Soul Sisters

​Author: Lesley Lokko
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
Sitting on my bedside table for a while was Soul Sisters by Lesley Lokko. I wasn’t getting round to it, because it felt like it was going to be a long read. So when I saw that Cheeky Natives, Alma-Natlisha Cele and Letihogonolo Mokoroane were talking to Lesley on facebook, it seemed like a good opp for a bit of a sneak preview. And what, I thought, is not to going to be intriguing about a Ghanaian-

Scottish architect, formerly at City College in New York and director of the African Futures Institute now based in Accra. Bit of a book in herself.
It’s my best thing listening to authors talk about their books – it adds layers and often throws spotlights into overlookable areas. Adding still more layers is the perspective of the questioner  – or in this case, questioners. Well the CN’s had impressively got their q’s worked out causing Lesley more than once to respond with, to the effect, ‘that’s a really interesting question’ – which can sometimes mean ‘I have no idea’. But all kudos to the very articulate architect who in each instance, not only tackled the question but added to it considerably.   
Anyway – the point here is that, now having read it, I wondered, now what would I have asked? Where to even start? The book opens in Matabeleland 1921, shifts quickly through to Edinburgh, to London and Johannesburg, back and forth a few times and finally to Cape Town in 2010. So have your time travel passport with you. The Soul Sisters of the title are about as different as they come. The red headed, brow-beaten, underloved, chauffer-driven, art-world wannabee Jen and the beautiful, obedient, bright-minded and out-of-place, ‘negro’ (this is Scotland 1978) turned 5-star surgeon Kemi. ‘A whole world separated them’ is to understate the case.
They do however become inseparably close – until the wickedly attractive Solam Rhoyi comes along and badly damages both their lives. Mercifully their souls remain intact. Mr Rhoyi’s duplicity is breathtaking, and that he eventually, shamelessly climbs the political ladder in Cape Town without a care for who gets trodden on the way, equally so.
The story closes at the time of the World Cup in Cape Town. But events in between move at a pace across so many situations, struggles, circumstances (some alarmingly familiar) and continents such that only someone who has ‘been there’ could really deliver. To conclude where I began, I really don’t know what I would ask Lesley – but I suspect that whatever, her answers would be both informed and very interesting.