Available at all good bookstores, courtesy of Penguin Books South AfricaMy adage has always been that if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck. This time, however, I was wrong. Last Orders at Harrods: An African Tale looks like a book by Alexander McCall Smith, sounds like a book by Alexander McCall Smith and features a township heroine who closely resembles one of Alexander McCall Smith’s – but Last Orders is another species of novel altogether.
Available at all good bookstores, courtesy of Penguin Books South Africa
Available at all good bookstores, courtesy of Penguin Books South Africa 
Available at all good bookstores, courtesy of Penguin Books South Africa 
Available at all good bookstores, courtesy of Penguin Books South Africa
Available at all good bookstores, courtesy of Penguin Books South Africa
This book disturbed me so profoundly that I had to sit in the sunshine, cuddle my (nice, normal, stable) husband and take a hot shower, just to get through it. Unusually good writing and familiar, flawed, screwy characters notwithstanding, Novel About My Wife is hard to read – and not just because I’m a relative newlywed. To sum it up, it’s about a charming neurotic, Tom (“skinnyish, fortyish, English”), with a deeply disturbed but beautiful Australian wife, Ann, and how her psychological demons take over their happy hippie lives.
If you like a book to get inside your head and stay there for a while, unbidden, this one’s for you. And yes, I do have one unqualified ‘nice thing’ to say about it: Emily Perkins writes her male protagonist so convincingly and with such absolute authenticity, that I googled her in case she’d used a misleading pseudonym.
But be warned…
If the intermittent flashbacks throw you off as much as they did me, you may have to read this novel twice – something I simply don’t have the heart for.
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It’s a beautifully illustrated, deliciously presented fairy encyclopedia, with all of the facts, info and non-jiggery-pokery background to intrigue even a confirmed skeptic. I even toyed, for a brief moment, with keeping it all to myself…
But why not share this friendly little tome – which introduces the realm of fairies; elaborates on water fairies, air fairies, fire fairies, earth fairies (who knew?), house and hearth fairies, flower fairies, tree fairies, and weather fairies; and ends with a dictionary of which ones come from which countries, philosophies, religions and belief systems?
It’s a cracker of a gift: a lovely pressie for a certain kind of child – or for that divine adult in your life who spends her free time trying out sweat lodges, flipping through tarot cards, checking out her star sign, twiddling the crystal around her neck or simply dreaming.
'A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich'
Available at all good bookstores, courtesy of Penguin Books South Africa
I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a book so unexpectedly… Not that I didn’t expect much from it, you understand, but this little volume sat next to my bed every night for a week, causing me – despite being a confirmed narcoleptic – to stay up ‘n read.
Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich introduces us to the inhabitants of Richistan – a fictional breakaway republic peopled entirely by the super-rich.
Not the slightly-rich. Not the moderately rich. The obscenely, hideously, nauseatingly rich, rendered sleepless by troubles like, ‘My yacht doesn’t fit into the marina’, ‘It’s hard to manage 105 staff members’, and ‘How to out-donate the dot.com tycoon next door.’
Please note: this is not a book on how ‘the other half’ lives. It’s a book on the lifestyles of the 0.001% who make up
Richistan’s author, Robert Frank, is a senior special writer at The Wall Street Journal. In the process of creating his multi-carat republic, Frank inveigled his way into centuries-old charity balls, mammoth private estates, yacht clubs, fancy boardrooms, butler academies and other havens, where he recognised, observed and then elicited the ins and outs from the brave billionaires who’ve been both on top and down ‘n out.
Here’s a taste:
The rich have now created their own economy for their needs, at a time when the average worker's wage rises will merely match inflation and where 36 million people live below the poverty line. In Richistan sums of money are rendered almost meaningless because of their size. It also has other names. There is the 'Platinum Triangle' used to describe the slice of
It’s been said that “All good journalism is really travel writing. You prepare for a serious story the way a foreign correspondent would. You buy the maps, you learn the language, you hang out with the locals — not just the taxi drivers! — and then you write.” Gotta agree with that. Robert Frank’s is like the finest travel writing: packed with colourful and interesting stories, peppered with crazy people and rich in insights into an alien locale.
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Available at all good bookstores, courtesy of Penguin Books South Africa
What is heaven? Heaven is dark chocolate cake and strong coffee. Heaven is ‘under-sleeping’: waking up a delicious 30 minutes before the alarm clock does. Heaven is orange roses. And heaven is re-reading a book you ADORED as a child, 20 years later.
Egmont has re-published this first enchanting Blyton book, but retained the original artwork. I’m also pleased to see tidbits of charming, anachronistic language like, ‘Horrid thing!’; ‘We’ll go to-morrow’; and ‘Hurrah!’. All I have to do, now that I’ve read this book for perhaps the hundredth time, is find somewhere safe to keep it until I have kids.
