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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.
​
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! 

Blood to Poison

1/21/2023

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​Author: Mary Watson
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Reviewer: Hazel Makuzeni
Blood to Poison is the third novel from author Mary Watson. I’m sorry I missed the first two because if this book is anything to go by, then The Wren Hunt and The Wicker Light, must be spellbinding books to read.
Seventeen-year-old Savannah is no ordinary girl. She is cursed and the curse runs through her bloodline. It all began with Hella, her ancestor who had been enslaved during colonial times. 
​As the author says, “The story is inspired by the very real historical trauma and injustice of enslavement and discrimination in South Africa.” Hella’s anger has been passed down from mother to daughter.
Back to the now. Savannah and her close-knit family live in Cape Town. They live in secret fear of the curse that her aunties believe claimed the lives of her grandmother (who died suddenly at twenty-nine years old), and her aunt Freda who lost control of her car on the highway. She perished just aged twenty-seven. Hella’s curse: You will die before you have fully lived.
Freda was like a second mother to Savannah as she looked after her so that Kim, Savannah’s mother, could finish school. As difficult as she was as a child, prone to frantic meltdowns and tantrums, Freda always found ways to soothe her. When Freda died, her world imploded. Now Savannah is fury on two legs. Not afraid of anything; especially misogynists and veil witches out to get her. Her wrath knows no limit. Hella’s girls: The angrier they are, the younger they die.
Savannah doesn’t want to die before her time. It’s a frantic race against the clock as she confronts danger and brutal moments from her past.
The author deserves a ten out of ten for this thriller. It’s vivid and tragic at the same time. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put the book down. Even at midnight, during load shedding, I had to make use of my mobile phone torch until the electricity came back on – two hours later! It’s awfully engrossing. Witches, forbidden magic, and incredible twists churning in my head as I type the review.  I commend the sensitivity shown by the author when dealing with past trauma, enslaved people, race, inequality and violence against women.
Kudos for a superb book that kept me fascinated from beginning to end, and made me think about my own history. I hope it can reach as many young adults in this country.
“Like Savannah, enslavement is almost certainly part of my own family history, and the book ‘s underlying themes of trauma and historical rage resonate deeply for me,” Mary Watson.
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Double or Nothing

1/16/2023

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​Author: Kim Sherwood
Publisher: Harper Collins
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
I’m not proud of this, but I surrendered. I gave up on Double or Nothing by Kim Sherwood. Not because it’s not a good book, but because it’s just not moi. Helen Moffett recently asked ‘What makes a person pick up a book?’ I ask ‘What makes a person put down a book?’ In this instance, I am simply not sufficient, not sufficient of a James Bond devotee. Bit of a wimp actually. 
Don’t get me wrong – loved the movies, and all the Bond boys – Connery, Lazenby, Brosnan, Dalton, Moore, Craig (in whatever order). I can process the visuals, but not the words. The thrill just escapes me…’Three fingers on the grip, thumb on the barrel, finger at the trigger. His heart was haring. “It’s my first war”’. He tried a smile. “I haven’t developed a defense against my humanity yet.’” I’m out. I tried again, ‘Bashir kicked out, aiming for the colonel’s groin. The colonel caught his ankle, and hurled him against the wall…he was trying to shift his arms when the colonel stamped on Bashir’s solar plexus, with all the pressure he’d give a cockroach.’ Ouch. Lost me.
So around Chapter 7, The Sweet Science of Bruising – I threw in the towel. Is it because it’s a boy book, I asked myself. Hmm – sexist stereotyping. Or is it because I don’t, don’t want to understand? Hmm – closed mind. Sore? Yup.  
But before the bruising faded, I thought I’d just check the acknowledgements. Now there’s a story! Kim Sherwood thanks her action advisor, medical advisor, the man who advised on science and whisky, the other man who remembered the code, yet another whose mind could power a quantum computer...the list goes on. But wait, there’s more. Kim Sherwood is 34 years old. Born 1989. Ian Fleming’s Casino Royal, the first Bond book, came out in 1953. She wasn’t even a twinkle. So how did a young thing like Ms Sherwood get to be commissioned by the Ian Fleming Estate (nog) to write a trilogy to ‘expand the world of James Bond’ joining the men’s club of Bond-writers that includes Kingsley Amis, Sebastian Faulks and William Boyd?
Well apparently, James Bond has been “one of the enduring loves of my life since I first watched Pierce Brosnan dive from the dam in GoldenEye. As a teenager”, she says, “I chose Fleming when my English teacher asked us to write about an author we admired – I still have the school report.” So there you have it – staying power and raw grit admiration.  I aspire.
But wait again, because there’s even more. Her next book, Wild and True Relation, second in the Bond-expanding trilogy with a ‘new raft of Double-O agents for the 21st century’ has been lauded by the late Hilary Mantel as ‘a novel as remarkable for the vigour of the storytelling as for its literary ambition. Kim Sherwood is a writer of capacity, potency and sophistication.’ Can’t argue with that. 
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Notes from the Lost Property Department

