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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.
​
COVID19 ALERT! Please note that while the Women's Library is closed during lockdown, 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! 

The Language of Food

4/4/2022

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Author: Annabel Abbs
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
‘And it seems to me that the kitchen, with its natural intimacy, is more conducive to friendship and love than any other room in the house.’ Such a tender quote. So what’s not to devour about a book called The Language of Food. In this case a period piece based on the English woman who wrote the first ‘break through’ cook book. And with a classic blue &white tiled cover – a winning fusion.
Blending historical fact with appealing contemporary fiction can’t be easy. A bit like Downtown Abbey meets Masterchef. There’s the responsibility of honouring history but allowing sufficient self-licence to add spice. But for a cook book lover, I would say just a taste of the end result will surely be both satisfying and filling.
The story is based on the real-life Eliza Acton who back in 1845 published Modern Cookery for Private Families. Over 576 pages, it took her ten years to compile. Groundbreaking in that she was the first to list ingredients – a practice used by cookery writers ever since. She had however, the help of the poor but instinctively gifted scullery maid Ann Kirby.  Adding layers to this lasagna are the secrets both women carry – Ann a drunken, mole catching, crippled father, lunatic mother…I won’t divulge Eliza’s bigger secret as it’s only revealed later in the book – but she is also published poet – with a longing. Her lyrical pen infuses her cookery copy. There is also the issue of love… and marriage. Or not.
The recipe descriptions are eye as well as mouth-watering (in some cases) and used as chapter heads: Tea Kettle Broth, Roast Calves Liver with Lemon Pickle, Oxford Punch, Seasoned Gruel, Mauritian Chutney, Swan’s Egg en Salade, Chocolate Almonds, Ginger Candy and Palace Bonbons on Osier Twigs... The tastebuds boggle. It’s also a reminder of how hot, hectic and close-to-the-bone it was in below-stairs kitchens back in the day.
Eliza Acton was extraordinary – a pioneer and role model, albeit with demons as well as culinary devotion. Ann, whose chapters open and close the story (their narrated chapters alternate) although she existed was more a construction of imagination and research. But Annabel Abbs did plenty of research on Eliza’s life and times too – starting with her mother-in-law’s 200 strong cook book collection. Modern Cookery stayed in print for seventy years – and sold 125,000 in the first thirty. Elizabeth David called it ‘the greatest cookery book in our language’. I steal these facts from the fascinating historical and character Notes sections at the back. For the brave there are also some of Miss Eliza’s Recipes – including, bless her, Soup in Haste appended with what she calls Obs. an abbreviation of Observations. Definitely a cook ahead of her time.                       PS just fyi, the acclaimed, later Mrs Beeton plagiarized Eliza’s work shamelessly.
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Boiling a Frog Slowly

3/13/2022

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Author: Cathy Park Kelly
Publisher: Karavan Press
Reviewer: Gail Gilbride (Under The African Sun)
Abuse creeps into one’s life, like a thief in the night.
Even a match made in heaven, can take an unexpected turn. And no, you don’t always see it coming and it isn’t always physical. The exact moment of clarity is hard to define. The decision to leave is fraught with vacillating contradictions.
Does this sound at all familiar?

The heroine of Boiling a frog slowly, teaches juvenile offenders in jail. It’s challenging and frightening at times. So luckily, she has a safe haven and partner to come home to…
And she does at first. But ever so gradually, things change. Yes, love and passion are there to begin with. So how come she creeps to her car some nights and curls up on the backseat? Why does her new safe place become an all-night roadhouse? And what’s with the lies to those dearest to her?  
When Cathy experiences her grandmother’s armoire being smashed to pieces in her bedroom, a vital piece of this confusing puzzle finally clicks into place.
Boiling a Frog Slowly is not only about insidious abuse. It is also about digging deep and trusting the inner strength you discover, when you thought it had disappeared forever.
Park Kelly writes deftly and with heart-breaking insightfulness. Her story struck many chords, on a number of levels. If you or anyone you know, has suffered abuse of any sort, then this memoir should be at the top of your reading pile.  ​
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Boiling a Frog Slowly

