What She Saw – Novel
by Lucinda Rosenfeld
What a great idea! To write
your debut novel with its
protagonist looking back
on a list of past boyfriends.
Each chapter finishes the
sentence, What She Saw...
in ‘The Stink Bomb King
of Fifth Grade’, ‘Spitty
Clark’, ‘The Anarchist
Feminist’. And so it goes,
as Phoebe Fine struggles
to unpack who she is and what she wants. The
author brilliantly presents Phoebe’s hilarious and
sometimes frankly dreadful romantic, emotional
and sexual encounters. I liked this book so much
I read it twice.
The Witness Wore Red (The 19th Wife Who
Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice) –
Memoir by Rebecca Musser
I’m fascinated by cults.
Always have been. And
I’ve read everything ever
written about fraudster/
child molester Warren Jeffs’
Fundamentalist Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints. So this inside story,
penned by 85-year-old
Rulon Jeffs’ 19th wife (a
child bride), was a must for me. I was fascinated
by Rebecca Musser’s decision to bear public
witness against the prophet of the FLDS, to protect
little girls from being forced to marry. Yes, it’s
long, but it’s well-written. And totally believable.
Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White
Guy). But as I began reading I began giggling. This
book is about Americans - those strange creatures
with their self-conscious national neuroses. If
I’m being honest, it’s less of a book and more of a
comedic rant against everything and everyone the
author hates. Carolla is deeply nostalgic for the
days before we all lost our minds/spines and if you
have a sound sense of irony, you’ll cry laughing.
Barracuda – Novel
by Christos Tsiolkas
In Barracuda, we see the
ugly conflict within a
young man’s own soul.
Daniel Kelly is a working
class boy who gets into
a posh school on a
swimming scholarship,
where he stands out
among schoolmates with
‘the clearest skin he had
ever seen and the best cut
hair and the whitest and most perfect teeth.’ This
experience moulds him into ‘Barracuda’: a violent
teen for whom winning is the only way to deal
with the teasing of his schoolmates, the sacrifices
of his family and the pitiless, relentless, heart-
breaking brutality of badly wanting to re-write
your own history.
I gave in to literary nostalgia
I’ve only recently discovered the books of Kathy
Reichs and I’m starting her Temperance Brennan
(the ‘bone doctor’) series from #1, with
Déja
Dead.
What a treat – to belatedly find an author
who’s written 20-something novels for me to track
down, in second-hand bookstores and on Kindle.
If you’re interested, here’s a quick summary:
Tempe Brennan is a forensic anthropologist (like
Kathy Reichs), who investigates human remains at
crime scenes where the flesh is too degraded for a
coroner to obtain evidence. Her activities, and her
ups and downs, are fascinating.
Winner of the
2014 Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction,
Donna Tartt’s
The Goldfinch
follows a
grieving boy’s involvement with a small but
famous piece of art. Tartt is known for her
exquisitely drawn characters, but also for her
many, many, many pages, so this particular
audio-book is a good choice. Listen as the narrator,
David Pittu, nails not a the multiple accents, but
also the personalities of every character.
EXTRA, EXTRA!
WINTER | 2014
37
RCI.co.za
