book bites
Out of Line: A Memoir Dov Fedler (Tracey McDonald Publishers, R250)
From his Jewish upbringing in Mayfair to his close encounters with “Moloch Hamovess”, this memoir is a colourful offering from the master cartoonist of Johannesburg. With a couple of paragraphs he manages to put a lump in your throat — but then he has you dispel it with a burst of laughter. He renders life as a tragic and comic affair but tells his stories with utmost compassion. The only cartoon featured in the book is that of Mandela’s face, magically formed by a flock of gulls over Table Bay. — Alastair Findlay
The Mime Order
Samantha Shannon (Bloomsbury, R305)
If The Bone Season was Paige Mahoney’s trial by fire,
The Mime Order is her rebirth. She’s managed an escape from Sheol I, along with a ragtag bunch of other survivors, and must now prepare the Unnatural Assembly, masters of London’s underworld, for the imminent arrival of vengeful Rephaim. There is a problem, though: her Mime Lord, Jaxon, would rather focus on money and power. Shannon’s second book is again heavy on detail, moving ponderously in places. Still, it’s an entertaining read that ends on a cliffhanger. — Donnay Torr @SAPixi
Play On: Now, Then & Fleetwood Mac – The Autobiography Mick Fleetwood & Anthony Bozza (Hodder & Stoughton, R310)
The Fleetwood Mac story — drugs, sex, music, sex with other people and then more drugs — has been exhaustively unpacked in many decades’ worth of music magazine articles. Drummer and ringleader Mick Fleetwood is acutely aware of this, and the ubiquity of those stories is his excuse for skipping over what many readers might reasonably have expected to be the juicier parts of his narrative. He does, however, pack dozens of entertaining anecdotes into this account. — Bruce Dennill @BroosDennill
The Girl Who Wasn’t There Ferdinand von Schirach (Little Brown, R275)
Sebastian isn’t an ordinary boy. He can see thousands more colours than the average person. His idyllic childhood outside Munich comes to a harsh end when he finds his beloved father in the study with his head blown off. Then we meet him as an adult: a renowned photographer living in Berlin, charged with murder. Schirach’s writing is so sharp and crisp that only in the third act do you notice and admire his clever plot devices. — Jennifer Platt @Jenniferdplatt