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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.

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Running in Heels

2/2/2021

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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.

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The Gospel According to Wanda B Lazarus

Running in Heels

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