Jun 15, 2016 01:49 PM
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A fierce, intelligent book so deep, dark and delightful I would need to write one of those exhaustive reviews I usually skim-read or scan for paragraph breaks to do it justice. But right now, I can’t. Let me keep it brief: an aging academic is brought tumbling down after the suspected or implied rape of a young student, then forced to deal with his own brutal assault and horrifying rape of his daughter. If you thought that was enough fun, it all takes place in South Africa, so there’s a whole race and class debate tossed into the mix too. The protagonist, although dashingly well-rendered, is something of a literary construct, but this is searing realism at its worst, so no complaints from me. Just don't read it on holiday.
