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A Woman Makes a Plan

9/30/2020

Title: A woman makes a plan
Author: May Musk
Publisher: Jonathan Ball
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
Maye Musk is a bold woman. And, if the surname sounds familiar, Maye is mother of the more famous Elon Musk. But Maye in her own right has carved a niche for herself as the woman who made silver hair glamorous at 59, (thank you Maye) becoming a CoverGirl at 69 and now in her seventies is an international supermodel and sought after speaker as well as writing her eminently readable memoir ‘A woman makes a plan’.

Add to that a thriving dietician practice and her energy is infectious. She has made it glamorous to be mature.
If the title has a familiar ring then you’re right as it stems from the South African phrase ‘N’Boer maak ‘n plan’ which she learnt when growing up in South Africa. Her life has been full of adventure and she writes in a frank, no-nonsense style imparting sound advice that can be used by any woman of any age. When i first picked up the book i was a little sceptical – privilege and all that. But I was pleasantly surprised. Privileged as a child - yes, but as an adult, no.
Her story is compelling, with resilience at its heart . Lying down and letting life stomp all over you is not in her plan. She, her twin sister Kaye and three other siblings learned at an early age to be independent and their young lives were, in anyone’s books, pretty magical. Moving from Canada to South Africa her parents were adventurers. Her chiropractic father had a plane and flying somewhere for a conference or holiday was common practice, and this was not the sort of plane we are used to! Her mother Wyn was a journalist and taught ballroom dancing and ballet who continued to be active until her death at 96. Their ideas and interests were a creative masterplan in how to survive. And for every trip, as dangerous as it appeared to be…there was a plan.
And for Maye, this was the key: whatever the situation you have to have a plan. A science nerd she went to modelling school at 15 - happily modelling at a department store for extra money but not taking it too seriously. Learning Afrikaans she studied at Pretoria University and then went on to do her Masters degree at Bloemfontein. With a PhD and various degrees in nutrition she has restarted her practices in several different countries over the years, no easy task. She took on these challenges in life and as she says’ you just have to overcome them.’ She freely admits that her weight was a continual problem, one that with a strict regime she has conquered (including a peanut butter sandwich) bringing her the ultimate successes of modelling work.
Her early marriage was a mistake and, escaping to Durban after nine years with three young children, Elon, Kimbal and Tosca, she struggled financially, juggling her dietician practice and other jobs to keep the family afloat. There was no financial back up – her abusive husband saw to that with 11 tough years fighting lawsuits. Advice here: ‘Get yourself out – as quickly as you can’. To this day she freely admits she doesn’t have great taste in men!
Maye’s attitude is practical: ‘make your own choices and be responsible for them, they can lead to surprising events whatever your age. Be kind to others, without expecting anything in return. The harder you work – the luckier you get.’ With her kids, who have all been hugely successful –‘ let them go their own way but always support them.’ Health – ‘there is no magic pill.’ Kindness and consideration play a big role in success but it is the plan that is the key. While she is a great role model for older women her advice is relevant whatever age you are.
What I enjoyed was her positive spirit, despite many emotional and physical upheavals. There is a distinctly frank and no nonsense approach that is endearing and never sanctimonious. Written in conversational style the book has lots to offer in an accessible way. She learnt her lessons the hard way and is honest in her revelations and how she coped. But what she has achieved is a life of adventure, beauty and success and who wouldn’t want that – at any age… as long as you have a plan.

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We Dont Talk About It. Ever

9/24/2020

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Title: We Don’t Talk About It. Ever.
Author: Desiree-Anne Martin
Publisher: Jacana/ MFBOOKSJHB
Reviewer: Barbara Boswell
This weekend I read Desiree-Anne Martin’s brilliantly-written and wrenching memoir, “We Don’t Talk About It. Ever.” almost in one sitting! I highly recommend this memoir about drug addiction and recovery, which left me in tears at the author’s bravery and determination to beat the terrifying disease of addiction.
Desiree-Anne writes poetically and with an honesty that sometimes took my breath

away. I could not put this book down; yet was forced to at times in order to just breathe and experience and process the emotions the writing brought up for me.
Desiree-Anne is also a poet, and this aesthetic comes through clearly in her work. It has the unusual quality of having depth, while being paced quite fast, and I found myself racing towards the end to see how her story ends.
Another aspect of this book that I loved is the fine textured depiction of Cape Town during the late 80s and 90s — growing up “Coloured” during that time and issues of class, race and shifting racial identity that the memoir subtly brings into focus.
Please go and buy this book and support a compelling new voice!

