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cnyreader's review
5.0
South Africa, the Johannesburg area where Ben lives with his family, is a dangerous place for a black person who doesn't know his place. So when Gordon, the black man who's worked with Ben, a white teacher, at their school, tells Ben about his son's death and Ben helps him look into it, bad things start to happen. But Ben keeps investigating, and it dawns on him that the system he was raised in, the system that funs his entire world, is corrupt and prejudiced. That he, a white man, has privilege because of the color of his skin. And then he has to decide what to do, what is within his power and responsibility.
Reading the phrase "white privilege" in a book that was written in the late 1970s was surprising and hopeful. Witnessing this character wake up to realization of his race, what it really means, felt important, like I want to give this book to people I know so they can understand, or be validated in their experiences as well. Aside from the universal concepts, the story is painful and real and despairing and hopeful.
Food: the first time I ate oysters. I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into, but I was going to be daring and try something new, and I was so happy when I had a mouthful of chargrilled oysters. Uniquely their own taste, I lost my fear of shellfish and a whole realm of possibilities opened up to me.
Reading the phrase "white privilege" in a book that was written in the late 1970s was surprising and hopeful. Witnessing this character wake up to realization of his race, what it really means, felt important, like I want to give this book to people I know so they can understand, or be validated in their experiences as well. Aside from the universal concepts, the story is painful and real and despairing and hopeful.
Food: the first time I ate oysters. I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into, but I was going to be daring and try something new, and I was so happy when I had a mouthful of chargrilled oysters. Uniquely their own taste, I lost my fear of shellfish and a whole realm of possibilities opened up to me.
kaadie's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
tamara292's review
3.0
A very good read, did get a bit boring in the middle but the ending is worth it.
zeinm1980's review
5.0
This is an incredibly powerful book set in South Africa during the most turbulent years of apartheid. Beautifully written. I would recommend alongside The Native Commissioner.
catherineo's review
4.0
‘There are only two types of madness we should guard against. One is the belief that we can do everything. The other is the belief that we can do nothing.’
A Dry White Season is a sad, depressing look at racial prejudices in apartheid South Africa through the story of a white man trying to bring justice to the memory of a black man. Ben du Toit is a schoolteacher whose life changes when he becomes involved with the family of the school caretaker Gordon Ngubene. Set around the Soweto Riots the book deals with the futile endeavours of an individual to overcome injustice by the state. This book was banned in South Africa. It was made into a film in 1989.
The story itself is incredibly gripping. I read it in only a few sittings, but had to stop reading it on the train, instead waiting until I was home, because I was scared of my own emotional reaction.
A Dry White Season is a sad, depressing look at racial prejudices in apartheid South Africa through the story of a white man trying to bring justice to the memory of a black man. Ben du Toit is a schoolteacher whose life changes when he becomes involved with the family of the school caretaker Gordon Ngubene. Set around the Soweto Riots the book deals with the futile endeavours of an individual to overcome injustice by the state. This book was banned in South Africa. It was made into a film in 1989.
The story itself is incredibly gripping. I read it in only a few sittings, but had to stop reading it on the train, instead waiting until I was home, because I was scared of my own emotional reaction.
slyallm's review
1.0
Decrying the evils of apartheid through a mild-mannered white (i.e. Afrikaner/Boer) narrator really misses the point. Even worse, the novel bookends that white POV through another white narrator, like "white savior complex" nesting dolls (TM). Meanwhile, the black characters tend toward shallow and cliched, and in a couple mob scenes, Brink engages in "black peril" sort of dehumanizing hyperbole.
If you are willing to look past all that and judge DWS as a novel, that doesn't really help. Mostly cliched, with extensive dialog that reads like Mad Libs filled in with random quotes from an inspirational calendar.
Well meaning, and perhaps one of those novels that can't be judged outside of the historical context, but god this one has not aged well.
If you are willing to look past all that and judge DWS as a novel, that doesn't really help. Mostly cliched, with extensive dialog that reads like Mad Libs filled in with random quotes from an inspirational calendar.
Well meaning, and perhaps one of those novels that can't be judged outside of the historical context, but god this one has not aged well.
sarahlogan's review
4.0
A story of state-sponsored crime set amid the death throes of the Apartheid security state and the Afrikaner fear of losing power. The protagonist embarks on a dark, lonely journey for justice, and the reader's only consolation is the knowledge that Apartheid eventually fell. A story of bravery and a pursuit of justice, summarized by: “There are only two kinds of madness one should guard against. One is the belief that we can do everything. The other is the belief that we can do nothing.”
juliechristinejohnson's review
4.0
I was introduced to the dream and nightmare that was South Africa around the same time A Dry White Season was published: 1979. I was ten, a 5th grader in an isolated, rural western Washington town. Perhaps it wasn't a coincidence, for A Dry White Season was a bestseller upon publication in the United States, but I recall our class watching a cartoon film of black African children, each drawn with tight black curls and toasted almond skin, holding hands and singing as they paraded through streets made of simple gray lines. The words they sang never left me: "We are marching to Pretoria. We are marching to Pretoria, Pretoria, Pretoria. We are marching to Pretoria Pretoria, Hooorah!"
