New book in the library: Joonie by Rayda Jacobs

Qurasha Rajkumar reviews "Joonie" by Rayda Jacobs

Strongly recommended: The Shipping News / E. Annie Proulx

"I'd set myself a task, so I squared my shoulders and, with grim determination, started reading. One of the best decisions I ever made, for I quickly found myself immersed in one of the best, most engaging works of fiction I've ever read."

"The protagonist of The Shipping News (for he could assuredly not be called a "hero") is Quoyle, a big man with a huge chin who is an established loser. Unappealing in appearance and uninspiring in personality, Quoyle is pegged as a wretch from day one by everybody, including his parents. At 36, he's a college dropout and a third-rate newspaperman who is caught in an endless cycle of firing and rehiring, forced to take demeaning temporary jobs at his editor's whim. He is married to an unashamedly philandering woman who has borne him two children she almost never sees, a heartless bawd who never misses work but brings her boyfriends home to have sex with them in the living room while Quoyle listens, silently weeping, in their bedroom. At the head of Chapter One, Proulx defines "quoyle" as "a coil of rope," and proceeds to quote The Ashley Book of Knots:

"A Flemish flake is a spiral coil of one layer only. It is made on deck, so that it may be walked on if necessary."
It it the perfect introduction to Quoyle; he is, in more familiar terms, a doormat.
"Quoyle's life is suddenly and forever changed by a rapid succession of momentous events. His parents, both diagnosed with cancer, commit suicide -- his father leaves a final announcement of the decision on Quoyle's answering machine in his last conscious moments. Quoyle's editor again informs him that he is fired, but that this time it is likely permanent. His wife, after taking and selling their two girls, dies in a car crash while running away to Florida with her latest boyfriend. And Quoyle finally meets his Aunt Agnis, who convinces him that the best thing would be to relocate to his family's ancestral home in Newfoundland. An old (and only) friend of Quoyle's secures him a job writing the shipping news for a paper there, and Quoyle packs up his recovered daughters, his aunt and her dog, and leaves New York for Newfoundland". (From: www.curledup.com)

Aanbeveel: De souffleur / D. Carrisi [vertaal uit het Italiaans door Els van der Pluijm]

"Agente Mila Vasquez is gespecialiseerd in het opsporen van vermiste kinderen. Zij wordt toegevoegd aan een rechercheteam dat achter een seriemoordenaar aan zit, een ongrijpbare tegenstander die de politie steeds een stap voor is. Mila zet alles op alles om hem te doorgronden, maar ze heeft niet in de gaten dat zijn duistere geest ook leden van het rechercheteam aantast. En ondertussen begint de tijd te dringen, want een van de verdwenen slachtoffers is mogelijk nog in leven..." (From www.bol.com)

Recommended: The Solitude of Prime Numbers / Paolo Giordano

"A prime number can only be divided by itself or by one—it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia, both "primes," are misfits who seem destined to be alone. Haunted by childhood tragedies that mark their lives, they cannot reach out to anyone else. When Alice and Mattia meet as teenagers, they recognize in each other a kindred, damaged spirit.

But the mathematically gifted Mattia accepts a research position that takes him thousands of miles away, and the two are forced to separate. Then a chance occurrence reunites them and forces a lifetime of concealed emotion to the surface.

Like Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, this is a stunning meditation on loneliness, love, and the weight of childhood experience that is set to become a universal classic." (From: http://www.bookbrowse.com/)

New SA fiction in the library catalogue

EVE by Sandra Charles (Kwela Books) "Searing, sad and beautifullly triumphant - this novel will stay with me long after many other stories have disappeared from memory" - Chris van Wyk

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LOST GROUND by Michiel Heyns (Jonathan Ball) [Discussion excerpt below by Janet van Eeden, published on Litnet]:

"Lost Ground is yet another compelling novel from the pen of Michiel Heyns, who made his debut with one of my favourite books, The Children’s Day. Lost Ground revisits the South African dorp of Heyns’s childhood. This time it’s a fictional place called Alfredville which embodies all the intrigues that make small towns such fascinating microcosms. In this particular dorp there are villagers gossiping about one another, a few outrageous characters making their presence felt, the unflinching prejudice of the past and, for good measure, the murder of a beautiful young woman.

