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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.
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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! 

How I Took Back My Power

12/28/2021

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Author: Nompumelelo Runji
Publisher: Tafelberg
Reviewer: Hazel Makuzeni
I’m always in awe of people who brave the unknown and bare their souls to the world by sharing their utmost personal stories. People who are not afraid to tell their truth no matter how traumatic and intimate some of the details are deserve our undying support. Esteemed socio-political analyst and academic Nompumelelo Runji has done just that with this brutally honest and inspiring book about her life. Her journey begins at home where she takes the reader through the destructiveness of the relationship her 
mother and father had while she was growing up. Theirs was a toxic mix. With no stability at home, and with parents who at best of times were unresponsive, happiness was in short supply. Emotionally neglected, she was filled with void and loneliness from a young age. She lived in constant fear of abandonment and rejection thus seeking other people’s approval and validation became her addiction. “Always afraid that people wouldn’t stay, I worked hard to keep them around, even when it hurt,” she says. Nompumelelo continues, “I gave away my power very easily and became the plaything of toxic and difficult people.”  
To protect the identity of the people mentioned in the book, names have been changed. Nompumelelo’s husband is Sheffield - the person who will finally push her over the edge leading to her admission (not once but twice) to a psychiatric hospital. At the beginning theirs read like a fairy-tale that descends into a nightmare bit by bit. They met at church. He was a striking man, very charismatic, eloquent and full of surprises. He’d been a student at the University of Pretoria since 2002, while she started in 2005. Two years into their courtship, he proposed.  To this the author says, “I felt like the luckiest woman in the world, as if I’d run a race and won first prize.” After the lobola was settled, that feeling didn’t last very long. Sheffield increasingly started showing his patriarchal views on marriage. High on his agenda was a wife well trained domestically. He could never be satisfied with her efforts of trying to please him. Always pointing out her shortcomings and making her feel inadequate in every turn. The wedding finally did take place (after three postponements) on 23 September 2012. In her view, they should have gotten married in 2010.
The author chronicles her years of emotional abuse from the man who was Prince Charming in public but cold and uncaring at home. A man who couldn’t be bothered with intimacy but was manipulative, insensitive and controlling. Self-doubts, anxiety and loneliness were the hallmark of her existence. She could do no right. He would compare her to other women who were always greater than her in his eyes. All this trauma took a heavy toll on her health and mind. Compounding this was the fact that she was suffering in secret – to the outside world they were the perfect couple and he was everyone’s darling in church. “I felt increasingly unstable, emotionally and psychologically,” she says. She was losing weight, suffering from chronic fatigue, muscle tension and sleep disturbances amongst other physically devastating conditions. It took her second stint at a psychiatric hospital for her to see the light and leave her husband for good. Through therapy she also strengthened herself, learning to cut off old habitual patterns that no longer serves her. “To this day, therapy is my safe space,” she says.
By reading this book you get an understanding as to why for many women it is not easy to walk away from toxic and abusive relationships. And as someone who’s been in toxic relationships, I fully relate to everything she says. Mental abuse is the worst kind as it is unseen and remains a secret for a long time until you start falling apart. Abusers of this kind are the worst deceivers.  In public they’re Mr Nice Guy but behind closed doors, it’s Mr Nasty. Constantly undermining you and belittling your intelligence and efforts. You start to self-criticise everything you do and your confidence goes to the pits.
I thank the author for being so candid in telling her story - from her childhood pain to her difficult relationship with her mother. It must not have been easy, but by sharing her memoir she’s helping others to open up and no longer live in shame. ​
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This Might Sting a Bit

12/28/2021

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​WOMAN ZONE BOOK REVIEW
Title: This Might Sting a Bit
Author: Claire Adlam
Publisher: Quickfox
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
‘Bloody Hell!’ I found myself muttering, frequently, as I read through this roller-coaster tale of heavy-duty opiate addiction. Prescription drugs on steroids, washed down with copious swigs of vodka and the familiar fragrance of a joint. But eliciting the ‘bloody hells’ (and a few Hail Mary’s not to have been there myself), was not the combo so much as the sheer quantity. 

