This slowly building novel avoids stereotype, offering a captivating narrative with nuanced perceptions of death, love, and...
Khosi, a 17-year-old Zulu woman, seeks to fully inhabit both spiritual traditions in which she was raised while struggling to support her younger sister, Zi.
Baptized Catholic and later chosen for induction into the spiritual traditions of her ancestors, Khosi’s fight for survival begins the day she welcomes guests to mourn her grandmother. Her Auntie is suspicious that Khosi bewitched Gogo, who had looked after Khosi and Zi since their mother passed away from HIV three years earlier. As Khosi is left with no support from her family, her beau, Little Man, sets a plan in motion to assist her—however his good intentions go awry, placing them all in physical danger. Soon after the funeral, Khosi also breaks the deathbed promises she made to her grandmother. Under the watchful eye of her ancestors, she stumbles along, setting up her own business as a spiritual healer. While the voices of the ancestors are ever present to guide her, her nursing ambitions and insightful understanding of familial relations enable her to give holistic advice to her customers. Learning of the trouble brewing in her area, Khosi delivers warnings to those involved and ends up the target of multiple groups seeking to cause her harm. This intriguing story is set against a backdrop of social upheaval due to economic discontent in contemporary, multicultural South Africa.
This slowly building novel avoids stereotype, offering a captivating narrative with nuanced perceptions of death, love, and cathartic self-discovery. (Fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947627-04-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
Things lost, things found, and their seekers are at the center of this novel about a girl’s prolonged mourning for her mother. In the wake of the sudden death of her mother, Sammy finds that her only consolation has been her best friend Bones, who shares with her the hope that their endless digging in their neighbors’ yards and the surrounding countryside will lead them to a magic discovery. Then Sammy’s long-absent Aunt Constance, her mother’s sister, comes for a visit. She is a real “finder,” sought out by others who have lost people and need comfort, answers, or both. In spite of that gift, Aunt Constance is unhappy; she is hounded by people who need her, and has no real home of her own. Worse, she has never been able to locate the one thing that means anything to her, the top half of a photograph of Sammy’s mother that has been placed in a threadbare pink satin jewelry box, which has been hidden. Sammy, anxious to locate anything that was her mother’s, quietly joins the search and succeeds, coming to terms with her loss and seeing that she has a real future, her own way. This tender and touching story of love, loss, and rediscovery is strongly plotted and poetically told, but the characters make it count; every one of them is someone readers will want to meet again. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-32678-5
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
Carrick (Melanie, 1996, etc.) sensitively explores the pain of a parent’s death through the eyes, feelings, and voice of a nine-year-old boy whose world turns upside down when his father becomes terminally ill with cancer. Through a fictional reminiscence, the story explores many of the issues common to children whose parents are ill—loss of control, changes in physical appearance and mental ability, upsets in daily routine, experiences of guilt and anger, the reaction of friends, and, most of all, a fear of the unknown. Although the book suffers from a pat ending and the black-and-white sketches emphasize the bleakness of the topic, this title is a notch above pure bibliotherapy and will fill a special niche for children struggling to deal with the trauma of parental sickness and death. (Fiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-84151-8
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
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