The narrator, Peter Jacobs, is drawn back to the town in which he grew up to investigate the details behind his cousin Desiree’s murder. He’s left an ex-partner, James, behind in London. He hopes to make a new beginning by reviving his freelance writing career with a story which will reflect the racial conflicts which led to the murder of his cousin in the small South African town. His motives are totally mercenary, as he clinically digs into the seeping wounds of the inhabitants of Alfredville while hoping to write something worthy of the New York Times."

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BROERS deur Bart Moeyaert, vertaal deur Daniel Hugo (Protea)

“Een keer per jaar gaan ons pa onderaan die trap staan en roep hy ons name in een asem boontoe, asof ons één broer met ’n lang naam is.”

'Bart Moeyaert is die jongste van sewe broers op ’n ry. Daarom is die Belgiese koning sy peetpa en het hy ’n geskenk van die koninklike paleis ontvang: ’n goue beker en ’n goue lepel met ’n kroon en die letter B daarin gegraveer. Hy wonder nog steeds of die B vir Boudewijn of vir Bart staan.

In hierdie versameling sketse vertel hy van al die avonture wat sewe broers kan beleef. Deur die verwonderde oë van die jongste word selfs die mees alledaagse gebeurtenis iets buitengewoons. Die broers bly deurgaans naamloos en word net aangedui as die oudste, stilste, opregste, verste, liefste, vinnigste en “ek”. Die vertellings, waarin sy ma, pa en ouma ook figureer, is tegelyk fantasieryk én lewensgetrou. Dit is ’n boek wat oud en jonk sal geniet: van tieners tot tagtigers.' (Uittreksel afkomstig van bookslive.co.za).

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HELSE MANIER VAN KOEBAAI Sê deur Francois Bloemhof (Human & Rousseau)

"Die vierde (en laaste) aflewering in die reeks oor Mark Steyn, die Luiperd, een van Die Fabriek se topagente. Mark Steyn en sy mede-agent Lana Dubois is steeds aangetrokke tot mekaar, maar het onoplosbare verskille. Nou moet hulle noodgedwonge weer saamwerk aan 'n nuwe saak en word nie slegs fisieke nie, maar ook groot sielkundige eise aan hulle gestel. Wie vertrou jy? Wie is vriend en wie is vyand? Die spioenasiebedryf is immers bekend vir sy verskuiwende alliansies: Gister se vyand is vandag se "vriend", maar dalk ook net vir vandag. Dit is 'n losstaande verhaal, maar knoop ook verskeie drade uit die vorige drie saam. Helse manier van koebaai se is propvol intrige, spanning, aksie en gevaar – en selfs sake van die hart!" (Opsomming afkomstig van Kalahari.com). Die biblioteek het die hele reeks.

Nuut in die biblioteek: 'n Vrou gaan dokter toe

Francois Smith se Afrikaanse vertaling van Ray Kluun se 2003-blitsverkoper, "Komt een vrouw bij de dokter" is nou beskikbaar. Fassinerend en hartverskeurend, dié kyk na 'n man se (gebrekkige) vermoë om die realiteit van sy vrou se borskanker te aanvaar en te hanteer. Die biblioteek het ook die Nederlandse filmweergawe, met Engelse onderskrifte. Niemand kan hierdie verhaal meemaak en onaangeraak bly nie! Verbreed gerus jou verwysingsraamwerk, jou begrip en insig in die menslike kondisie; lees Kluun se verhaal of kyk die film.

Fransi Phillips se "Net 'n lewe" die moeite werd

"Fransi se jongste roman, Net ’n lewe, word in 2011 bekroon met die eerste prys in LAPA Uitgewers se Roman-kompetisie. Fransi het R100 000 ontvang, wat dit die grootste prysgeld nog in ’n Afrikaanse romankompetisie maak. In haar bedankingstoespraak sê Fransi dat sy soms skuldig voel, “omdat skryf so lekker is”. Sy het Net ’n lewe geskryf terwyl sy by die Tsjeggiese ambassade in Pretoria gewerk het. Hier het sy onder meer “die ambassadeur se toesprake en briewe van simpatie aan die ambassades van afgestorwe staatshoofde” geskryf.