1/7/2023

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​Author: Bridget Pitt
Publisher: Penguin
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
Isn’t it funny how books come to you. Bought, loaned, recommended…stolen (well…tell me you haven’t been tempted). Or gifted. The best, because the giver has thought - about this particular tile, and about you. But just before Christmas, at a writer’s group, we had a Secret Santa and everyone brought a copy of their book, anonymously wrapped. Well a book is a book, so there was no guessing, 
shaking or squeezing to identify the contents. But what a treat to get a book by a writer who you could not only ask to sign your copy, but get the back story first-hand – the unabridged pain and joy! Some of the group are old friends, some are newer acquaintances, so it was also a ‘getting to know you’ opportunity.
I was delighted to unwrap Bridget Pitt’s Notes from the Lost Property Department (Penguin) – primarily because of its irresistible cover. But secondly because she was in the ‘newer acquaintance’ category. And is it not so that a writer wears his/her heart on their sleeve when they write a novel. Their experience, their knowledge, their soul, style and humour are all laid bare for the reading.
The choice of subject matter already says something about the author – the manifestation of brain injury, through stroke or accident. In the acknowledgments she thanks survivors and their families for their testimonies. So we know she cares and has listened. We know that she is a hiker through her intimate knowledge of the Drakensberg, and an environmentalist through her descriptions of flora and fauna - I venture that not everyone knows what a lammergeyer is. It is clear she’s a thinker in the conversations she captures and that her background was filled with song and poetry for which she has both memory and nostalgia. She has a great deal of heart – I’d say it’s necessary to have ‘been there’ to write about the intensity of relationships, and overall it’s evident that she’s also a careful craftsman. The interwoven stories of ageing Grace who suffers a stroke, and of her daughter Iris who had a fall as a child, are delivered in ‘then and now’ chapters – 1972 and 2012 with the ultimate reveal coming only towards the end. It is a story, certainly of what’s lost, but also of what can be found. ​
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How Stella Learned to Talk

1/5/2023

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Author: Christina Hunger
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Reviewer: Wendy Goddard
​Christina Hunger is a Speech-Language Pathologist who works with language-delayed toddlers.  She uses various communication devices to help the children communicate with their parents and teachers, including Push-to-Talk buttons.
Christina acquired a puppy (Stella) and noticed that Stella communicated with gestures – by scratching the door if she wanted to go out; and by flipping her empty food bowl if she was hungry.  Christina wondered if some of her work methods might work with Stella. This book is the story of that journey.
I loved this book from the very start.  Christina’s writing style is casual and easy, with a great flow. The reader shares in the anticipation, frustration and joy of the entire process, with gentle dollops of humour along the way. 
Each chapter ends with a summary of the basic guidelines for applying what Christina learned in that chapter. At the end of the book is a 10-page Appendix with instructions, suggestions and ideas on helping you teach your own dog to ‘talk’.
The book certainly inspired me, and I wasted no time ordering the Recordable Answer Buttons online. It took a few weeks to get the message across to my dog, Steffi; but I now fear I may have created a monster. Each time I go near the food bowl, Steffi pushes the ‘Supper’ button and looks up at me hopefully. Of course, I have to oblige…
Even though the book can be seen as a text book or instruction manual, it makes an equally good read as a story. Highly recommended.
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The Antbear Cabin

