This is a powerful read, sensitively written. The author transports you into his world, and makes you care for the characters more than you can know. Ultimately the book is a coming of age novel, but it is also more than this. It is a snapshot of life in late 1980s South Africa. It is a book about morality, and might makes right, and exclusion and racism and so much more.
There is plenty of metaphor in here. Observations about a vicious dog - it is not its fault, someone made it that way - reflect right back on the central characters for instance. The pot bellied black child that is ignored by a mother of two boys again leaves so much unsaid, and yet gets its message powerfully across.
The imagery in the book is wonderful. Without wasting words, the author transports you into another country so completely that you end up thinking you could have grown up there! The beautiful mountain scenery, the aquamarine Indian ocean, the grimy poor suburb the family live in - it is all well drawn. So too are the characters.
This book is a very good, gritty read but with an ultimate message of hope.
Highly recommended.