So our addict is Kat or Kit-Kat as she’s known in the family. A farming family living in Zimbabwe at the time of Mugabe’s land reform. As a backdrop, edgy enough to drive any white farmer to drink I would imagine. But political stress is not the trigger – instead a flying rugby ball and a pair of teetery stilettos are what cause Kat to start on the long slippery slope of painkillers. A slope littered with lies, wrecked relationships, a crooked pharmacist and some institutionalized wake-up calls of note.
While Kat’s experience forms the core of this drug drama, she’s not the only one with a ‘problem’ and there are some other pretty harrowing skeletons rattling in the family cupboard as well.  But aside from the expletives, what also kept going on in my mind is How Does Claire Adlam Know All This? Originally from Zim herself, her descriptions of incidents and individuals are enormously convincing. I know only a few Zimmbos well, so its maybe just coincidence, but I’ve always found them to be disarmingly honest and open – and apart from the deceit around her dependency, Kat is gobsmackingly frank with a wicked wit and way with words – especially insults. But the slippery slope? There’s definitely been some research here.
To say things get really bad would be an understatement - the title phrase comes from injections around the eyes to numb the pain. Without giving too much away, she does end up in rehab, and again Claire appears to have an insider’s knowledge of these things (I won’t mention the ‘fishbowl’), so there’s a lot to be learned here, and much of it cautionary. It’s a clever plot with ends all tying up neatly. Apparently Claire wrote it a few years back, so for some time she says, ‘it’s been a footrest under my desk’. I imagine she’s feeling much relieved to finally have it out there. At over 460 pages it was no small book to write, and as her first novel, almost certain to have liberated her to write another.
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Never Tell a Lie

12/20/2021

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Author: Gail Schimmel
Publisher: Pan MacMillan
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
Gail Schimmel nails it every time. She takes current themes and marries them skilfully into an absorbing story that is as real as it gets. She says she is lazy to do research but as I turned these pages my feeling was that she has kept herself exceptionally well informed; with her legal background she understands the intricacies of how lies are not only perpetuated in Gender Based Violence victims but also have their place in what purports to be everyday family life.
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Never Tell a Lie’ is a revealing, sometimes quizzical, sometimes uncomfortable story about how we protect ourselves and our loved ones.  Another one of these page turners that makes you reflect on your own life and perhaps those of your friends.
We are all probably guilty of telling little white lies to cover our backs or mask some (hopefully) minor transgression. But what happens when that lie grows bigger and bigger? Because that’s what so often happens. And when we mask the real truth in the hope that no one will see the cracks, cuts and bruises that show evidence of our real world, that’s when the trouble starts and life spirals out of control. We live in a world where truth is often hard to discern, take fake news or celebrity gossip – gossip – well there’s a thing that can lead to big lies. What goes on behind closed doors…as the saying goes…and hiding behind those doors are some vicious secrets.
Meet Mary Wilson. After a traumatic marriage to an emotional abuser who, thankfully, meets his end in an accident, she and her 12 year old son have finally come to a place where life is giving her joy and not angst. Her relationship with her Dad is enviable – the man who brought her up, picks up the pieces and supports her through thick and thin. But when she finds an old postcard which calls into question everything that she has grown up with, it’s time to call up the past and get at the truth. A high school reunion brings her into contact with an old school classmate, April, who becomes a new friend – but there are some anomalies which Mary can’t quite put her finger on. Perfect marriage, gorgeously perfect husband - revered for his work in women’s rights – but the niggling doubt that all is not right pervades.
No spoilers, but this a very worthwhile read,  exposing as it does the ills of our society and the lengths that we ourselves will go to hide the imperfections of our private lives to protect those we love . But what it also reveals is how easy it is to fall into the trap of self-doubt and undervalue our own humanity at sometimes terrible cost.  ​
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Boiling a Frog Slowly