3/13/2022

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Still Life

2/13/2022

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Author: Sarah Winman
Publisher: 4th Estate
​Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
Sarah Winman is a masterful storyteller and in the two books (A Year of Marvellous Ways and Still Life)I have read she enjoys placing the aged next to youth and making magic with these relationships. She has a special way of celebrating age that is refreshing and plausible, creating characters that defy all definition and stereotype. Deliciously engaging you want to throw your arms around them and not let them go!
Still Life is centred around art, Florence and 
post war Britain with a cast of characters as disparate and unusual as you will find.  There’s Ulysses Temper the young British soldier from the East End of London, subordinate to the cultured Darnley, a source of inspiration and enlightenment to the young Private. Commissioned to assist with restitution of stolen artworks in 1944 they meet the 60 plus art historian Evelyn Skinner (Miss) on the periphery of Florence as she is making her way into the city to assist with identifications. There sparks an immediate friendship between the young private and the elderly woman, one that will traverse decades. In a charming piazza complete with fountain a chance, life-saving encounter will change Ulysses life and bring with it an unimagined future. In London Peg Temper is busy living her life and bringing up her daughter Alys, result of a love affair with a Yank, while her mates Cressy and Col try to keep up with her, all waiting for Ulysses return. A cheeky parrot called Claude, a van called Betsy, Pete the musician and you get the idea.
This is a book about enduring friendship, about the love and ties that bind over decades as the body grows frailer but the spirit soldiers on. It’s about crossed paths, serendipitous meetings and the curved balls that life throws us. It’s about recognising change and embracing it with humour and openness. Her characters are funny, fulsome and completely charming – quirky and with those endearing human failings that can drive us nuts or make you fall in love.
Throughout the novel the theme of art is prevalent- in all its forms, in all situations – to recognise that it is in a rainstorm, or a slant of sunlight on a shadowed square or a bright bunch of flowers.  Brightly populated with this cast of characters, snapshots of moments are captured and then brought back to life in this meandering journey.
From the grey war torn London we move to the light and history of beautiful Florence and a community that is as colourful as the Tuscan countryside. The reader learns as much about the city and its people as do the transplanted characters (yes, Ulysses and his tribe end up there!) it is all written with humour and slightly tongue in cheek observation.  Perhaps the message here is that whatever paths we travel, however misdirected we may be, eventually we will all end up where and with the people we are meant to be. Sometimes it takes a little longer than we expect but destiny will lend a hand!
A splendidly written book that will inspire you to visit Florence, tread the well -worn stones of a piazza and mull over a coffee as the moving picture of this world spreads before you.   ​
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Hard Rain and Man Down

2/13/2022

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Author: Irma Venter
Publisher: Tafelberg
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
Translating from any language is what I consider a super skill, vital not to lose anything in the translation; to bring the authenticity of the writer to a new audience. There are a surprising number of contemporary Afrikaans writers who have found global success when their novels are translated into English: Marita van der Vyver 
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Coco Chanel: The Illustrated World of a Fashion Icon

2/8/2022

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Author: Megan Hess
Reviewer: Emelia Govender
 “Books are my best friends”, Gabrielle Chanel confided one day to the writer Paul Morand. 
Through Woman Zone I was lucky to win an Exclusive Books voucher as part of their 70th birthday celebrations in 2021🎉🎈
​I had my eye on this stylish and whimsically illustrated biography of the Iconic Coco Chanel by Megan Hess. 
This special Limited Edition book was launched in 2021 which marked 50 years .
 since Coco’s passing and 100 years since the launch of her iconic Chanel No.5 fragrance
This special edition features a larger format, beautiful new cover and a ribbon.
“This book is a lover letter to her. “ Megan Hess 
Discover the story of Coco's amazing early life, the iconic fashion empire that she built, and the legacy that the left behind. This is a stunning book for a Chanel Fan💗 
 Thank you @wzbookclub @womanzonecapetown and @exclusivebooks ‼️
#MeganHessXCocoChanel @hardiegrantbooks @meganhess_official #winningiscool #booksaremagic #designercoffeetablebooks #cocochanel #womanzonect ​
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Girl on the Edge

1/24/2022

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Author: Ruth Carneson
Publisher: face2face
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
Ruth Carneson is an artist. I was reminded of her work recently when she posted an image on facebook. This in turn reminded me of her book ‘Girl on the Edge’, first published in 2014 and which I read a while ago. Ruth is an established artist now, but her book tells of the long, bumpy ride she had to get there.
Briefly, but significantly, Ruth is the daughter  ​​of anti-apartheid activists Fred and 
Sarah Carneson. Copy on the back of the book says ‘Ruth was four years old when her father was arrested for high treason and her world was turned upside down…(she) learned how to keep her mouth shut, to look out for microphones in the walls and to beware of friends who could betray her trust.’ This was in the mid 1950’s. Many young children had parents who were arrested, detailed, tortured or exiled then. Each would have had their own experience, but not all have written them, nor have a body of artwork that tells their story.
The four year olds fear of the Special Branch knocking on the door turned into a troubled, rebellious childhood and expulsion. At 14, teddy in hand, Ruth was flown alone to England ‘for her own safety’ to stay with her brother and sister, Lynn and Johnny. This is London in the swinging 60’s. Things don’t go well. Psychiatric hospitals and suicide attempts make an appearance – as does Samson, two sons, a caravan in Wales, Dartington Art College in Devon, protests, and a solo exhibition. Soon after Nelson Mandela is released, she makes the return pilgrimage and later takes up the role of artist-in-residence on Robben Island.
Ruth’s life has been a roller-coaster as she openly and disarmingly reveals in her book. In it are  included a telling selection of photographs as well as letters she wrote to her father in prison between 1968 and 1971.
Throughout all this, art has been her companion and her means of expressing her fears and feelings, and her pictures, like her book, tell a layered back story of emotional and mental turmoil that reflect the complex psyche of South Africa. Good news is that the now smiling and  gentle Ruth is still producing art – and in a much happier head space back home in Cape Town. It’s quite a story.
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Rediscover Your Self-Confidence

