Fairlady

BOOKS

Lockdown got to you a wee bit? This month’s cathartic reads will have you weeping, laughing out loud, pondering – and on the edge of your seat. Enjoy!

- COMPILED BY SUZY BROKENSHA

Keeper

BY JESSICA MOOR

When Katie Straw’s body is pulled from the waters of a wellused suicide spot, the local police are all but ready to rule it as just that – suicide. The residents of a women’s shelter where Katie worked, however, think otherwise. To them, it’s clearly murder. But after spending years escaping the men whose violence led them to the shelter, how much of this is their own paranoia? Detective Dan Whitworth considers it a tragic but open-and-shut case, yet he soon discovers that not everything was as it seemed with Katie.

Inspired by her own experience­s with survivors of domestic abuse, Moor has spun a powerful tale about male violence in all its forms. The story of how each woman came to be at the shelter is where Moor really got to me, showing how the violence isn’t just expressed as bruises and broken bones: she illustrate­s it in the trolls who threaten rape online, in emotional abuse, and even in the detective’s dismissive response. Alternatin­g between the times before and after the incident, Keeper is more than a murder mystery – it highlights the plight of women who escape abuse at the hands of their spouses. Robyn Walker

Travel Light, Move Fast

BY ALEXANDRA FULLER

In her memoir Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, a beautifull­y written account of her upbringing in colonial Rhodesia, Fuller portrays her parents as dysfunctio­nal people who constantly made selfish decisions that impacted hugely on the family. Fuller pulled no punches, and I wondered whether she even liked her parents, let alone loved them.

Travel Light, Move Fast has a very different tone, and her love for her parents, particular­ly her father, is apparent.

The book begins in Budapest with Tim Fuller in hospital: he is dying after falling gravely ill while on holiday. He’s thousands of miles away from his beloved farm in Zambia and his dog, Harry. Fuller joins her mother in Budapest, spending weeks at her father’s bedside, waiting for him to die.

It is so painful to read. The writer’s love for her father is all-encompassi­ng – at times, I couldn’t stop weeping. She deals with death in such an honest way that I’d encourage anyone who has battled with loss to read this book. Fuller hides nothing, and it’s this frankness that makes her a brilliant writer. I’m sure her father would consider this book to be one helluva send-off. Caryn McArthy

Redhead by the Side of the Road

BY ANNE TYLER

I can’t imagine a more reassuring book to read in lockdown. There’s something so compassion­ate about the way Tyler sees people – it’s not that she doesn’t see our faults and weaknesses, more that she sees them as a necessary part of the whole – as what makes us human.

Micah Mortimer is a 43-yearold geek who lives rent-free in the basement flat of a building in Baltimore – he acts as superinten­dent for his rent. On the side, he is Tech Hermit, an on-call tech-assisting service. A stickler for solitary routine and discipline, he thinks he loves his life (he has a girlfriend, but they don’t live together – and he carefully refers to her as ‘lady friend’ throughout).

Then two things happen: his lady friend is threatened with eviction from her flat, and an indulged student arrives to tell him that Micah is his father. Both events mean that Micah needs to start making changes to the routine

he’s loved for so long.

He knows he has difficulty understand­ing people and responding to them appropriat­ely, but clearly, he has to challenge himself because things have to change.

This is a funny, warm book, and also pleasingly short. And lockdown really makes you empathise with Micah’s longing for familiar routine. I thought it was fabulous. Suzy Brokensha

My Dark Vanessa

BY KATE ELIZABETH RUSSELL

At 32, Vanessa is disappoint­ed in her life: she has an unfulfilli­ng job, she numbs everything with booze and weed, and she’s only ever had failed relationsh­ips. Except for that one ‘great romance’: her relationsh­ip as a 15-year-old with her 42-year-old teacher, Jacob Strane.

It’s 2017, and Vanessa is obsessivel­y following allegation­s of sexual abuse against her former ‘lover’, telling herself that hers was not like those awful stories you hear. The narrative switches between the present – detailing the allegation­s against Strane as well as Vanessa’s defensive reaction to them – and the past: her boarding school years, when her future was bright and she had her whole life ahead of her. During that time, Strane made her feel special and beautiful – what’s wrong with that?

This is not an easy read, not just because of the controvers­ial subject matter, but also because some scenes will make you feel uncomforta­ble and will be especially triggering to survivors of sexual abuse and assault. But I understand why they’re there: your skin should crawl. Vanessa’s story illustrate­s how complicate­d these stories can be and the obvious red flags that we as adults can see.

They’re so blinding that at times they make Vanessa’s claims that she’s not a victim even more tragic. The pace stumbles in the second half, but this compelling read adds an important viewpoint in the time of #MeToo. Charis Torrance

Afterland

BY LAUREN BEUKES

The year is 2023, and the male population has all but been wiped out by a virus. Cole and her 12-year-old son, Miles, who is disguised as a young girl, are on the run through a very changed US landscape from not only the government – which has rounded up the surviving male population for experiment­s – but also from the most dangerous person of all, Cole’s own sister, Billie.

A blend of Blade Runner and

The Handmaid’s Tale, Afterland is the thrilling story of how far a mother will go to protect her son in a hostile world transforme­d by the sudden absence of men.

Beukes has a way of writing that transcends genres – you can’t pigeon-hole her. Afterland is no different. It may sound a bit close to home for some who will see the words ‘virus’ or ‘pandemic’ and not want anything to do with the book, but it’s not about that at all, really. It’s about a mom and her son on the run from someone they thought they could trust; it’s a road trip/chase set in a dystopian future, with a cast of intriguing characters – including neonrobed nuns! Charis Torrance

I You We Them

BY DAN GRETTON

In crimes against humanity, who are more culpable: the individual­s wielding the weapons, the bureaucrat­s oiling the wheels of the genocide machine, or the men and women in the shadows giving the orders? This is the central inquiry in Gretton’s genre-bending masterpiec­e. In it, he examines some of the worst atrocities in history, including the Holocaust, apartheid, Dutch oil company Shell’s decimation of the Niger Delta, and the Korean War, in which his ‘gentle, kind, loving father’ served.

Gretton plants himself in the story to illustrate how easy it is to become complicit in ‘a conspiracy of silence’.

He also calls out the hypocrisy of the colonial powers and civil society who deride Nazism but refuse to acknowledg­e that their empires brutally murdered many more, cementing the acceptabil­ity of mass murder in the collective psyche and thereby paving the way for the Holocaust to happen.

Some have wondered about Gretton’s personal meandering­s in the beginning; I found it a beautiful philosophi­cal opening filled with pathos, that has everything to do with his subject – and human habit.

For anyone wondering what the hell happened to humanity, this read is a must. These are Gretton’s lines about his father’s silences about the war: ‘It is one thing to have traumatic memories yourself... It is another to put these realities into somebody else’s head, and then to see that other person’s view of yourself shaken forever. The gentle, loving father – now with a machine gun in his hand.’ Sameena Amien ❖

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