Blog Posts - Woman Zone CT

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!

One Fine Day

12/12/2021

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.

Roads and Bridges

12/9/2021

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.

Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy

11/28/2021

Author:: Anne Sebba
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson / Jonathan Ball
Reviewer: Beverley Roos-Muller
Ethel Rosenberg’s story was a cruel, cold war tragedy. She remains the only American woman ever to be executed for a crime other than murder, yet she was innocent; and that continues, rightly, to haunt us. She was sacrificed in the era of the 1950s anti-Communist and anti-Semitic reign of terror by McCarthyism, not very different to the fear-mongering mob mentality that dominates parts of that country even today.

This powerful book by Anna Sebba covers the Rosenberg story with efficient, chilling clarity. Ethel was born in 1915 in an America full of new immigrants from Europe, many of them Jewish, many of them fleeing pograms and dictatorships and yearning for a new world of equality and opportunity. It was not at all unusual, in a world struggling to make sense of the First World War to look towards a different way of living – to support Communist ideals, whether in Oxford or New York, was neither unusual at the time nor – importantly - was it illegal.
Ethel was born into a poor home, full of ambition to better herself. She had an unkind mother who doted on her younger brother David, a favourite son who later perjured himself against Ethel, to save his own wife from arrest after he had passed on classified documents to the Soviets.
She adored her husband Julius and shared his idealism, but as a housewife consumed with caring for her two little sons, she was not a participant in his underground activities. Julius did in fact pass classified military material on to the Soviets, along with David, and in fact hundreds of other like-minded Americans. Why? Their actions happened during WWII, when Russia was an ally, fighting the Nazis. Many believed that such information should be shared among nations as a way of ensuring peace. Whether right or wrong, what they did was not in fact treason, for that is a crime only when secrets are passed on to an enemy nation. Let me ask you this question – if Julius had passed on secrets to a different ally, England for example, do you think he would have been executed?
The Rosenberg couple were known to be passionately in love. Ethel’s devotion to Julius meant that, despite her long imprisonment designed to put pressure on Julius, she would not betray him as she deeply believed he was innocent of treason, and knowing herself to be innocent she utterly believed that she too, would be freed.
Much of the world was horrified at the sentence and execution of the two Rosenbergs in 1953; Julius first and then immediately after, Ethel. She was 37. Countries such as France protested; unusual allies such as the Pope, Picasso and Einstein lobbied for her exoneration.
Ethel Rosenberg was more than just a cold war tragedy. She was taken from two grieving, much-loved sons aged ten and six years old, who were then abandoned by family members who were afraid of guilt by association, and sent to an orphanage. When it became clear that not even the highest offices in the United States, including the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, thought she was guilty, but nevertheless thought her conviction would be a ‘deterent’, it was too late to save her and restore her to her orphaned sons; you can pardon a prisoner, but no-one can resurrect the innocent dead.
She was victim of a government terrified of showing weakness in the face of a frantic fear of Communism at the height of the Cold War, and which knowingly allowed this miscarriage of justice. She might as well have been burned at the stake.

Alone. Together. Loved. Forever

11/28/2021

Author: Ingrid Lomas
Publisher: Reach Publishers
Reviewer: Hazel Makuzeni
This book is about the author’s long quest to self-discovery and ultimately her finding endless joy, love, peace, security and fulfilment through spiritual awakening. It’s Ingrid Lomas reflection on family, love, relationships and the real meaning of a good life. She talks about eternal spirit beings, vibrations, our Maker and re-connecting with the natural flow of the Universe. Our Maker is pure love and can only identify with positive thoughts, feelings and experiences. The

A Sprig of Rosemarie

11/24/2021

Author: Rosemarie Saunders
Publisher: Print Matters
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
With the digital advent, all that’s required for instant dinner-design is to type the ingredients left in the fridge and up will pop a clever recipe – custom made for the moment. As a result I recently had a huge throw out of recipe books, keeping only those written by friends. Needless to say I’ve regretted it – not the friend’s books, but the lost recipe for spinach and vine tomato rice from the marie-

