Go Away Birds

​Author: Michelle Edwards
Publisher: Modjaji
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
If Go-Away Birds were a recipe for a dish, the list of ingredients would be long. Created in the kitchens of trendy Cape Town, cool Misty Cliffs and alternative White River, in this dish is the social-media-intense world of foodie magazines; the competitive Cape Town restaurant industry; Taiwanese cuisine; allegations of slave labour; veganism; lowveld farming; mixed and mixed up relationships 

and messy marriage; a mugging; wanted, unwanted, missed and nearly missing children; sibling closeness and distance; emotional poverty; lost and found selves and souls. And coping with family. And the residual hangover of politics. ‘I think everyone in South Africa needs counselling round the clock, quite honestly.’ Tshidi suggests, ‘We’ve all got some kind of PTSD, even when there’s nothing specific that’s happened to us, personally.’  There’s a lot going on here. There are also sustainability concerns and sonnets, and a writing group – with issues.
Dealing with all kinds of her own issues, those above and more, is protagonist Skye, Karoo-Skye or just ‘Roo’, who we first meet heading to her childhood home near Hazyview for a break from the strain.  And as her taxi trickles up main road White River, ‘memories flood in, all tastes and textures’.
It feels like there are a lot of memories in here, the authors own, and those of others - not least the ‘single piercing kweeeeeeeeh’ and ‘mohawk of a go-away-bird in a palm tree’. ​