“Omdat Net ’n lewe in die sosiopolitieke arena van die laaste 50 jaar afspeel, is dit enersyds ’n politieke satire met ’n sterk feministiese inslag, maar dit preek nooit. Hiervoor is die skrywer se stem te soepel en ervare,” het die beoordelaarsverslag gelui." [Litnet]

Lees ook Louis Viljoen en Thys Human se resensies van die novelle.

Mike Nicol trilogy now in the library

Read Payback, Killer Country and Black Heart, Mike Nicol's acclaimed revenge trilogy set in Cape Town, South Africa. See Books Live for more and a YouTube trailer to market the final title in the trilogy.
Snippets from each of the titles also available on Books Live.

The Fence / Andrew Gray - a "political thriller"

African politics, dictators, rebels, diamonds, deals involving big money and South African security expertise from the previous regime... Read the blurb on the publisher (NB) website, and take out this absorbing debut novel.

Recommended: Atonement / Ian McEwan

"Atonement is a 2001 novel by British author Ian McEwan.

On a fateful day, a young girl (who aspires to be a writer) makes a terrible mistake that has life-changing effects for many people. Consequently, she lives seeking atonement—which leads to an exploration on the nature of writing." Read the rest of the Wikipedia article here.

18 May 2011 - Philip Roth wins Man Booker Prize

Go to http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1502 for the news article on the official website.

Freely available on Project Gutenberg as e-Books

Great Expectations / Charles Dickens

She stoops to conquer / Oliver Goldsmith

Wuthering Heights / Emily Brontë

Jane Eyre / Charlotte Brontë

Pride and Prejudice / Jane Austen

Sons and lovers / D H Lawrence

A doll's house / H Ibsen

Hamlet, King Lear, Othello & The First Folio / William Shakespeare


... and many more. Go to http://www.gutenberg.org.

Books may be read online or downloaded.

Lees 'Hondsdol' (Michael Green) as jy 'n Tarantino-liefhebber is

Lees Herman Lategan se onderhoud met die skrywer in die Rapport.

Highly recommended: Birth by Peter Harris

Peter Soal writes: "(It) is the story of the three months Peter Harris, a Johannesburg based lawyer, spent as the head of the monitoring division of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) during our first democratic election in 1994. (...) (He) describes in considerable detail the logistics in providing for many millions of South African voters. For instance, discussions on how to deliver polling station equipment: voting enclosures, invisible ink to be painted on voters' hands, the ultraviolet lights to detect if a voter had voted previously, furniture, etc. etc. How would all this equipment be delivered to the thousands of polling stations, including those in remote rural areas? This was a problem until someone hit on the idea of South African Breweries. Cold beer is available throughout the country and so the beer giant was co-opted to assist with the delivery arrangements. (...) 'Birth' reads like a political thriller which is all true. Read it if you can."

Beukes wins Arthur C Clarke award

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes has been declared the best science fiction novel of the year and the 25th winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Reviews: “As a piece of social commentary (Zoo City) is unsurpassed in the field.”
Chair of the Judges Paul Billinger

"Zoo City filters brutal social honesty through a stunning imagination to produce a world recognisably ours and obviously different. The plotting is tight, the characterisation strong and the writing superb. We had a fantastic shortlist but for me this was the clear winner." Judge and author Jon Courtenay Grimwood

The library has it on order. Here's an excerpt so long:

“Traffic in Joburg is like the democratic process. Every time you think it’s going to get moving and take you somewhere, you hit another jam. There used to be shortcuts you could take through the suburbs, but they’ve closed them off, illegally: gated communities fortified like privatised citadels. Not so much keeping the world out as keeping the festering middle-class paranoia in.” (From: Zoo City by Lauren Beukes)

Leeskring

Sluit aan by BOEKEMAKRANKA - 'N VIRTUELE LEESKRING

Nou in die biblioteek beskikbaar: Kaffertjie van Johan Engelbrecht

Lees hier meer oor die kontroversiele verhaal.

Die Ongelooflike avonture van Hanna Hoekom

Nou in die biblioteek se versameling beskikbaar op DVD!