claire Zest cookbook (if you find it…).
But the point I make is that these days, cookbooks have more of a job to do than just deliver recipes. One of these is to inspire you, through words and pictures, to put something a little special on the table. Otherwise it would be sardines on toast every night. Their other job, in my opinion, is to tell you a tasty story, or stories, which in the instance of A Sprig of Rosemarie is the author’s culinary journey.
To start at the beginning, Rosemarie has a Welsh mother and German father, an interesting fusion seasoned further by Hotel and Catering school in Birmingham. On her way to Australia she stopped off in Cape Town where a corporate cooking career finally gave way to a family and a catering biz. So that’s the abridged version. But it’s mainly the catering biz that fuels the Sprig stories. The first, lunch for 200 in an ice-cold airport hangar, resulted in thawing salmon towers the recipe for which is provided. Thirty years of a cookery school came next, Cuisine Marie Rose and the Provencal Kitchen – not to mention food and wine tours to France, a few years in Monaco and sojourns in all manner of interesting places. You may be starting to get the flavour of the journey - think Red Belle Pepper Soup and Gazpacho, Chicken Dijonnaise, Onion Tart with Chevre….you may also drool a little.
Hedonism is a word that sprang to mind as I taste-travelled with Rosemarie, and amongst the sprinkling of accompanying maxims is ‘Multitasking is holding your cards in one hand and a vodka in the other.’ This goes with the story of ‘bridge afternoons in Provence’, as does Prawn Chowder. You can keep the bridge, but the Chowder recipe turned up trumps for me.
It must be said though, that whilst Rosemarie regales with delicious and decadent stories of tarts and tagines, flans, phyllo and functions in exotic destinations, I like it that she is open enough to share the smell of burning rice. ‘I got busy chatting’ she confesses. Cindered jasmine is apparently a frequent occurrence in her home. Perhaps that’s another job of a good cookbook – complete honesty. Nobody likes a perfect cook.

Waterboy

11/18/2021

Author: Glynis Horning
Publisher: Bookstorm
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
I can’t imagine a more difficult book to write. They say nothing compares to the death of a child, but for the child’s death to have been at his own hand, is unbearable. Beyond words. Too sad for words in fact. And yet it’s through words that journalist, award-winning

ournalist, Glynis Horning has worked her way through trying to understand the devastating loss of her beautiful son Spencer – her Waterboy, her SuperS – his online name. Her shining son whose glow was dimmed by a pervasive depression exacerbated by a blood disorder.
The event happened in September 2019. Just over two years later Glynis has written and had published an account of circumstances around Spence’s leaving that left me, as a reader, shaking my head in disbelief and despair. But also with huge admiration and respect for the way she so transparently handled the journey. For support she drew on the strength of her treasured friends. At the same time caring for and being cared for by her husband, swimming buddy Chris and piano-playing, computer whizz second son Ewan. They are gifts these two.
But as if losing Spence was not a hole deep enough in which to fall, a series of other losses occurred around this time, all of which she includes in the book with love, sensitivity and unfailing clarity – whilst, incredibly managing to continue writing other challenging, demanding articles for work.
The incisiveness, or insightfulness, of her book is ironically due in part to the fact that Glynis is a practiced and empathetic wordsmith, writing on many subjects, notably on Mental Health. For these pieces specifically she has received many awards.
While for most of us lockdown was a time to learn new skills: baking, gardening, managing technology not least – but mostly learning to live with ourselves, for Glynis it was a time to learn to live without her darling, eldest son. As she touches on the emergence of COVID, the death of George Floyd and includes dated, what appear to be, diary entries – there’s a sense that she was writing this story as it happened. It’s certainly as fresh and raw as I suspect it may be for her, for some time. It's also a beautiful tribute to one very special young man – and as it says on the back cover ‘if this book can help one person avoid suicide, or bring new understanding to those who have lost someone, it will have achieved its goal.’

The Wilderness Between Us

11/5/2021

Author: Penny Haw
Publisher: Koehlerbooks
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
Prior to investing in this title, in a book shop, I overheard ‘Isn’t that the book about anorexia?’ Well, it is – but now that I’ve read it, I wish I’d been able to say to those customers, ‘but it’s about so much more.’ It’s about the wiles, wonders and perils of hiking, it’s about listening – to yourself and others, oh, and to what’s around you. It’s about relationships, friendships and human behavior – good, bad and questionable – and most importantly it’s about compassion. So for sure there’s

something to which everyone can relate.
Having once had a brush with anorexia I could relate to the skinny thing. And lucky enough to have hiked with friends in some fabulous but big scary forests, I’m not unfamiliar with the outfreaking sensation of getting lost, separated, confronted with ropes and raging rivers, and having to make stay or go decisions. Not to mention the huge and humbling respect that comes with being ‘in nature’.
But what’s notable over and above all that, is how all the characters, the group of hikers, behave – react, to one another and to the circumstances in which they find themselves. Impossible not to wonder with which one you identify most – and not to judge some others. The back stories of each individual also unfold in a series of reveries and reflections, so they develop and reveal as the story tracks back and forth.
But like a scattering of bonuses, there are some very memorable, closely-observed moments – the puffed out chest of a hadeda here, a hovering skink there, the fall of light on leaves, rain on skin, welcome distraction from pain and a flash of distant duiker. I can’t help feeling that Penny Haw must have filled up a note book or two on her real life Tsisikamma hike where this story germinated. She may also have spent some time chatting to medics, eating disorder counsellors, rangers, conservationists – and listening deeply to friends. ‘Did you know that the rosettes or spots on every leopard are unique?’ said the girl. ‘I didn’t.’ Personally speaking, I learned a great deal from this book.

