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serendipitysbooks's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
muga's review against another edition
Of all the things that are said of oppressed people the worst thing are said and done to the Bushmen...
my feelings for this aren't quite clear yet, it was really insightful in regards to the life of the San people and the oppression against them but often times this didn't read like a fiction book because so many things are just stated and the characters were a wee bit flat for me.
my feelings for this aren't quite clear yet, it was really insightful in regards to the life of the San people and the oppression against them but often times this didn't read like a fiction book because so many things are just stated and the characters were a wee bit flat for me.
will_mcdonald's review
adventurous
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
seabookshells's review
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Despite being very short the book is full of metaphorical language which made the pace of reading quite slower for me as I gave myself intervals in time to digest the informations. It centres around 4 characters and their relationships with each other and how those relationships affect their surroundings
junkyardigan's review
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
i have english hw for this book... anyways so maru is the title character. the book is a flashback, starting with maru having married margaret. despite being the next chief, maru marries a woman of a tribe that botswana discriminates against. he's now dealing with the consequences of that, exactly as he planned to. his grand master plan opens with how "throughout that hot, dry summer those black storm clouds clung in thick folds" (1). a few pages later, we learn that "there was a depth of secret activity in him like that long, low line of black, boiling cloud" (3). on the cover, maru blends into the cloudy horizon. this is a metaphor that threads through the whole book - maru as the uncontrollable weather over dilepe village. i'm pretty sure the newer versions without this cover will tell you his name means storm or something of the like.
see cus maru doesn't like the discrimination. his sister describes him as, "almost a god in his kindness" (23). he hates the oppressive power he would gain as chief. he doesn't act as anyone else like the leaders known as the totems want him to because he's guided by his own morals and purposes. he says, "if i have a place it is to pull down the old structures and create the new." (62). he resents dilepe village, he resents the treatment of margaret by the village. the village is like a thick collar around his neck on the cover, it's a burden he wants to be rid of. it's all reason for him marrying margaret, and not his closest friend moleka who "would have never lived down the ridicule and malice and would in the end have destroyed her from embarrassment. moleka is not one who has no care for the public eye, while margaret doesn't exist as a person in it.
speaking of margaret... i mean i suppose she's meant to be the main character. she is her own fleshed-out person however she is simply like.. a definition of something for maru and moleka in particular. i mean first of all, her white mother took her in as a nature vs. nurture experiment after her masarwa mother was found dead. her mother shows her affection, but you see that she fakes it all. margaret is just "a real, living object for her experiment" (11). margaret grows up to be a learned woman, despite enduring prejudice from her peers etc because she "was hardly african or anything but something new and universal, a type of personality that would unable to fit into a definition of something as narrow as a tribe or race or nation" (11). she has the privilege of growing up with a white parent but it doesn't carry over to her treatment as literally the most ostracized social group. no one knows what to do but hate her. when she is living in the village, the author says that "she was not a part of it and belonged nowhere." (89). and then second of all, maru instantly chooses her as the catalyst for his plans and wants to forcibly marry her.
for maru, she's perfect. she's educated enough that she won't purposefully make him look bad. marrying a masarwa woman will free him of the burden of being the next chief. he shares the burden, he hides under it, he uses it as something revolutionary for the masarwa people. again in the beginning, "a little brown, dusty footpath turned away from the roaring busy highways of life. yellow daisies grew alongside the dusty footpath." (3). this is a symbolism thing, the daisies are the "only flowers that resembled the face of his wife and the sun of his love" (1). the little brown dusty footpath is margaret, it will take maru away from where, "in the distance, a village proceeded with its own life" (89) that excluded margaret. and then it gets a little funky because erm! maru projects his dreams onto margaret. he surreptitiously gifts her painting supplies that she had never had before through dikeledi, and then margaret paints scenes of their future home and the daisies and their love. a little magic realism moment! it may be playing into maru's grandness and disconnect from the real world of oppression and trying to get ahead, but it was offputting. however, it's the daisies on his clothes, lining the little dusty path. again, margaret is very defined in this book despite not fitting anywhere. maru has an image of her that he wants. he says to dikeledi, "'i am not going to marry a pampered doll.'" (61), referring to the basic expectation of a bed. in order to truly shock the world, he needs a masarwa woman who understands the place that people like the principal pete wants her to be in. cus he needs people to understand that "they had said of the masarwa what every white man had said of every black man" (105), all the dehumanization with the nerve to call themselves good people.