12/27/2022

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​Author: Elana Bregin
Publisher: Wobbling Earth
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
Twice over there can be no hard a role on earth than that of a refugee. One, for having to leave the embattled place of your birth and two, for being unwelcome in your place of refuge. The frying pan, the fire. So it is for young Emmanuel who, with his mother, makes a desperate escape from the DRC only to arrive in the hostile streets of Durban. It’s not an uncommon story, except that 
Emmanuel arrives in South Africa alone.  A child.
This lone young refugee is the protagonist of The Antbear Cabin, the other is Winter, his elderly white-woman ‘rescuer’. Both are outsiders, but what they also have in common is loss. Emmanuel’s loss is not just that of his country but of his whole family, principally his now missing mother.  Although it is not expanded on, Winter’s loss is her son, Taylor. He makes an appearance only through his painting set that Winter bequeaths to Emmanuel. The young man is initially reluctant to be this eccentric woman’s ‘rescue project’ – but things change as the two find common ground, quite literally through nature, and eventually, through shared stories.
Fittingly, this self-published book is dedicated to ‘all the many displaced people of Congo and other conflict zones, in their search for home and wholeness’. But there is an unmistakably personal undertone to the story. On her website, Elana declares “Most of my writing is based on my own experiential knowledge of what I write. I’ve hunkered down at the Bushmen fires in the Kalahari Desert (Kalahari RainSong); seen firsthand the wild beauty of Congo lakes and forests (The Antbear Cabin)” so you know that she has witnessed, and felt, a large part of what she is talking about, and that she is moved to pass it on. I know now, for instance that amongst other things, the antbear is a good mother – a small but significant detail.
Years ago, around 2004, I had the opportunity to read Kalahari RainSong, the book that Elana co-wrote with Belinda Kruiper wife of the late poet and artist Vetkat Regopstaan Boesman Kruiper. In the author’s note she talks about her ‘own feelings of being different, an outsider’. So to read The Antbear Cabin, is not just to learn some of the cripplingly hard lessons that a refugee suffers on the streets of South Africa, but also some of the writers worldview, wisdom and knowledge.  ​
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Bamboozled

12/7/2022

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​Title: Bamboozled – In search of joy in a world gone mad
Author: Melinda Ferguson
Publisher: MF – Melinda Ferguson Books
Reviewer: Hazel Makuzeni
From the successful publisher of more than 70 books and author of three bestsellers, comes ‘Bamboozled’. The latest memoir from Melinda Ferguson. A maverick storyteller who admits to being a shameless confessor at heart, most often with no filters.
This book has been a long time coming. She 
started writing it back in 2017 but then stopped. Unable to continue, she was gripped by the paralysing fear familiar to so many of us. The fear of what people might think and say about us when we expose our most inner terrors.
It was only in the second year of the Covid pandemic, in 2021, that she took the deep leap of faith and wrote on. ‘Bamboozled’ is a fascinating read about the author’s controversial spiritual pursuit to fix herself, to find freedom, forgiveness and joy in a troubled world.
Before reading it however, I was concerned that I might not get the full picture of Melinda’s life experience since I haven’t read her first book ‘Smacked’, nor the follow-up ‘Hooked’ and then ‘Crashed’. My worries were laid to rest as the book delves into her early childhood right up to her current state. And what a rollercoaster ride her life has been. It was at the tender age of four that she was introduced to vulnerability – her sense of safety shattered by her father’s sudden death. She will start drinking by the time she’s nine. “My childhood was steeped in alcohol,” she reveals. “After my father died, my mother took to the bottle.” For the author, alcohol was the gateway drug to heroin and crack cocaine.
During a seven-year insatiable drug binge she loses everything. Her two sons are taken away by her mother-in-law, her husband is gone, and so is her career as an actress and an award-winning filmmaker. She’s utterly broken, penniless and homeless in Hillbrow. For a fix, she steals, begs and whores.
The road to redemption that follows is a long and lonely one. Against all odds, she soldiered on the mammoth journey to life recovery – clutching at anything that would give her a sense of purpose. She was thrown a lifeline when the opportunity to write her debut memoir came along. In 2005 ‘Smacked’ was published, a runaway success which saw her parachuted to glory. In 2011, she went back to university and earned an Honours degree in Publishing with distinction. But all the accolades in the world do not fill the gaping hole in her heart.  Something profound was missing.
Then her world literally comes crashing down again after the near-fatal Ferrari car accident. She developed extreme PTSD and checked into a mental-health clinic for three weeks. It was during this time of disconnect and anxiousness that she stumbled across the healing effects of psilocybin mushrooms. In late March 2015, she embarked on her first mushroom ceremony in Monica’s Healing House. The experience is life-changing.
Then the Covid pandemic hits the globe and the world is left in disarray. On 15 March 2020, the president announces that South Africa is in a National State of Disaster. Even though she has been clean and sober for 20 years, she’s overwhelmed by “out-of-control panic.” “Overnight” she says “the virus has, like some psycho vacuum cleaner, sucked away all my inspiration.“ 
To escape the pandemic, she finds a piece of heaven nestled in the remote Matroosberg mountains. Her place of joy and freedom. But, as cruel fate would have it, a brutal murder changes everything. For crying out loud…. when will this woman find eternal peace I wonder? Are the gods forever scheming against her?
Two decades earlier, Melinda sold her soul to the devil that is crack and heroin. She was a one-woman tsunami destroying everything on her path.  In ‘Bamboozled’, she owns up to her self-destruction as she tackles her darkest fears. Confronting buried memories, childhood wounds, guilt and unresolved pain. Eventually she finds a loyal friend in Joe, the dog she rescued and who ends up being her liberator….but there’s so much more in this book. Read it with your seat belt firmly fastened.  ​
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The Quality of Mercy