The Ophelia Girls

11/1/2021

Author: Jane Healey
Publisher: Pan MacMillan
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
Jane Healey’s ‘The Ophelia Girls’ is a fey and disturbing story of obsession, teenage love and the mesmerising quality of observation; through the prisms of water and the camera lens.
Shakespeare’s tragic heroine takes centre stage in this novel, not as a character rather as the group name five teenage girls are given in the summer of 1973. ‘The Ophelia Girls’ brings the spectre of this woman hauntingly into the river of their childhood.

The Island of Missing Trees

10/19/2021

Author: Elif Shafak
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
Elif Shafak has a magical use of words. She conjures indelible pictures, she dissects issues with a rare imagination, realism and poignancy that one is left reeling from the impact of her words - a longing for more. Champion of the displaced, the disenfranchised, the unloved and the environment, Shafak is a compassionate writer whose writing will move and inform you. ‘The Island of Missing Trees’ is a beautifully crafted novel which has, at its

heart, a fig tree. In fact the tree is the narrator. You might think that strange but it works. A metaphor for the environment; reminding us that our roots and branches spread beyond the place of birth and that all things that grow are living.
Shafak’s writing is variously described as luminous, masterful and I can only echo these descriptions. She tells this story with such heart and brings the issue of identity, trauma and love across cultures into such focus that we are forced to look at our own lives, our own intolerances.
Cyprus in 1974 is on the verge of civil war, a divided island but for teenagers , Greek Christian Kostas and Turkish Muslim Defne, love has bloomed and is all consuming. They meet in the local tavern ‘The Happy Fig’ where a fig tree spreads its branches through the roof offering shade and seclusion. It is the one constant, observing, growing, protecting - witness to the developing affair, to the horrors of the war, the crumbling of the city, the disappearance of the gay owners of the tavern, the separation of the lovers.
London 2010s. Kostas is a scientist specialising in trees and his daughter Ada is a troubled teenager. Her mother is dead and she is struggling to find herself. She knows little of her parent’s country of birth, or their history. This is never talked about and for Ada, stranded on that island between child and adult, the only constant is her father’s love and the fig tree Ficus Carica in the garden. Not a native of England but brought from Cyprus and knowing the history of this family. As Kostas prepares to bury the tree for winter, aunt Meryem, whom Ada has never met, arrives from Cyprus. Memories are stirred, longings and loss are brought to the surface and at the centre of it - a fig tree.
As the narrator tells us that all trees are essential ‘You might say there is a tree for every mood and moment’ it is a reminder that every living thing has a purpose…’ to reminisce about the past, seek out a holly to sit under...then again if it’s love you are after, or love you have lost, come to the fig, always the fig’.
Shafak’s inimitable style brings us once again a simply beautiful and emotional read.

The Tearoom

10/19/2021

Author: Gretchen Haley
Publisher: Penguin
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
Such a delightful book! Easy to read and sprinkled with spicy titbits that bring Indian cuisine right into your home. The delicacies of a KwaZulu-Natal community whose favourite eating place is The Tearoom run by the long suffering but proud proprietor Tubby Reddy are tantalizingly revealed as one would add the ingredients to a slow cooking pot. Gretchen Haley’s novel ‘The Tearoom’ is a warming romp that will have you longing for light-as-air rotis and spicy samosas as you

turn the pages.
Meet Tubby Reddy. Strange name for an Indian but then he IS tubby and with a name like Thirapatheegadu getting your tongue around that is almost like eating a hot chilli, so more than appropriate. His life is ordered – The Tearoom is popular, his staff are reliable and his clientele loyal. But his heart is not with his hypochondriac, histrionic wife Lynette, no, it has been taken by kitchen assistant Yogi, but until now she knows nothing of this. As the countdown to his fiftieth birthday begins Tubby is determined that his life is going to change and London and Yogi – here we come. Monitoring his life and successful business through his diary – carefully kept out of Lynette’s sight - Tubby has amassed a small fortune ready for the day when he will realise his dream. Lynette seems to have taken a serious shine to the new and energetic preacher, his daughter Nell is mysteriously disappearing into the night and son Benji has plans of his own. So it seems the stage is set. Tubby’s affection and love for Yogi is spurring him on, but as in all good stories ‘ the best laid plans’ have a habit of coming unstuck as reality deals him a low blow that could change everything.
Haley brings a colourful and warming cast to her pages. The reader will delight in the gentle Tubby, urging him on, sharing his disappointments. The aromas of the Tearoom follow you as the story gains momentum and the comedic moments will have you giggling. It is of course a tragi – comedy as colourful as the characters and instantly recognisable. Haley skilfully writes of issues prevalent in any South African community but brings pathos and empathy into her portrayal. Cross cultural dynamics, simmering sentiments of staff, clientele and family are all well rounded out and she skilfully brings the tale to a close with a satisfying outcome. Just like a good meal, The Tearoom, has a way of lingering.