1/21/2022

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​Author: Rolene Strauss
Publisher: Tafelberg
Reviewer: Hazel Makuzeni
I found reading this book a good way to kick-start my New Year. I must admit at first I found the task of reading over 300 pages of a self-help book quite daunting but, as I read further, I got clarity. There’s no need to rush here. This is about you reawakening your true self, finding joy and fulfilment in a frenetic world. If you’re overwhelmed, anxious, riddled with self-doubts and guilt, Rolene Strauss’s  
Rediscover Your Self-confidence, in one way or another, will help you rediscover your essence and become self-assured.  I see her Seven Steps as essential building blocks to achieving success, whatever that maybe to you, and reaching your goals. I truly enjoyed the author’s way of writing, her personal story, her insights and the very practical advice she gives to the reader.  
Upon reading her journey my eyes were wide open to the reality that we all suffer from low self-esteem at some point/s in our lives. Even those women we hold in high regard, like the author of this book who is a former Miss World, do grapple with insecurities. I guess that’s what makes us human after all.  The tools and techniques she shares will go a long way in assisting you deal with uncertainties, and transform the negative mindset that’s ultimately detrimental to your well-being.
Rolene is a miracle baby, a test tube baby born in 1992 through a new in vitro technique. She grew up a happy child in the small-town of Volksrust in the corner of Gauteng, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal. Her father is a doctor and her mother took the role of being a homemaker even though she had graduated at the top of her class in nursing. Her brother Johann is 18 months younger than she. Her childhood was carefree with weekends spent climbing mountains and trees, and milking cows barefoot. She started modelling classes while still at primary school, even though a tomboy, she really enjoyed them. It was late in year 2000 when she met the then reigning Miss South Africa, Jo-Ann Strauss, that a dream was born. At age 15 she became self-conscious and ashamed of her body. She had reached 1.77 metres tall, was teased by other girls at school and rumours of her having an eating disorder did the rounds.
Modelling was still all fun and games to her when in 2006 she came 3rd in the Ford Model Look competition, and won the Elite Model Look South Africa. This win meant she was given a place at the international Elite Model Look 2008 finals in Prague. She ended up in the top 15 (out of 50 girls) in the world. So at the age of 16 she was awarded a contract with Elite Model Management.  She was invited by Elite to go and work at their head office in Paris for three months. Before leaving she had to meet with a model agent in Pretoria to take measurements of her waist, hips and bust. This was the beginning of a change: no more confident, small-town girl. She was told for her to be an international model, some weight needed to come off her hips. “I never truly realised it then, but looking back on my career it was from that day on that I found myself constantly measured by the measuring tape called Perfect,” she says. Her time in Paris was disastrous. Her leg got infected and was painful. She was all alone in Germany for a modelling job when she had to undergo surgery. Back in Paris, her leg started swelling again and that’s when she realised the infection was back with a vengeance. She was emotionally drained and her confidence was in shreds. This was her first major emotional breakdown, at just 16 she found herself walking through the streets of Paris crying without realising it.
She would have a second one as Miss South Africa 2014 when she was alone in Johannesburg and felt so much public scrutiny and humiliation. “The third one should have been in that final year of my studies, but I knew I couldn’t afford to breakdown then. I had a baby. I had a husband. I had my studies. So, I never really allowed myself to feel,” she confesses.
In search of self-discovery, she took a break from medicine and went on a life changing journey that has led to an online educational platform with transformational online courses and, this book. The progress of rediscovering her self-confidence began when she started her masters’ degree in philosophy and management coaching at the University of Stellenbosch Business School. She’s now a successful transformational coach with a passion to empower women to be confident, in control of their own lives, and courageously chase their dreams. A graduated medical doctor, wife and mother of two boys. ​
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RUN For the Love of Life

