A warm welcome to Pauline and a delicious thank you to Jackie for those scrumptious choux pastry eats. Those were addictive.
Onto the book: Darling and her friends Stina, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho and Bastard are street children in Paradise, a shanty town in an undefined city, in an undefined African country, but assumed to be Zimbabwe. The lyrical cadence of the prose should almost be read aloud to understand the slightly sing-song/poetic turn of phrase. The novel depicts in harsh but innocent reality the life of these children, whose family once had a house, material goods and a life, but with the change in government lost everything. The desecration of a family through the ensuing poverty is slowly depicted. The loss of the men from the family, as they go to South Africa to grub out a living (despite their university degree), Aids, violence and casual sexual violence, fervent preachers and strong women carefully outlined. The startling games the children play, enacting scenes of great violence that they have seen - making it normal by integrating it into play. You can almost smell Africa in the description of guavas. In the second part of the book, Darling has reached the promised land of America - but reality is not the dream. Materialistic American and the loneliness of separation of all that she knew is bleakly and clearly depicted. Seeing Western materialist society through the eye of one who had nothing is interesting. Descriptions of snow falling and engulfing the land are positively brilliant.
Onto the book: Darling and her friends Stina, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho and Bastard are street children in Paradise, a shanty town in an undefined city, in an undefined African country, but assumed to be Zimbabwe. The lyrical cadence of the prose should almost be read aloud to understand the slightly sing-song/poetic turn of phrase. The novel depicts in harsh but innocent reality the life of these children, whose family once had a house, material goods and a life, but with the change in government lost everything. The desecration of a family through the ensuing poverty is slowly depicted. The loss of the men from the family, as they go to South Africa to grub out a living (despite their university degree), Aids, violence and casual sexual violence, fervent preachers and strong women carefully outlined. The startling games the children play, enacting scenes of great violence that they have seen - making it normal by integrating it into play. You can almost smell Africa in the description of guavas. In the second part of the book, Darling has reached the promised land of America - but reality is not the dream. Materialistic American and the loneliness of separation of all that she knew is bleakly and clearly depicted. Seeing Western materialist society through the eye of one who had nothing is interesting. Descriptions of snow falling and engulfing the land are positively brilliant.
This book created quite a good discussion, some felt that it should have been shorter or might have been better as a short story. Others loved the lyrical prose and elegiac cadences and descriptions of the children's lives that capture the harshness without being sentimental.
Words used to describe it: poetic, lyrical, too long, should have been a short story, insightful migration, a verbal feast.
Marks out of 10: scored highly all between 7 - 9
Next Book
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
Next Meeting
93 Harbord Street
Thursday 7 November - cocktails!
Another date for the diary
Friday 13th December - Book Club Christmas Do
at La Pizzica, 764 Fulham Road
Please let me know if you are coming so that I can book a large table.
