Other Lives
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:
Mouroir
Mouroir
by Breyten Breytenbach
250 pages
Literary Fiction
Archipelago Books (April 1, 2009)
Breyten Breytenbach is not a man who stays away from causing a wave or making a ripple. But he seems more likely to be driven toward throwing himself into the water as a cannon ball to get things rolling. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa. While attending University of Cape Town he became a committed opponent to apartheid. When he was just under twenty he moved to France. When he went to South Africa for a visit he was captured and imprisoned for 7 years under the Terrorism Act, that is when he wrote The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist. Currently he divides his time between the US, Europe and Africa and is a professor of the graduate level creative writing at New York University. He is a poet, writer, painter and activist, he is known as "South Africa's most important poet of the sixties".
After reading Moriour I can see why he and his writing was important during that time. A time when race issues were flaming and life in South Africa was disjointed and hard. He does not write inside a neat box making sure that his readers understand every nuance and intonation. He concentrates on the message, but not wrapping it up pretty or even simply. Several times throughout the reading I would read a page and wonder what happened. I figured out soon that I was not meant to understand everything, just to gloat on the beauty of the richness in his plump words. If you enjoy artistic writing, poetic prose and an author who writes with a voice full of wisdom then for you Mouroir is a must read. You too will become captivated in its dream-like scenes and sequences, which will surround you even after the book is placed back on the shelf happily read.
I will leave you with a quote:
"For a long time the unfinished story haunted me. I wanted to be able to complete it because I was keen to fit it in with the other writings, get my characters in perspective, fill my notebook so as to be able to hand it in. One doesn't get any younger. The flesh starts riding you bareback, drags you down towards the sods" (p. 237)
(quote from Advanced Reading Copy, final book my contain changes and a different page listing)
Orbis Terrarum Challenge: 2009 South African Author
The Writing Circle by Rozena Maart
Title: The Writing Circle
Author: Rozena Maart
Publisher: TSAR
Pages: 199
Awards: Journey Prize
Yearly Count: 25
The Writing Circle is a group of five women who live in Cape Town, South Africa and gather every Friday as a group of women, looking for the strength that in their community only comes from unity and protecting each other. A place where they who cannot trust are surrounded by each other, therefore embracing their loss, and while participating gain the friendships they hold. Healing comes to a halt one night as the rest of the women are gathered together, one of the circle members Isabel, is late, they start without her, and she is raped in her car in front of her very own house. The members of the group hear a gunshot, and from that moment the question will be: can they survive this common scab being scratched and picked at, or will the pressure and soreness cause hatred from within the group?
Maart leads the reader though that night and the following days. This was a group of women, united through experience, yet different in most everything else, who are filled with a desire to live their lives, and hope for a future that is better than their past. The Writing Circle cries out for women all over, but especially in places where they are not allowed to speak out on their own. Rozena Maart brings up difficult subject matters facing her nation today, the ramifications of apartheid, racism and segregation, rape, incest and calls forth life into the souls of these raped and silenced women, she gives a voice to the women of the world whose lives parallel the women of The Writing Circle, but have not had the chance to let it off their shoulders.
It is easy to hear that Maart's every desire is for the people of her nation, and others like it around the world, to open closed ears stunned by an ugly tradition. That all people of all races would listen to the cries of women and girls and to heed the suffering that surrounds them is real and needs attention. The dark and horrid secrets of uncles, fathers, and husbands shriek out from Rozena Maart's The Writing Circle.
This book is a novel, but it is not based on fiction, but fact, as South Africa is one of the nations with the highest number of reported rapes (and estimated 500,000 cases of rape every year!) The law pass system, is one that becomes a breeding venue for rape and incest. The men are removed from the homes, placed in hostel like locations in the city thus leaving families unprotected in the country. Before that apartheid. Those in power feel the freedom to do as they please with their supposed inferiors. When those angry, powerless inferiors became free...things did not improve in the aspect of women's voice.
Hope returns, it always does. Dark days turn bright, and South Africa has begun taking steps of action against this problem. Good things are on their way!
If you are interested in articles on the situation in South Africa:
South Africa Begins Getting Tough on Rape
Tackling South Africa's Rape Culture
Rape Survivor Journal- Rape Stats for South Africa and Worldwide
The Writing Circle:
Reviews of The Writing Circle on TSAR Publications
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