Highly recommended: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Read this stunning novel!
See the New York Times Review of Books for a review.

Het koningsboek ("literair thriller")

"De jonge IJslander Valdemar reist in 1955 naar Denemarken, waar hij een aan lagerwal geraakte hoogleraar ontmoet, die een groot geheim met zich meedraagt. Tijdens de oorlogsjaren is hij een kostbaar manuscript uit het oog verloren: de Codex Regius, een onderdeel van de Edda, het manuscript uit 1271 waaraan het IJslandse volk zijn identiteit ontleent. Als de hoogleraar hem in vertrouwen neemt, maakt Valdemar zich op voor een reis door Europa. Zijn doel is het manuscript terug te vinden - en in leven te blijven. Want, zo blijkt, voor deze schat zijn mensen bereid over lijken te gaan.
Het koningsboek is een faction-thriller over de waarde van cultureel erfgoed. Toen de Deense regering in 1971 besloot de Codex Regius per boot terug te brengen naar IJsland, een voormalige Deense kolonie, stond het op de kade in Reykjavík zwart van de mensen. Twaalf pagina's van het middeleeuwse manuscript ontbraken echter - en zijn nog steeds niet teruggevonden." (Recensie: www.bol.com)

Beautiful prose in "Little Bee"

I heartily recommend "Little Bee" - on order for the library. Review and excerpt follow:

"Ten pages into Little Bee, I decided there's no reason to write again - not even an e-mail. There's no reason to read again, either. Chris Cleave has done something truly stunning with language in this book, but it's not just the language. The story is fascinating and utterly believable".

"Little Bee is a Nigerian girl who has learned to talk like the Queen. She's a refugee who has been detained in an immigration detention center forty miles east of London for two years. I've never heard a Nigerian woman speaking the Queen's English, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the dialogue. But I believed in Little Bee from the first paragraph, and I loved her by page eighteen, (where Cleave has Little Bee say):

"I looked back at the detention officer, but he would not look up at me. While I looked, he moved his arm over the page to cover the headline. He made it look like he needed to scratch his elbow. Or maybe he really did need to scratch his elbow. I realized I knew nothing about men apart from the fear. A uniform that is too big for you, a desk that is too small for you, an eight-hour shift that is too long for you, and suddenly here comes a girl with three kilos of documents and no motivation, another one with jelly-green eyes and a yellow sari who is so beautiful you cannot look at her for too long in case your eyeballs go ploof, a third girl from Nigeria who is named after a honeybee, and a noisy woman from Jamaica who laughs like the pirate Bluebeard. Perhaps this is exactly the type of circumstance that makes a man's elbow itch." [By Jessica Gribble @ http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/fiction/fr/little-bee.htm]

Brilliant read: Incendiary by Chris Cleave

"The un-named narrator of this book certainly feels like writing a letter - she has got a lot of patience to pour out 300 pages in the direction of Osama bin Laden. An Islamic terrorist attack demolished one quarter of a football stadium while her husband and four year old lad were having an innocent time of watching their team beat their greatest rivals.
She has her own narrative style - as she says at one point, she's not sure on where to put commas, so hardly uses them. She has a unique way with metaphors and similes, and breaks often into tabloidese, headline-style capitalised nouns like a TRUE ORIGINAL. (A) brilliantly astute look at life with guilt, incrimination, love and the lack thereof, and more, after tragedy." (From: the Bookbag, John Lloyd)

