A deeply impressionistic, compelling novel about a young girl’s life in the waning days of the British Empire.
A photo album in prose about the brutality of life in British South Africa.
Loshe’s debut novel offers glimpses into the unrelentingly sad and violent life of Shirley Schreiber in the British South African territories in the mid-20th century (now Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa). Shirley and her siblings are raised by her mother and a brutish drunk of a father who drags them from Durban to Port Elizabeth to the Transvaal and points north in search of work and, later, safety. Businesses are festooned with signs reading “Nee blanks nee” (Afrikaans for “Nonwhites No”), and the sound of tribal drumming fills the air. As the narrator, Shirley remembers and vividly recounts the almost incomprehensible cruelty of the men around her: her father bloodies her brother and mother, a close relative rapes Shirley herself, and revolutionaries behead a gentle servant and burn a woman to death in her car. The man she marries when she comes of age attempts to murder her twice, then threatens to kill their children. Halfway through the story, just as readers assume things can’t get any worse, they’re warned that “the terrifying ordeals that we had survived had only been the beginning.” This is not merely a collection of horror stories, however: Shirley loves the wilderness, enjoys sweet moments with her mother and sister, and feels joy. But because so much of what happens is narrated from a young girl’s point of view, these scenes carry a strange, varying weight: through a small child’s eyes, bouts of sickness and “Soft, yellow, baby chickens” assume the same narrative importance as rapes and beheadings. As a result, this is a novel of subjective reportage, not objective analysis. Still, though readers may not know why or even when events are happening, they’re always presented with vivid pictures of what is happening. Readers won’t be able to stop reading in order to learn more about this bad, vanished world.
A deeply impressionistic, compelling novel about a young girl’s life in the waning days of the British Empire.Pub Date: March 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5035-0365-6
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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