Matriarch of a white family in South Africa promises a black woman, long-term caretaker, the property she owns, on her death bear, in front of witnesses. After passing this does not happen, and the family all but conspires to make sure it doesn’t occur. We get a narrator who flits in and out of the family, showing the state of the country before and after apartheid—the result of which is the intention to show the family as a microcosm, which is condemned for their casual racism and other traits.

Reread on audio: 2.5 rounded up. I think this maybe barely gets by in its intent, of which I’m not sure was entirely successful. The narrator shifts often, very playfully, in a way that didn’t work for me on the page but the narrator helped me with it greatly. And because of the way the plot unfolds, together with the narration, it feels quite toothless, in the end, and throughout. But I also pretty notoriously think satire is almost always flaccid and facile; which is this, to a tee. I’m happy when proven wrong but it’s my rule, and it serves me well.

This does land some blows, however. And the writing, though a character in of itself - and annoying one at that - is otherwise quite good, at the sentence and paragraph level. When it’s not annoying it’s lively and engaging. So, this is certainly just down to my taste. But it being constantly distracting while flourishing the shit show family, selling me on the notion of a racist family I didn’t need to be sold on, just took away the enjoyment almost entirely.

Objectively, I can see why people like it, but it’s lofty intentions feel like they barely string together a fairly meandering and predictable plot. While comprehensive in its character work, and resolution beside the point, I found myself asking if it DID actually ask of me something interesting? Is it surprising white people would be racist and deny a claim, or act how they are, to their own detriment, often? No. I suppose there’s something to putting substance to anxiety of what the future of South Africa will look like? But this liminal state is already answered for with the present.

So, perhaps just like the voice, this is simply not for me. Technically it does tell a story, and the perspective and narrative voice I think are different, which means, though it didn’t work completely for me, I think it completed the expectations the story had for me from its first pages. Which isn’t nothing. But I had hoped for more, given how well regarded it is.



Gave it 50 pages and bailed. My brain does not like this perspective or style. It’s like water off a duck’s back. Nothing sticks with the infodump right off the bat. Too much of the wrong kind of information and the prose is interested in everything about a scene or person or situation that I am not. It’s certainly different, so I can see why people were engaged by it. But, for me, it made everything feel less rendered and sketchy.