12/16/2021

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​Author: Cathy Park Kelly
Publisher: Karavan Press
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
Someone once explained to me the frog in increasingly hot water concept - that he won’t notice till he literally boils to death. I remember being horrified that such an idea could have been put to the test – poor frog, for heaven’s sake.
More shocking though is the thought that such a concept could apply to a human being – but seems it can.  Despite an increasingly hot water relationship, Cathy Park Kelly, hung on in for eight tortuous years with a man she 
calls here Karl. Her book, a vivid recall of the undermining, violent and over-heated treatment she tolerated, just made me want to weep for her. And lash out at the perp.
The slow rising temperature analogy is an apt one. Things started sweet, romantic, fun even – play pillow fights. But with the wisdom of hindsight, she describes the warning signs, like watermarks. The cruel teasing, the disproportionately angry outbursts, the accusations, the manipulative, psychological language designed to lay blame – ‘You are pulling on me’ a recurring chant. As things heat up, there’s hair pulling, a first glancing blow, harder blows to the skull where bruises don’t show, and trying to cover up where they do. It’s dark and devious stuff. One can only assume that the man has serious psychological problems. Though the damage he inflicted makes one disinclined to feel much sympathy.
But the learning lies in how Cathy responded – forgiving, excusing, accommodating, self-blaming, trying, lying – to herself and to others. Eventually out of desperation, retreating to sleep in the car, driving around the streets at night, agonizing. All this while holding down a job helping juvenile offenders, trying to write a book about the experience and putting on a brave, if weary, sometimes battle scarred, face.
Mercifully she does finally climb out of the ‘hot pot’ relationship. So what helped with the healing?  Journaling, which in part gave her the insight to share this story. That and what she took from the writing groups she’s been part of. Expressive, I found, is her line, ‘Memory is like a basket filled with beads…some are shiny from being picked up often…unchanging, fixed in our life story…others have fallen to the dusty bottom of the basket…but they can be retrieved…polished up once more to a glossy shine.’
Cathy crystalizes all the lessons in the last section of the book, called What I Know Now. She cites ‘Learning a new vocabulary’, ‘How red flags can look like green flags’, ironically how unhelpful self-help books can be and ‘Lying because I couldn’t face the truth.’ Her happy ending (thank the lord there is one), includes Biodanza dancing, a healthy new relationship and a small boy – plus the opportunity to finally be the sunny, giving person she clearly always was. ​
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Manifesting Motherness: Healing from Infertility

12/14/2021

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Author: Rekha Ramcharan
Publisher: Self
​Reviewer: Nancy Richards
​‘It’s a rare couple trying to conceive who doesn’t at least sometimes look around the world and wonder why they are being singled out for this particular heartbreak.’ Just one of the nails that Rekha hits so accurately on the head in this careful book about infertility – or as she later refers to it more hopefully, as about fertility. If you’ve been there, you will know the distinction.
But primarily, she describes it as ‘a story….simply my experience rendered as 
honestly as anyone can tell their own story.’ So, expect no miracle cures or solutions. She emphasizes that her journey may not be yours. Nor her final attainment of what she calls ‘motherness’, your ultimate experience. Rekha’s daughter Aarya was born on December 17 2016 after four long years of infertility when she herself was 45.  But there are an extraordinary number of lessons to be learned along the way – and not all that pertain exclusively to becoming pregnant.
She starts simply with her own background by way of context. She shares that surprisingly, until her late thirties and her second marriage she had never really wanted children. She also shares a sort of spiritual awakening – and then the long and winding road that she trod with all the dark tunnels and cul de sacs along the way.
She confesses, ‘I’m an intellectual magpie and a reading addict, so now and then there are references to statistics and research, as well as to other books on fertility and healing.’ Personally I am both in awe and appreciative of writers who read a great deal and then synthesize what they’ve learned so that it can be easily grasped for the lay person. To this end she has investigated all manner of contributing factors that lead to infertility – environmental, chemical (beware BPA chemicals found in plastics), and above all emotional. She looks deeply into this and gives a 6 step guide to releasing emotions – ‘an iterative process’ she emphasizes. There are no quick fixes.
To each of the eight parts of the book she gives a guiding introduction as well as a conclusion to tie it all up. Of particular note, with our without fertility being an issue, are the parts on Transforming Limiting Thoughts and Beliefs as well as Understanding Personality. In this last she gives a helpful breakdown of the Enneagram types with special focus on her own, Type 8. I will confess she lost me a bit on the Metaphysical adventures – but nobody could accuse Rekha of being anything other than completely thorough in that no leaf is left unturned, no avenue unexplored.  As a business leader she says, she was interested in the ‘pathfinder phenomenon’, while I don’t know exactly what that is, it sounds as if her book clearly exposes that interest.
Finally, what I found extraordinary is not just her journey, but the depth with which she has examined and shared it – and found the time to do so, as a, presumably, working mother. Although it’s an intensely personal book, in her acknowledgements she closes by thanking you, ‘I never realized’, she says ‘how much The Reader, that imagined person who will choose to share a writer’s world by picking up her book, becomes part of the writer’s life.’  There is a sense of community amongst those who’ve known infertility – and in these pages, dear Reader, you may well feel embraced. 
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Female Fear Factory