12/7/2022

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Author: Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
Publisher: Penguin Random House
​Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
A gifted storyteller, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, brings us The Quality of Mercy, the final book in the trilogy that began with Theory of Flight and was followed by History of Man. The good news is that each book stands alone so well does she craft her characters and her stories, but you will want to read the others after finishing this, simply for the satisfaction of extending your stay in the City of Kings.  
As she says…’ this novel began many years ago as a story my grandmother told me…any 
​story that was fortunate enough to find its way onto her tongue was brought to colourful life.’ Ndlovu has truly inherited that gift of storytelling and, while the origins of the story may have been a while back, here she prologues the novel with this story based on what her grandmother told her…and so the doors to her magical world are opened.
As the novel progresses, she invokes that spell that blurs fiction and myth bringing a cast of what I can only describe as technicolour characters. Larger than life, their quirks create a stage set for a story of unheralded adventure with heroes, murderers, mistaken identities, mistresses, guerrillas, ex-soldiers and heartbreak in this bustling story.  But it is enduring love that both begins and ends this deliciously engaging story.
There is a busyness that hauls you inside the pages making you part of the evolving action as we enter the mythical African City of Kings. These are not quiet streets or quiet people now that ceasefire has been declared. Independence is on the horizon and colonialism is about to be replaced with a post - colonial state. Spokes Moloi, a policeman with spotless integrity is about to retire and his wife Loveness could not be happier. He has had an exemplary career, with only a couple of cases that remain unsolved – the ‘Daisy case’ being one, something that has irked him. As the City settles into its new status Emil Coetzee, the powerful Head of the sinister Organisation of Domestic Affairs walks into the bush, and disappears. This is a mystery to be followed up, and, with conflicting reports it is up to Spokes to solve this, his last case. Was Emil murdered or could he have committed suicide?
Piece by piece, tangle by tangle, myth by myth Spokes peels away the layers of the embattled Coetzee’s life to reveal some surprising and baffling information. Along the way we meet the mistress, the ex-wife - mourning for the loss of her son and ex-husband, the impersonator and the madam. With each character wanting to contribute some information on the feared Emil there are an awful lot of red herrings which lead Spokes into a maze of contradictions and lead to unexpected outcomes. And does he solve it? Well that’s for you the reader to discover.
Delve into the pages of this book and you will be simply captivated. It’s a book that you live as you follow the footsteps, the sickly sweet perfume of the stalker, watch the skulduggery  between politicians and secret service characters (very close to the truth methinks!) and follow intrepid journalist and biographer Saskia Hargrave as she weaves her own web of deceit.
Ndlovu’s writing style is uniquely decisive, her phraseology defining her meaning. She writes about social issues and does not shirk at the horrors, the violence and the heartbreak that affects us all. She is a brave writer, bringing a new style of literary fiction that is accessible, readable and totally absorbing. Many of her characters deserve a book of their own, but I urge you to enter the wonder that is Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s world. You will never be disappointed.
Born in Zimbabwe Ndlovu has already proven to be a talent to be followed. She won the Sunday Times fiction prize in 2019 for the bestseller The Theory of Flight. She is a winner of Yale University’s 2022 Windham Campbell prize, is a writer, filmmaker and an academic with a PhD from Stanford University, and directed and edited the award-winning short film Graffiti.
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Across the Kala Pani