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'The Complete A-Z Guide to a Healthy Life'
Available at all good bookstores, courtesy of Penguin Books South Africa and delivered to me by both Penguin and the team at MediaCo UK
The only fair way to begin this review is to say that I’ve been on every diet known to civilised man – and some that even uncivilised man wouldn’t tolerate. From Atkins to Zone; Blood Type to
Not too long ago, I picked up a book called You Are What You Eat, by Gillian McKeith – who turned out to be that blonde lady on TV who examines people’s tongues and poo (although not at the same time, thank G-d). I read it, made a long list of foods to seek out, foods to avoid and foods to buy – and never looked at the list again.
It seemed, at the time, that McKeith advised eating a lot of weird healthy stuff I’d never heard of and didn’t know where to find. I even joked that ‘tincture of spider’ and ‘essence of seaweed gathered at midnight’ weren’t my cup of tea, so to speak.
Enter: McKeith’s latest offering, Gillian McKeith’s Food Bible – . This time, it’s a different story. Not because I’m more committed to my health (I ate MacDonalds yesterday). Not because I know where to find healthy stuff (okay, I do, but it’s far). It’s different this time because the book is so flippin’ easy to follow.
It really is a complete A-Z guide, detailing the key health factors, what makes up a healthy diet in general, which foods to eat at which age and stage of life, and then how to use food to prevent or treat a list of staggering conditions – including acne, Alzheimer’s, autism, breast cancer, bronchitis, bruising … I could go on for 200 pages (the book does).
And for each ailment, there are sections entitled ‘Causes may include’; ‘Action plan’; ‘Eat/drink’; ‘Avoid’; Herbs and supplements’; and ‘Extra tips’.
So let’s say I’m experiencing bloating. (Just to be hypothetical, you understand. Not because I have any idea what it’s like to lug a huge swollen stomach around for days on end, like a kangaroo’s pouch.) This book doesn’t, like other diet books, say, ‘Well, bran’s bad for you, because you’re in the O blood group. Stay away from it at all costs, or die.’
It says, drink warm water, chew really well, avoid refined carbs, consider a couple of supplements, combine food carefully, eat when relaxed, close your mouth when you eat, etc., but in a lot more detail – and more importantly, with good reasons that are specific to the condition in question!
The clincher is, it’s not a once-off read-this-book-and-change-your-life situation. It’s a tome-for-the-home. A big, heavy, easy-to-follow guide to feeling better – all the time, most of the time, as needed, or almost never. It is what it promises to be: a bible. And I intend not only to treasure my own copy, but to give one as a gift to everyone who’s important to me.
For more info on Gillian, her philosophies and her following, visit www.gillianmckeithclinic.com, www.mckeithinteractive.com or www.gillianmckeithclub.com, or take the quiz at http://www.gillianmckeith.info/yourbody/health/questionnaire/index.php.
www.tiffanymarkman.co.za
Available at all good bookstores, courtesy of Penguin Books South Africa
In my world, Marian Keyes is queen. She can do no wrong. Fiction. Non-fiction. Heart-breaking. Hilarious. And whatever she attempts turns into a cuppa hot literary tea: delicious, soothing, welcome – but bloody scalding if you sip too fast.
Despite my overwhelming bias, Keyes’ latest offering, This Charming Man, threw me totally. For starters, it has four narrators and four accompanying first-person perspectives. Not my favourite. Second, there are no Walshes in it. Sad, but forgivable.
But, while its usual fist-in-mouth humour still rolls across every page, there is more sinister grimness than I’m used to from this author; more pain, more anguish, more ugliness, more anxiety, more subtlety. And a plotline that is profoundly disturbing.
Nonetheless, I couldn’t put it down.
Paddy de Courcy, Irish politician and JohnJohn Kennedy-esque hunka-runka, is the charming man. And when he announces his engagement to the graceful (yet equine) Alicia, four women take it very badly. In different ways, for different reasons, and with different results. It’s a great story, but the undertone is undeniably hardcore.
My conclusion? Either Marian’s writing has grown up faster than I have and it’s up to me to keep pace – or I’m more of a softie than I thought. Go ahead - see what you think.
Available at all good bookstores, courtesy of Penguin Books South Africa
It was a fresh, new year. The first few days of 2008. Optimism. Promise. Potential. We’d had our well-deserved rests, spend more than we should have and eaten more than we’d thought possible – and the hard work was upon us. But then, the world went dark.
In the midst of the Eskom disaster, climbing interest rates, soaring fuel costs and plummeting property prices, we were all starting to wonder whether the grass wasn’t actually a bit greener in Perth, Toronto, or even sweltering Dallas. We were whining and whinging, albeit by candlelight.