1/16/2022

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Author: Erica Terblance
Publisher: Quickfox
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
I am both incredulous, and exhausted. I have just finished reading Erica Terblanches’s book RUN: For The Love of Life – and have been transported into another world, worlds actually.  Other planes and places – way out of my comfort zone, deep in fact, into discomfort zones. Imagine, just imagine if you can, running 56kms across the salt flats of the Atacama Desert in Chile on Day four of six. Or 
127kms along the Lycian Way in Turkey – Day one of six. Or 41 kms through the Kalahari, along what she calls Death Valley – Day two of seven. I could go on, but you get the picture. More astonishing still is that these cross-desert runs took place in 2009, 2015 and 2019 respectively, with many, plenty of others equally challenging, in between. Erica’s levels of endurance seem to know no bounds – her descriptions of tent-sharing sleeping, eating and competing in these events are breathtaking. They are also written with such immediacy and detail that you can all but smell the sweat and feel the grit – fresh from the pages of the journal she must surely have kept. Because Erica is also a writer. A writer who runs or a runner who writes? The question comes up in the book and certainly her style, of writing that is, is evocative, colourful and agonizing.
It’s not just the running that is agonizing, her own emotional life during these last twenty years or so (she is just 50 and only started running at 30) also suffers some extreme peaks and dips, and she very openly shares the passion and the pain that some of her partners have both given and caused her.  Adding to the texture of the copy is her liberal sprinkling of quotes and poetry: ‘Only those who risk going too far find out how far they can go.’ TS Eliot; ‘As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler…what I found in simplicity was fullness’ Henry Thoreau; ‘I know you are tired but come, this is the way.’ Rumi. There are also lots illuminating, um, ‘footnotes’ on all things from nutrition and equipment to politics and philosophy for anyone who may even be contemplating following in her tracks.
You have to admire the commitment to putting across the full story of her running life, which is not just about running. Aside from her family and partners, Erica describes in detail the physical and mental approach, the strengths and weaknesses of several of her fellow athletes – some of them in their seventies (just in case you were feeling comfortable that at your advanced years you have moved beyond such madcap activity). But above all, the running journey has enabled her to look deeply into her own approach, strengths and weaknesses, and she is again, very open to sharing. ‘As I grow older’, she concludes ‘…I have found that in the moments when I shift my attention of worldly preoccupations…the greater the peace and the more my life seems to right itself.’ And as she grows older one of her other preoccupations is to encourage others to benefit from running – not hundreds of kms through unforgiving landscape – but Couch to 10kms in 10 weeks through her Thrive Run Club. You might like to check it out on facebook – or take a trot along the Sea Point promenade where you just might find her like a pied piper with a new and enthusiastic set of followers. Erica is an athlete in the extreme. ​
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69 Jerusalem Street

1/12/2022

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​Author: Lindiwe Nkutha
Publisher: Modjaji books
Reviewer: Hazel Makuzeni
An accountant by profession, Lindiwe Nkutha’s book is a vivid collection of eight short stories that will move you in a profound way. The stories are about the daily struggles of ordinary people living in an unjust world. She covers (amid other things) issues of patriarchy, sexuality, abuse, love, loss, marginalisation and faith. She’s unpretentious in her writing describing her characters and their circumstances in great detail.  Her sharp, humorous writing style 
and use of poetry makes the book that much more addictive. 
Some of the stories that still linger in my mind long since reading the book:
Confessions of Karelina.  A guilt ridden story about a woman caught between her Catholic faith and her unwonted desire and love for a woman.
69 Jerusalem Street.  That’s the number of a house in Phomolong Township, where on one fateful Saturday in August, a mother found courage she never thought she had to fight back against her rapist - who was also her tormentor and husband; father to her child.
The Glasspecker. A sad account on loss and grief.  A story about a young woman drowning her sorrows in liquor and cinnamon cigarettes – mourning her youth, the loss of her life and that of her lover. When all is lost, she makes the ultimate human sacrifice.
The Reader. An intriguing tale of spirituality and divination in this century. A company is in desperate need to have its aura cleansed after hitting financial difficulties. The Reader, needing plenty of cash fast, takes the job. As the week from hell comes to an end, The Reader exposes embezzlement of company funds and who the culprit is.
Black Widow. The author here not only tackle issues of love, betrayal, loneliness and death but, sensitive matters of transgender and gender reassignment.  
Jocasta’s Hairballs. A heart wrenching story of violence and patriarchy that had me both furious and shattered from begin till the end. The story is about Jocasta, a woman who endures two miscarriages, a loveless marriage and, appalling abuse from her adulterous husband. There are many characters in this story but the least said about the misogynist Pastor Paul the better. I do not know who’s more vile him or the husband.     
It’s always wonderful hearing African women’s voices coming to the forefront and Lindiwe Nkutha is a remarkable story teller. Her exhilarating stories in this book jump out of the pages and you can see them playing in your mind like a movie. She has a wealth of insight into the human psyche. I can’t wait to read more from her in the near future. ​
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