Category Archives: Novels

The Theory of Flight – Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

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This book was a birthday gift. I’d never heard of the title before I received it, nor of the Zimbabwean author. I finished the book a few days ago, and have been thinking of it ever since.

One point to make right at the start is that I almost put the book down when I read the prologue, and realised that one of the story’s foundation stones is the shooting down of a passenger plane.

However … I read on, and I was fascinated. The writing is beautiful.

At the heart of the story is Genie – beautiful and defiant, and profoundly giving. She knows love and gentleness, and always holds true to those, despite the dislocation, disloyalty, and disease that follow her into adulthood. It is her life that links together the many other characters in the book who surround her, some intersecting with her only briefly or indirectly but each of them adding their own flawed humanity to the context through which Genie evolves.

That, for me, is the chewy soul of this book – the way it gives villains and heroes alike, lives and hopes and dreams. No person is right or wrong, regardless of whether they are navigating or inflicting trauma. They are simply revealed, their day to day sharply focused, but their roles smudged around the edges with magic realism. There is real trauma, but it is blurred in a way that spares the reader.

The impression I’ve been left with is of a book that is gentle, but also devastatingly powerful. I loved the writing, and would rate it as one of the most striking novels I’ve read by a Zimbabwean author.

(The copy I have is published by Catalyst Press. The novel was originally published by Penguin Books in South Africa in 2018. It won the Barry Ronge Prize for Debut Fiction in South Africa.)

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

A book full of pictures and hope

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I was given this book at almost the same time as I finished Demon Copperhead.

Demon Copperhead, as long as a battle, wound me in beside its main character to witness the traumas of his growing up, while The Last Tree – A Seed of Hope, by Luke Adam Hawker, is very different.

This book spun me like a leaf through its roots, allowing me to drift along with its young protagonist Olive when she loses touch with her classmates on a visit to the Tree Museum. There she becomes absorbed by a picture of The Last Tree. She sits in front of it, imagining how it would have been to climb trees and to live amongst them. At the end of the visit, when the class leaves for home, she is eager to see her father, and is clutching a seed that they will plant together for the generations to come.

That’s the story, but it’s the illustrations – pages of lovely drawings in black and white – that really pull the narrative wide, exploring and imagining through the eyes of a small child in a big world, and using only a few lines of text to do so.

I loved this book. It’s gentle but intense, and hard to resist flicking through again and again.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

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I’ve finished! Longest book I’ve read for a while (546 pages) … and I didn’t abandon it.

I read the novel a chapter at a time, and occasionally not even that. The reason was the lack of minutes in my day, but each time I picked the book up, I was surprised to find myself engrossed again.

The reason I think is the voice. Demon Copperfield’s voice. It is fascinating, trapped like a stone in a barrel rolling down a hill, the barrel being the Appalachian community that Demon finds himself born into. Both his personal circumstances and the community are potholed with hardship, and his own path through them as dysfunctional as any.

Orphaned as a young child Demon is reliant on the damaged hands of others – foster carers, relatives, guardians. He bounces from one difficult situation to the next, always hopeful that things will get better. But they don’t seem too.

In his late teens his body shows real sporting potential, but when that too suffers breakdown the cracks in his life split wide open. Vulnerable and willing they are soon stuffed with drugs, some prescription and some not, all available and seemingly everywhere.

“I stopped caring around this point because the little white submarine-shaped pill he’d given me to swallow was starting to sing its pretty song in my head.”

And down Demon goes, taking us with him, and showing us why through this book. Its pace is as fast as a young child growing, its tragedy as restless as Demon as he searches for a way out.

I found the story engrossing, and feel richer for having read it. If you have the time, and like a strong voice, I think you’ll enjoy this.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023