12/7/2022

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Author: Shevlyn Mottai
Publisher: Penguin
​Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
Author Shevlyn Mottai is descended from indentured Indians from Arcot in South India and I suspect that this was quite a painful novel to write, yet she brings a sense of joy as she winds this story forward.
It was her great – great- grandfather, Sappani Mottai who came out on the Umzinto to Natal in 1909. Travelling from Madras he was accompanied by his one year old son and a 20 year old woman who was not his wife. The family stories that abounded about her great-great-grandmother had stayed with her as a child and into adulthood. Questions of 
dentity rose, as they do with so many immigrants, and the reasons why Indians would come to South Africa to the sugar and tea plantations. As a writer this drove Mottai to research extensively, visit India and dive deep into the back stories of what being an indentured Indian really was. As she remarks: “The novel began as a testament to my great-great-grandfather but very quickly it was clear that the novel had taken on a life of its own. The lost voices of the women of indenture raised their voices and, through me, they would be heard and finally their stories would come to light.”
And bring them to light she certainly has, with authentic and memorable characters that tell a story that is harrowing and yet an integral part of South African history and the Indians who are so much part of our demographics.
Indenture, a system of bonded labour was instituted after the abolition of slavery in 1833 when the British colonies needed labourers. Recruits were found within the poverty stricken streets of India and the workers came to what they hoped was a better life in Natal. A casteless life that would after five years, result in freedom and, if they were lucky a small plot of land.  But for the ‘coolies’ (and I use this advisedly as this is how Mottai refers to them in the book) the ‘promised land’ was never quite what it was cracked up to be – as it rarely is. It is the time of Gandhi and his influence is clearly narrated.
Mottai paints a fine picture of Sappani as a kind and gentle man, unlike some of his contemporaries, but it is the four women who become bound together in support and friendship that form the rays of the story.  The shy young widow Lutchmee who escaped a vengeful mother-in-law and self-immolation on her husband’s funeral pyre; Brahmin caste and educated Vottie whose abusive husband holds on to his caste at all costs, Chinmah, heavily pregnant, married to a simply useless man as part of an unpaid debt and Jyothi a dazzling young girl whose fate is tied in with her beauty.
Kala Pani means Black water and the crossing is merciless-but life on land has its own challenges and Mottai paints a grim picture of how the indentured labour was treated. I am not giving away any spoilers, the story will envelop you. Harsh as it is this is an integral part of our history - the cruelty of colonialism is well documented.
It is a beautifully written story, and Mottai’s prose is smooth and lilting as the story unfolds.  Well -structured it evolves as if in the swirls of a sari -the colour, words and contrasts clearly celebrating the Indian heritage. The use of Indian words and phrases adds to the authenticity and a glossary gives meaning. The power of women take centre stage and, in telling who her great –great- grandmother might have been, shows their strength in facing adversity.  Whatever the conditions they always pulled together to make life a little more tenable.  A precarious existence for both men and women, the friendships forged surmounted the hardship, prejudice, loss and cruelty and clearly show the strength of the foundation of today’s Indian population. We learn a lot from historical fiction and this is a novel that offers a clear picture of this part of South African history. ​
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Agatha Christie

