
And this is exactly as it reads…a parallel disintegration of a city and its inhabitants and a destruction of the very soul of a country.
When the book opens Tambudzai Sigauke (Tambu) is a bleak, disillusioned and desperately unhappy woman, approaching middle age, estranged from her family, jobless, childless and seemingly hopeless. Written in the second person it is as if Tambu is an observer on a life that the Zimbabwean system has sabotaged. As an African woman who has been Western educated, she finds she is disadvantaged with her intelligence undermined and she is dangerously close to unravelling.
Tambu moves from the hostel (where she is an overage resident) to rent a room on the estate of a wealthy widow. The widow’s niece Christine is an ex-combatant who knows her village family and brings a gift from her mother that remains accusingly in Tambu’s room as she is unable to acknowledge it. When she finally finds a new job teaching it is only to lose it when she badly beats the mild mannered student Elizabeth. It is Tambu’s breaking point as she hears the ‘hyena’ calling and she lands in a psychiatric ward. .
Her aunt and cousin Nyasha support her during this time and she is offered a temporary home with Nyasha and her German husband Leon and their two children. This is the beginning of her recovery and, on an outing one day, she runs into her school friend (and nemesis) Tracey Stevenson who hires her to help her launch an opportunistic eco-tourism business venture.
It is in this final part of the book, aptly named ‘Arriving ‘that Tambu starts to find herself again, not without a disastrous homecoming, but with a profound sense of hope and newly recovered self -respect. One of the things that struck me was that throughout the story, Tambu remains true to herself, decent , upright and mostly restrained, even in her most dire circumstances.
This is a novel that is full of images and Dangarembga writes with the skill of the observant artist, as she rolls back the lives of the ordinary Zimbabwean, their struggles and the manipulation of the wealthy. What comes across so compellingly is the status of women, or should I say their non-status, to be used and abused as the men in the story wish. And it is this that makes so many of the female cast raw, ambitious and outspoken. This is an African book written as only an African woman can as she dissects and plays the characters one against the other. They bristle and speak in a way that might be strange to many ears, but the rawness depicts their anger and their resolution and ultimately successes.
With a depth and breadth that is breath- taking the reader feels as if they are caught in the cross hairs of a quivering rifle. There is almost a contemptuous tone as the apathetic Tambu views herself. Never sentimental, always thought provoking, at times the reader is angry with Tambu then sorry for her and finally rooting for her as she struggles to rebuild a life she spent her youth working for. Evocative and devastating ‘This Mournable Body‘ is a stark reminder of where we are and Dangarembga has once again lived up to her reputation. A brilliant addition to African literature.