and enough about the cover! let's talk about maru and moleka. boy best friend moment am i right... like these guys are the bestest of friends. they would die for each other. they are opposites. they are the greatest of rivals. they share everything. in the end, maru takes it all. maru is like a villain mastermind, except he's not villainous he just "never cared about the means towards the end and who got hurt" (81). maru is not out of the public eye per se, he just pays it no mind. the immediate impression of their dichotomy is maru as the kind gentle soul and moleka as the brash outgoing one. moleka sees them as simply close friends, but maru sees other things. he sees him as rulers of opposite kingdoms, his of the heavens and gods that guide him to do right, and moleka as someone with locked doors situated firmly on earth. maru feels that its inevitable that on will kill the other. they are both womanizers. moleka drives his to eternal shame and maru makes his go mad.
margaret is the one to break their relationship. firstly she opens the heavy locked doors of moleka's hearts. this is significant because moleka's closed doors were part of what made him and maru equals and able to love each other, as maru had an advantage with his ability to take in everything. however with margaret, moleka feels actual love, he has a purpose like maru does. it unlocks the greatness of the spirit, and maru thinks, "'he is greater than i in power'" (53). while maru always had his true purpose of being born into the chieftaincy to "see its evils and its effects on society" (65), moleka "had the energy but someone else had the equivalent gifts of maru's kingdom" (53). this embarrasses maru. maru is the moon and moleka is the sun, and maru the moon has nothing now. and so moleka fetches margaret a bed.
and so he goes back to his house, invites the education superintendent to see him eat from the same spoon that one of his masarwa slaves just used. maru, despite being called a kind empathetic god, takes away her bed. he scolds moleka for his bold actions. it's like they switched - now moleka is being kind and grand while maru just seems misguided. they are fighting over margaret and it's like what is maru trying to do...!
but maru is the one pulling all the strings. he is the one that scares off the racist principal and superintendent. he has ranko threaten moleka when he tries to approach margaret. moleka had hesitation, he had the passion for her but not the inner strength to approach her like maru would have. moleka is angry, and now he's thinking okay i got to get back at him, I'll have sex with his sister. maru has the village thinking him and moleka are angry because of dikeledi, he has the village thinking he doesn't care for margaret, he has moleka thinking this is just a power grab, he hasn't even really interacted with margaret yet. moleka gives his passion for margaret to dikeledi, who is surprised at his change of heart from being a horrible man to suddenly declaring his love for her. moleka feels wrong about it, "as though a prearranged trap had been set for him, as though the organizer of the trap was alertly on jump ahead of his every need" (78). maru's ruthlessness really shines through. his plan is for dikeledi and moleka to marry.
margaret loves moleka. like she is the one who opens his heart and before him. the feeling is like "the loneliness had disappeared like the mist before the warmth of the rising sun." (26). and again with the extended metaphors, we have moleka and the sun. despite her exclusion from the village, "the rhythm of the sunrise, the rhythm of sunset, filled her life." (89). moleka and dikeledi keep her from being untethered and lonely in the village. he brings warmth to her, that neither of them have experienced before. but wait! moleka cares about what the village thinks about him. so maru wants him to marry dikeledi, an accomplished woman in her own right that knows everything the wife of a chief should.
moleka and dikeledi get engaged, and dikeledi telling this to margaret absolutely breaks her heart. for actual class i wrote - margaret's reaction to dikeledi's announcement is that of quiet and intense pain, and this pain changed where they stood with each other. over time they saw each other as "equal in quality and stature" (88), where margaret was not defined by how people saw masarwa people. however, "it was their equality which had given dikeledi the unconscious power to knock her down with a sledge-hammer blow." (88). they had been equal in their ability to love moleka, but margaret essentially only had moleka and dikeledi's affection. dikeledi takes away moleka's love and margaret no longer wants dikeledi's, so it's as if margaret essentially has nothing. margaret feels as though her neck was broken, as if "a few vital threads of her life had snapped behind her neck," and her throat "tightly constricted with a knot of pain" (88), demonstrating her pain at having moleka and dikeledi, her lifelines in a village that did not like her, gone.
dikeledi questions whether margaret would say no maru's proposal, a little before moleka went to dikeledi. then she remembers that "he really made people do everything he said they would, and could create such a tangle of events with his spies that it was simpler and less harassing to carry out his orders" (67). and then he did... so that's the story of him and margaret.
d1n1z's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
rebeccatulloch's review
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
alison_massey's review
5.0
This is currently tied for first place of my favourite books that I've read this year. While the story is somewhat unassuming (set in a small town in Botswana), the prose is just beautiful and breathtaking at times, in my opinion. It's such a quick read but so well worth it.