Tara T. (celestialfire) reviewed on 9/6/2006 + 4 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

This is a very Sophomore English book - suffering in South Africa. It's told in the style of oral history, with the local dialect mixed in for color and a shifting central character, though all the characters are members of the same clan. The subject/style isn't entirely to my taste, both because I'm generally peeved by the mixing in of foreign words in a novel, whether or not there is a glossary of terms available in the back [which there is in this case], and because I really did read books of this genre all through Sophomore year. The white man takes over with his church/government/ideals, the locals fight back in a vainglorious attempt at preserving their sacred way of life. A couple of characters die tragically, mirroring the death of a culture, crushed on the wheel of progress.
This book has a couple of poignant moments, but it's difficult, as the whitest white white person ever to white whitely, to really empathize with a culture when some of the biggest scenes in the book are things that from my cultural perspective are "barbaric", i.e. killing a kinsman without due process, ritualized human sacrifice, etc. Still, the main character is well developed and I did feel bad for him at the close of the novel.

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