12/12/2021

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​Author: Pumla Dineo Gqola
Publisher: Melinda Ferguson books
Reviewer: Hazel Makuzeni
Female Fear Factory could not have come at a better (or maybe worst) time in our country as we emerge from the 16 Days of Activism against gender based violence – a focus that should remain throughout the year in South Africa as we battle the scourge of sexual violence. This is a follow-up book by Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola to her 2016 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award winner Rape:  A South African Nightmare.
Writing the book during the COVID 
pandemic “was not one of my best ideas,” Professor Gqola confesses. Despite this, the book is so insightful with extensive research on global patriarchal violence, its myths, lies and stronghold on women. She gives bona fide examples that expose the construction of the ‘female fear factory’ and how it is institutionalised and maintained throughout the world. It’s not all doom and gloom though as the author offers possible remedies.
She looks at public spaces and how these spaces are taken away from women. Take street harassment – as one example. On a daily bases many women face sexual harassment from men while walking down the street, going to a taxi rank or simply jogging. As a woman you have to mentally prepare yourself to be vigilant at all times - a walk to your corner store is not that simple. I was reminded of this just the other day while going to a store near where I live.  A guy I barely know grabbed me by the arm and didn’t let go for some time because he wanted to talk to me. In the process he also yanked off my sunglasses because he wanted to see my eyes. Even though I was in a hurry and very much upset about his behaviour, I had to plead with him with a smile so as to not make him angry. This is a daily battle. Reading this book made me realise how much patriarchy is normalised in our public spaces. There are routes in my neighbourhood that I totally avoid because of guys who terrorise me with their unwanted sexual advances. Even though people see what is going on, nobody ever intervenes.
Patriarchy runs on fear and it is fear that keeps women under control. Women have to constantly self-police. We have to watch the way we dress, wear make-up, talk and behave. You do not want to run the risk of being labelled a whore. As Professor Gqola writes, “Women are made whores in order to justify their violation.” The book also talks about why the criminal system fails women in cases of rape, with many of these cases disintegrating on the requirement of evidence.
It was also interesting reading about the #SexforGrades and #SexforMarks scandal in Nigeria. What this shows is the unreasonable demands placed on women who speak out against sexual harassment. Fear and violence are a necessity for patriarchy to thrive. Women who challenge the status quo are put in their place. The case of Mona Eltahawy, the journalist who was arrested by police in Cairo during a protest, illustrates this. They broke her arms in detention and sexually assaulted her.
What the author explicitly prove in this book is that patriarchy is brutal and that there are no safe spaces for women – anywhere. Even though the battle is long, if we’re committed to a fair world, we have to soldier on.  “Although patriarchy uses violence to enforce fear, and to punish those who will not successfully be made female, and submissive, it cannot kill feminism.  Although agents of patriarchy and the state – through the courts and police force – may kill and attempt to silence and bankrupt those who rise against it, hundreds of thousands more will sprout and amplify the project of disrupting patriarchy, interrupting the Female Fear Factory, and unlearning its fluencies everywhere,” she says. Gqola is a feminist writer and Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies. She is the SARChl Chair in African Feminist Imagination at Nelson Mandela University.
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State of Terror

12/12/2021

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Authors: Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
‘Noli Timere’ - ‘Be Not afraid’, is a poster that Louise Penny, creator of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Quebec  Sureté, has hanging above her writing desk.  Because political thrillers are not her genre when it was suggested she collaborate with her close friend Hillary Rodham Clinton, to produce ‘State of Terror’ she had to conquer that fear.  She had once asked Clinton about her time as Secretary of State and what had been her 
worst nightmare. This is the answer – a blockbuster if ever I read one.  The combination of these two women has produced an explosively plausible novel. While I am sometimes sceptical of these collaborations the expert inside knowledge brought by Clinton, her reputation as a formidable politician and strategist coupled with Penny’s skill has produced a huge winner.  
Hold on to your nerves as you venture into this all too real world! A new administration has just been sworn in following  the lunatic former presidency (we know who that refers to!). Secretary of State Ellen Adams is unravelling the damaging effects of the previous administration. The withdrawal of American troops in Afghanistan has given power back to the Taliban, nuclear warfare is on the Middle Eastern table and the shadowy figure of unscrupulous arms dealer, Bashir Shah, haunts her. When two bus bombs explode in London and Paris and a lowly US foreign service officer receives a baffling text, it looks as if a rogue terrorist organisation is intent on developing their own nuclear arsenal.  It is a race against time as Adams moves from one leader to another tracking down the White House traitor and averting international horror. With her trusted counsellor Betsy, and a President who is none too keen on Adams, instinct, intelligence and intuition are put to the test.   
Breath taking in its scope one of the things I enjoyed was the solid friendships between the female  characters, the many twists and turns, country hopping and the authenticity of the plot. Penny cleverly brings Gamache into the cast, as the Intelligence centres of the world are brought into play. The pace is fast, tension builds and this is a book to read in one sitting. Reading the two author’s notes sheds enormous light on the task undertaken and the development of the characters.
One of the best thrillers of 2021.  ​
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One Fine Day