12/7/2022

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Title: Agatha Christie: A very elusive woman Author:  Lucy Worsley
Reviewer: Beverley Roos-Muller
In a murder-mystery class literally all of her own is the late Dame Agatha Christie, whose clever, plot-twisting books turned her into the world’s best-selling author of all time, with 66 novels inspiring many famous movies such as Death on the Nile, Murder on the Orient Express and my personal favourite, the slightly naughty Murder under the Sun with Maggie Smith as the ex-mistress of a Balkan king and the late, great Peter Ustinov playing her most famous character, Hercule Poiret, the clever, plump Belgian detective.
She wrote successful plays too, The Mousetrap being the longest-running ever on the West End in London.
            When I think of Agatha Christie, I picture a slightly frumpy old lady in pearls. Yet she was considered a tall, slender beauty in her day, born to a wealthy English family in England in 1890; she was full of fun and energy, and above all, hard-working talent, usually turning out at least a book a year.
            She was, in reality, an extraordinary pioneer in the world of women writing, a role she liked to downplay. It’s only when we look back on her string of famous successes that we realise just what a considerable talent she was, slightly scorned by the literatti but it’s her books that are still selling. I’ve just reread a couple, and was fascinated by her insight into characters and motives. She understood human nature, and hid her brilliance well.
            Her first husband Archie Christie was rather gorgeous; he was also feckless. They had one daughter, Rosalind, but Agatha did not take to mothering (though her later relationship with her grandson was deeply affectionate). Soon after the birth, she and her husband took off without their daughter for a ten-month cruise connected to his work, during which time she surfed at Muizenberg (a sport she enjoyed) and secretly surveyed the passengers on board – she loved using material she overheard for her next novels. One of her favourite anecdotes was overhearing passengers talking about her: “I hear she drinks like a fish!” said one, not realising that the author was sitting close by.
            When the marriage crashed, she famously disappeared for ten days – it made international headlines. Much nonsense has been written about this gap in her life – the skillful author Lucy Worsley has briskly set out what really happened, and why.
            Her later marriage to the archaeologist Max Mallowan (later Sir Max), fourteen years younger than her, was successful, loving and passionate. She enjoyed (and financed) many of his expeditions to the Middle East while picking up much material for her incredibly popular novels. After her death, a love letter from him was found folded into her purse – she had carried it for 39 years.
            Lucy Worsely’s biography is delightful, the best I’ve read of the extraordinary Agatha Christie, whose work is still giving a huge number of people a huge amount of pleasure - they are well worth revisiting, or discovering for the first time.
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Our Missing Hearts

11/27/2022

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​Author: Celeste Ng
Publisher: Abacus books
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
It was Lauren Beukes who first unpacked the word ‘dystopian’ for me following the release of her first book, Moxyland in 2008. As you know she’s stayed on that trail with a few more titles, and I’m still reeling from the latest, Afterland, described by some as feminist dystopia. But whilst I appreciate the creative foresight that goes into writing dystopia (imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically 
​one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic), I have to say that with the global here-and-now being so ghastly, dipping into the future to find worse, often leaves me depleted.
So on that basis, ‘Our Missing Hearts’ by Celeste Ng presented a bit of a challenge. Set in the US a decade or so into the future, the ‘authorities’ have declared PACT– Preserving American Culture and Traditions - to be the defining ethic, or law. They’ve also decreed that the offspring of anyone defying that law, are to be removed and relocated. Most especially children of PAO, People of Asian Origin (and don’t we know that when you become an acronym, you’ve pretty much lost the battle. Don’t we also know about racial bigotry and fear).
Having said all that, I found this to be a beautifully written book, something that kept me going when I felt I might be missing, or losing, the plot. What I did get though, loud and clear, was a reverence for folk tales and sharing them, the fragile value of libraries and the agony of a mother torn between her beliefs and caring for her child.
I wish I had read the Author’s Note before instead of after reading the book. It details how children have been used as pawns in discriminate thinking across the world and over generations. Amongst other things, it also explains the extraordinary guerrilla art protest that features here, but most importantly it reveals that this is not just futuristic fantasy – but a cautionary tale.
I haven’t read Celeste Ng’s other books, ‘Everything I Never Told You’ and ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ – but I believe they have had people talking, and thinking.
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