Books for April

  

by Diana Studer

- gardening for biodiversity

 in Cape Town, South Africa

 

Michael RIDPATH

The wanderer

~

From Reykjavik to Boston and back. Murder detective. Inspired by Oscar Wilde - The Icelanders are the most intelligent race on earth, because they discovered America and never told anyone. The story bounces between making a popular documentary for TV, and the scientists supporting, or refuting, the evidence. Did they land in America? Where?

 

Iceland is white, yellow and blue

Iceland - glacial white

and sulphurous yellow

and deep drowning blue

From - Robert Goddard - Caught in the light

 

A J PEARCE

Yours cheerfully

~

Agony aunt in 1941. Charged with encouraging women to do war work. Toeing the party line - while carefully! pointing out issues around - young mothers needing child care, and war widows struggling to survive if husband and father is missing or POW and she loses that financial support. (Thinking of my grandmother after WWI with 3 small children)

~

Our Art Director ... throughout the meeting he had been quietly sketching ... It was the simplest illustration, just a few strokes of his pencil, showing an outline of a woman ... sitting at a desk reading a letter.

~

But if your boy dies, you lose his wages of course, and they stop the twenty-eight shillings because they say you're not a Married Woman anymore. So then, you have to pay single woman's tax on your wages and the pension, too.

 

My mother Kathleen in stripes, granma and Aunt Eileen

Emma HENDERSON

Grace Williams says it out loud

~

'This isn't an ordinary love story but then Grace isn't an ordinary girl' In 1947 spastic, now we say cerebral palsy. In 1957, ineducable, sent to a home for mentally and physically disabled. All of them lumped together regardless. Brutal treatment - electric shock therapy. Then 'care in the community' when that home was closed in 1986. Feisty lady pushes thru and makes something of her life. The book is dedicated to the author's sister.

 

Cape Town 2023 a retired physio told me about a little girl. After a swimming accident at 2, she couldn't see or hear, only a sense of touch. Another patient made a 'worm' for the little one, filling each pocket with something different. When she felt the pocket of sand, she burst into delighted laughter.

 

Texture of beach sand

Louis GREENBERG

Green Valley - what hides beneath the surface?

~

A dystopian utopia. Tech noir - a new to me category of fiction. We have grown accustomed to some digital tracking as part of our life. Outside Green Valley there is 'no digital surveillance'. In Green Valley people chose to live in virtual reality.

~

I could already recognise how the sterile superficiality of this place [Green Valley] made me crave touch, and yearn and ache and regret.

 

Eden Project driftwood sculpture of a pig
and my virtual digital art

Natasha PULLEY

The kingdoms

~

Imagine. If Napoleon had won, and England spoke French. Joe is a British slave in the French Empire. In London he receives a postcard from the Outer Hebrides, but it was written one hundred years ago. (T shirt on a French visitor at Kirstenbosch - Je n'ai rien à - folded arms hiding - cacher ;~))

~

He called, then listened, but nobody moved or spoke. Little echoes came back to him after a while, having explored [the lighthouse] by themselves.

 

Cape Columbine lighthouse

Abbie GREAVES

The silent treatment

~

Frank hasn't spoken to his wife Maggie for six months.

~

Her script is as neat and sharp as ever as she finishes her last sentence to Frank. If there is any fragment of doubt in her mind, there are few visible signs. Maybe a little wobble on the comma, if you look closely.

 

My mother's handwriting

Kate Reed PETTY

True story

~

The frat boy's indulgent Poor me! version of a rape story - is the first half of this book. No, thank you. But the second half is told by the other boy and the girl herself. The story twists, and turns, and unfolds.

~

But the story is mine only as the victim owns the prosecution, or the whale the harpoon. Telling it has always been the privilege of the perpetrators, who have the actual facts, and of the bystanders - like you [her friend] - who believe they know.

 

Only my granma could have told us Uncle Anthony's story ... and great-uncle George is another untold story.

 

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