We Recommend: Wolf Hall

"It's a story (...) about power."
"Though set in Henry's court and, overwhelmingly, about his long, panting battle to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn, Wolf Hall is really the story of Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith's boy who became the king's right-hand man. When we first meet Thomas, he is sprawled on the floor, bloody and beaten. His father, drunken Walter, has just put the boot in and not for the first time. "Inch by inch forward," he orders himself, as he crawls, spewing and fainting, resolutely out of the life he was born to."
"Immune to the courtiers' disgust, this pirate from the Putney riverbank ascends through the ranks to become Henry's most trusted guide. Eventually, even the bitter Duke of Norfolk comes to rely on him. After all, what can't he do? He knows the whole New Testament by heart; "He can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury." If anyone can free the king from the trusses of his marriage, it is the blacksmith's son."
"The church protects its interests by murdering dissenters; reading the Bible in English is a crime punishable by death. This is what lies behind Henry's struggle with the Pope: the England of the common man, who can be ripped limb from limb for daring to suggest that "God on the altar is a piece of bread". By centring her narrative on the humane and free-thinking Thomas Cromwell, who believes in kindness, tolerance and education, Mantel has found a way to reconfigure the tired tale of Henry's lust and what it led to. Henry might want a son so desperately that he is willing to make war with the Pope, but Cromwell, who dreams of a nation that can talk and learn and worship freely, is revealed as the true author of England's independence."
It won both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
(Review by Olivia Laing in The Guardian, 26 April 2009)

We recommend: Killer country

"Mike Nicol's Killer Country, which has been compared to Cormac McCarthy's classic No Country For Old Men, is the second of his bleak and powerful Revenge trilogy. Pylon and Mace are struggle veterans now working in Cape Town's security business, while many of their old comrades are on the opposite side of the fence, cheerfully looting the country they helped liberate." (Sunday Times review, 16 Jan 2011, by William Saunderson-Meyer)
The UP library also has the first book, "Payback", in stock.

We recommend: Green-eyed thieves

"Firoze and Ashraf Peer, the novel’s twin protagonists, have the potential to become literary heroes – characters created so compellingly that their lives and evils and triumphs reach well beyond the vehicles that house them.

You know the kind I mean: Hannibal Lecter. Dr Evil. Captain Jack Sparrow. The Yebo Gogo guys and Mo the Meerkat, from Vodacom. Bigger than their books, better than their movies and often brighter than their brands.

The crooked Peer brothers who wreak havoc from Sun City to the USA have the potential to wield that type of power. Indeed, their story is so fascinating, exquisitely penned, intelligent and rich in surprise as to warrant becoming a classic.

Green-Eyed Thieves speaks of inspired crime and brotherly betrayal; philosophy and family business – even introducing cameos for worthies like Mohammed Atta (of 9/11 fame) and President George Bush. It’s a wild romp. Read it."

(Review excerpts from: bookreviewsouthafrica.blogspot.com, by Tiffany Markman)

We recommend: Till we can keep an animal

"(This) fascinating debut novel was awarded the European Union Literary Award (in 2008)."
"It is the story of Susan, a woman in her fifties who is raped, then shot and killed by robbers in Cape Town."
"Susan relates the story of her death as a kind of omniscient narrator. When she is killed she doesn't go wherever it is dead people go. Instead, she hovers in the world between ours and the next, eavesdropping on the conversations of the living, reminiscing about her life. We, as readers, share in these reminiscences. In a deft way the narrative defies the cliché that dead people don't tell tales."
"The story's narrative poise and control means we are composed about many things that could possibly enrage us, sending us into tantrums. But we don't come out emotionless; Voysey-Braig is much too ruthless to let us go off easily; we feel a kind of a slow-burning, consuming rage at crime, the single biggest blight on South Africa's exemplary democracy."
"Till We Can Keep an Animal is not exactly an easy book to read, both in terms of its narrative structure and its subject. Perhaps it is worth the trouble, for forging a nation from disparate groups and interests is never easy." (Excerpts from a 2009 review by Percy Zvomuya in The Mail & Guardian)

We recommend: The Slap

The plot: "(a)n obnoxious child does something faintly threatening at a family barbecue, and the father of the threatened child smacks him. Everyone is so upset by this that the barbecue breaks up in a hurry, and (...) the parents of the slapped child have the slapper arrested."

"(A)ll the characters in The Slap are touchy, and that seems to be part of Tsiolkas's point – in the Australia of the 21st century, multiculturalism has won. People of all ages, all ethnic groups and all political persuasions are interconnected and intermarried, and, at least some of the time, they just can't handle it. The Slap, which was first published in Australia in 2008 and has since won the Commonwealth prize, is a "way we live now" novel, and it is riveting from beginning to end."
(Excerpts from a review by Jane Smiley in The Guardian: www.guardian.co.uk)