And then, like a friendly virus, Alan Knott-Craig’s reassuring missive began to make its way across the country and soon, across the world. Oh, the power of word of mouth! Don’t panic, it said. See 2008 as a year of opportunity and remember: we’ve had worse, and survived worse, before.
I read it, and felt better. I sent it to everyone I could, and they felt better. Tsotsis started to attack helpless foreigners in the townships and we almost panicked, but didn’t – because we were feeling better. We just did what we could, donated blankets and bought gas.
The end of this long story is that Alan Knott-Craig’s e-mail has spawned a little book of joy, titled Don’t Panic: a book by South Africans, for South Africans.
The result of South Africans wanting to share their positive messages with the rest of the country, it includes thoughtful contributions from John Robbie, Branko Brkic, Noeleen Maholwana-Sangqu, Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein, local writers and thinkers, and a whole lot of cheerful kids for whom ‘there’s no place like home…’
It’s upbeat and inspirational. It’s sweet. I liked it. But I am a little disappointed that the original message couldn’t remain just that: a simple piece of writing with a cracker of a message, able to achieve surprise success – without yielding a whole jolly bandwagon.
THE MAKING OF MR HAI’S DAUGHTER, a memoir by Yasmin Hai (VIRAGO) IN A NUTSHELL: For Mr Hai, a Pakistani immigrant, becoming English is something to be taught to his wife and children. No Urdu, no long plaits, no salwar kameezes and - although they are Muslim - no religion. BUT IT’S NOT JUST ANOTHER BOOK ABOUT RELIGION; it’s a book about family, and fitting in. THE SADDEST BIT: “…something changed once we dropped Urdu... It just became too frustrating trying to explain complex matters of the head and heart to my mother in English. After dropping Urdu, she became lost to me for years.”
www.tiffanymarkman.co.za
Available at all good bookstores, courtesy of Penguin Books South Africa
Available at all good bookstores, courtesy of Penguin Books South Africa
Chaos right next door, in
What better time, then, to read Lauren Liebenberg’s debut The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam?
Peanut Butter has a lot of Spud in it, due largely to its deliciously naïve and heartbreakingly frank little narrator. It also has a fair helping of The Power of One in it, in terms of its backdrop of civil war, pain, inter-racial tension and power struggle.
But perhaps the most appealing thing about this exquisitely written book is that it is a story about sisters; about being young; about mad grandparents and stressed out parents; and about growing up in beautiful, abundant, troubled, damaged
At the same time, there are two things about this book that profoundly disturb me.
The first is its antagonist, Ronin – the calibre of serpentine evil teenager that makes you want to have your tubes tied immediately and without remorse. The second is that, even though Peanut Butter is fiction, so much of it, especially the unpalatable parts, is true.
Regardless, it’s a must-read.
www.tiffanymarkman.co.za
MARY, MARY, the debut novel by Julie Parsons, now available in paperback (PAN) TO SUM UP: Margaret Mitchell’s 20-year-old daughter is missing and the police think she’s over-reacting. Until a beaten and broken body turns up in the canal. IT GOES BEYOND: the tired old murder-mystery-meets-psychological thriller hybrid, by wielding unusual emotional impact and introducing a charming Irish cast. THE REALLY SATISFYING ELEMENT IS: that it’s written in two parts: the first, Mary’s kidnap and murder and the second, Margaret’s revenge. If you’re growing tired of the formulaic James Patterson, this intelligent book is for you.
THE CHAMELEON’S SHADOW, a novel by Minette Walters (MACMILLAN) TO SUM UP: Lieutenant Charles Acland returns from
DAYS OF ATONEMENT, a novel by Michael Gregorio (FABER & FABER) TO SUM UP:
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OF MERCHANTS & HEROES, a novel by Paul Waters (MACMILLAN) TO SUM UP: Amidst love, politics, honour and war, Marcus is a young Roman determined to avenge his father’s murder and to live life by his father’s high ideals, when he is caught up in events that will shake the world. IT REMINDS US OF: the evocative vividness of Robert Harris’ Imperium and
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STOLEN TIME, a true story by Sunny Jacobs (DOUBLEDAY) TO SUM UP: A no-holds-barred account of one woman’s condemnation to death, and then 17 years in jail, for a crime she didn’t commit. THE PART THAT MAY BREAK YOUR HEART: Sunny is eventually exonerated and reunited with her two children, but only two years after her partner’s botched execution. WHY IT KNOCKED OUR STRIPEY SOCKS OFF: It’s a rare look into the strength, resilience and even joy to be found in the world’s darkest places on the soul’s darkest days. And it is all true.
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THE FACES OF ANGELS, a novel by Lucretia Grindle (PAN) TO SUM UP: Newlywed Mary Warren is stalked and brutally attacked as she explores the streets of