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The Dutch House

9/16/2020

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Title: The Dutch House
Author: Ann Patchett
Reviewer: Christina Coates

“But we overlay the present onto the past. We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we’re not seeing it as the people we were, we’re seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered.”
The Dutch House is a story of how the past can define us, hold us, and grip us in its thrall. It’s also about values — that your job and

owning a fancy house doesn’t necessarily make you happy. Rather doing what you love and living where your heart desires is more likely to bring satisfaction. This is a fairytale, a modern Hansel and Gretel story, full of archetypes and doubles — there’s an enthralling house and slums, a disappearing or abandoning mother, a wicked stepmother, a controlling father, two sets of entwined siblings. It’s where Henry James meets the Great Gatsby.
Maeve and her brother Danny cannot let go of the house they were ejected from. For many years they return over and over to sit and watch it from the street. The house and their past holds them, the narrative they tell is constantly overlaid onto the house and what happened there. They can’t really move on or live the lives they really want to. The narrative also traps the other characters. It’s only when they’re forced to confront the past and the one person they most fear are they able to unravel the threads and see the people they really are.

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The Man Who Saw Everything

9/16/2020

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Title: The Man Who Saw Everything
Author: Deborah Levy
Reviewer: Christina Coates

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy is a very smart book about the difficulty of seeing ourselves and others clearly.
A man in London attempts to cross Abbey Lane (where the Beatles’ iconic picture was taken in 1969). It is 1988, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and he cross again in 2016 (Brexit). In East Germany a woman is obsessed by the Beatles. This story slips and slides between time, countries, ways of seeing. Things are fragmented. In order to

cross the road that he’s been trying to traverse for 30 years, Saul will not only have to look both ways, but outside of himself. Otherwise, he is destined to remain a man in pieces, and lonely in space-time continua.
The story feels like the lyrics of the song Penny Lane where the character is looking back, in and out and through his life littered with people, friends, lovers, experiences. It’s hard for him to make sense of it all — a fugue, a narcotic haze?
I loved the continuous references to the Beatles and their songs and how Abbey Road is linked to the story, how the crossing is made or not.
There is a sharp sense of what it means to look back on a life and construct a coherent whole from its fragments.

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The Bell Jar

9/14/2020

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Title: The Bell Jar
Author: Sylvia Plath
Publisher: Faber
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
My sister gave me a copy of The Bell Jar more years ago than I can remember. On the back of this tattered Faber edition, it says 80p – so there’s a clue. Decades later, I finally read it. It was my intention to write a review of this extraordinary book that could have been written yesterday.
To that end I thought I’d find out a little more

about Sylvia Plath herself. Knowing only that she had committed suicide and had been married to fellow poet Ted Hughes who turned out to be a bit of a rat, inherited her work after she died and destroyed some of it – there was clearly so much more. And indeed there is – so I’m afraid I am hi-jacking this ‘review’. Not to tell the bigger Plath story (which has been chronicled many times over), but to look at where this book stands, for me, at this moment in time. For many reasons.
Firstly, because my sisters inscription in the book says ‘Dearest, just because it’s winter here – with warmest love’. I had just moved to Cape Town from London, so it carries a special message.
Secondly because depression and issues around troubled minds seems to be strongly in the ether right now – COVID coincidence? Who knows.
Thirdly because Esther Greenwood in the book has a summer job working at a woman’s magazine – and having spent many years working at one myself, bells were set off – and bells of nostalgia as so many magazines, women’s titles amongst them, have ‘folded’ – a demise maybe accelerated by the pandemic. Again, who knows. But women’s magazines were a world in their own right – maybe one day someone will do a PhD on their significance. Or the significance of their closure. Maybe someone already has.
Fourthly because I just heard that Florence Howes died aged 91. She was the US founder of the Feminist Press back in 1970 – and in her own words started what became ‘….an avalanche of the rediscovery of women writers.’ While Plath has been called ‘one of the most fascinating and tragic women writers of the 20th century, it was her contribution to the ‘confessional poetry movement’ that saw her hailed as an important feminist writer. Semi- autobiographical, The Bell Jar it seems most certainly has a ‘confessional’ feel to it.
Googling I found that Plath’s mother wanted to block the publishing of The Bell Jar in 1963. Describing the writing of book to her mother she said, ‘What I’ve done is throw together events from my own life – fictionalising to add colour – but I think it will show how isolated a person feels when she is suffering a breakdown.’ She compared her despair to ‘owl’s talons clenching my heart.’
But lastly, no matter the content, some books just get to you because of the way of the writers words. Like ‘It was the day after Christmas and a grey sky bellied over us fat with snow.’ I loved that.
Sylvia Plath died in 1963 aged just 30.

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September 14th, 2020

9/14/2020

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A Woman Makes a Plan

We Dont Talk About It. Ever

The Dutch House

The Man Who Saw Everything

The Bell Jar

September 14th, 2020

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