Other Lives

12Sep/091

Other Lives
by Andre Brink
316 Pages
Fiction
Sourcebooks Landmark
September 2008

Three men living in South Africa whose lives are intertwined to a degree in the matter of hours change their identities, they loose what perceptions they had of themselves. The man that is white awakes to find himself staring in the mirror at a black man, the man who has not been able to have children gets home after a days work to find that he has kids and a different wife! The way this story is told creates mystery and introspection in the reader. What would it be like if you lived in a nation filled with racism, struggling through apartheid to find yourself the other race? What if something you had tried for for years were suddenly there, but you felt guilty in having it?

The concept of the book is good, well, no- it is amazing! However it didn't live up to the hype it set in the first couple chapters for me. I was thrilled to think it was a mystery, but then bummed to realize that it was more a situation created to cause the reader to think, and not really a book that ended with a conclusion to its own plot. Still, it is very well written, the characters are precise and you could swear they were made of flesh and bone, and the interweaving storylines really is intriguing. But, it just wasn't my delight, too much idea and brilliance and not enough of what sells me books-a story that has beginning, middle and end. The beginning was there, the middle was too and the end...I guess that was left up to me. Maybe it is my imagination that is lacking!

Make sure you check out what the NY Times has to say, because I enjoyed reading it:

New York Times Book Review of Other Lives