12/12/2021

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Author: Irna Van Zyl
Publisher: Penguin
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
Racy, pacy and so very South African, Irna van Zyl has created a cast of characters and a story that pulses with energy from the very first page. Her writing holds you captive and her use of familiar Cape Town and Karoo destinations and events gives another view of what is hidden beneath the beauty.
Van Zyl is a media queen and it is clear that she absorbs news like a sponge translating them into highly readable thrillers with strong storylines that are totally plausible in 
the world we live in. This is a thriller that is relevant and relatable, exploring relationships, pulsing with secrets, past lives and a nice juicy murder.  Van Zyl builds a back story that fits with the South African psyche even down to the cat named Mister Bo but who is actually a Mrs!
Louw has disappeared, her partner Kristien is frantic, with a myriad of possibilities tormenting her. Louw has not come home after an event with a tricky guest speaker client at a very upmarket hotel at the Waterfront. Was it the quarrel they had earlier in the day or is there something else? When the client is found dead at that same hotel and Louw has vanished.  Big question marks are flagged – is she on the run? Kristien has to spring into action and calling in best friends Niklaas (who knows the cop on the case) and Zanie (truly zany – pot-smoking, cat boarder and honey collector) they try to find the trail and are led on a terrifying journey. Is there a connection with the hijacking of Louw’s mother 21 years ago? 
So many layers to the psychologically scarred Louw and for Kristien, unravelling the disparate threads holds the key to their relationship. Has the past been resurrected? The reader is taken on a ride of epic proportions, hurtling from Cape Town to Graaf Reniet to Outdsthoorn as each piece of Louw’s past threaten to engulf them. And as the present hurtles to meet that past there are electrifying consequences.
The strength of any novel, and most particularly in a thriller, is in the detail and Van Zyl has plotted this thriller with precision. She is acutely aware of the quirky characters that people South Africa and uses them to bring life and colour to the prose. She knows how to build the tension and hold it.
But the message I got from this well -constructed read was that hanging on to the bitterness and hatred of the past is the most damaging and destructive element for a peaceful present.  ​
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Roads and Bridges

12/9/2021

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Author: Glynnis Hayward
Publisher: Catalyst
​Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
There is a large focus on book covers at present and rightly so. The more arresting the cover, the more likely it will pique the interest of a buyer. Yes, I know – don’t judge a book by its cover - but we are in that age where we are bombarded by design and good design is vital. So when i was sent Roads and Bridges by Glynnis Hayward the cover did not impress me, it tends to look a bit like a teen book.
However the contents belie the cover and I read this quickly and with great satisfaction. 
Roads and Bridges combines the power of storytelling through its characters and the issues of adoption across the colour-line
You just never know who you’re going to meet on a bus and one travelling through rural Kwa-Zulu Natal is full of quirky, colourful and instantly recognizable characters. American Mandy Walker and her companion Ryan, (read wannabe boyfriend) both Peace Corps volunteers, are travelling in a taxi to Durban. Running out of gas, the driver hotfoots it to the nearest town for more gas leaving the occupants to amuse themselves. South Africans are a chatty lot and the stories flow from the mostly Zulu occupants giving Mandy a taste of culture, friendship, support and loss. But it is the AIDS orphan Jabulani who captures her attention. En route to an orphanage, she is drawn to his plight, propelling her to change her direction in life to help this child. The friendships forged on this unusual bus ride are going to support her on the bumps in the road ahead. She finds a sympathetic lawyer, encounters the barely disguised prejudices of the white elite, has to face her own demons and realises that cross-cultural decisions are not hers to make.  This is a very relevant story that takes a quizzical dig at celebrity adoptions (Madonna and Angelina Jolie) and the issues surrounding taking a child out of its cultural heritage. But it is also a story of the power of Ubuntu, emphasising how we should embrace those unexpected stops on our personal journeys and the respect that needs to be shown for tradition and culture.   
Hayward writes with empathy and understanding using her South African background to bring a heart-warming and thoughtful story to a broader audience. ​
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