Of course, it would be years, decades, before the irony of those lyrics hit me. What that film was, why it was shown in our classroom, why we learned the lyrics to British military marching song (or a Boer independence marching song, or an American Civil War marching song-for all are claimed as the song's origins) are mysteries never to be solved. I can only assume my teacher hopped on the same bus as The Weavers, who sang the song for years without bothering to learn what it was about, and once they did, turned it into a protest song.
But of course, it's easy to protest another country's political tyranny with folk songs from thousands of miles distant, when it isn't your life on the edge, when you don't risk family, job, property or your life to stand up and do the right thing. For Ben Du Toit, a white schoolteacher in Johannesburg, doing the right thing never occurred to him, until suddenly it became the reason for his existence.
As this story unfolds in the late 1970s, apartheid is the accepted way of life. Blacks are segregated in township ghettos, a condition Afrikaners and other white South Africans treat with reactions ranging from mild concern to dogmatic approval. But nearly all are oblivious to the effect racial segregation, injustice and abuse has on the human beings who clean their homes, tend their gardens, and who are disappeared by the authorities for crimes real and, mostly, imagined. It isn't until Gordon, a janitor at Ben's school, pleads for his help in locating Gordon's missing son that Ben wakes up to the reality around him. Ben follows protocol, solicits an attorney, and restricts himself to the usual channels of inquiry. At least in the beginning. When Gordon is detained by the police, Ben is drawn into a much darker drama, beyond the borders of his reasonable, tidy life.
This is a political story. Ben remains something of a cipher- a mild-mannered, oddly passive husband, father, teacher, who is motivated not so much by affection or concern for Gordon and his family, but by a blossoming sense of social justice. In that, this is not so much the story of a man, but of a nation of men. It is no surprise that
A Dry White Season was banned in South Africa soon after its publication there, for it is a strident call to action by a white man to his fellow white citizens. It is an appeal to resist, defy, expose, even when fighting back seems futile agains the might of a wealthy, armed regime. It is the shedding of ignorance, innocence, passivity. It is a story of betrayals and loss, of courage.
There are some awkward stylistic choices-insertions of Ben's diary that seem to want to lend more humanity and color to an otherwise monochromatic personality-but the prose is refined and confident and careful. I squirmed a few times at the drifting of Ben's narrative toward the White Savior, but I wonder how much of that is my own baggage and an armchair reflection of this history, nearly forty years later.
I am so glad to have read this book, a classic indictment of apartheid that has not lost its power or relevance in a time when race dominates our national conversation and international imperatives.
Of course, it would be years, decades, before the irony of those lyrics hit me. What that film was, why it was shown in our classroom, why we learned the lyrics to British military marching song (or a Boer independence marching song, or an American Civil War marching song-for all are claimed as the song's origins) are mysteries never to be solved. I can only assume my teacher hopped on the same bus as The Weavers, who sang the song for years without bothering to learn what it was about, and once they did, turned it into a protest song.
But of course, it's easy to protest another country's political tyranny with folk songs from thousands of miles distant, when it isn't your life on the edge, when you don't risk family, job, property or your life to stand up and do the right thing. For Ben Du Toit, a white schoolteacher in Johannesburg, doing the right thing never occurred to him, until suddenly it became the reason for his existence.
As this story unfolds in the late 1970s, apartheid is the accepted way of life. Blacks are segregated in township ghettos, a condition Afrikaners and other white South Africans treat with reactions ranging from mild concern to dogmatic approval. But nearly all are oblivious to the effect racial segregation, injustice and abuse has on the human beings who clean their homes, tend their gardens, and who are disappeared by the authorities for crimes real and, mostly, imagined. It isn't until Gordon, a janitor at Ben's school, pleads for his help in locating Gordon's missing son that Ben wakes up to the reality around him. Ben follows protocol, solicits an attorney, and restricts himself to the usual channels of inquiry. At least in the beginning. When Gordon is detained by the police, Ben is drawn into a much darker drama, beyond the borders of his reasonable, tidy life.
This is a political story. Ben remains something of a cipher- a mild-mannered, oddly passive husband, father, teacher, who is motivated not so much by affection or concern for Gordon and his family, but by a blossoming sense of social justice. In that, this is not so much the story of a man, but of a nation of men. It is no surprise that
A Dry White Season was banned in South Africa soon after its publication there, for it is a strident call to action by a white man to his fellow white citizens. It is an appeal to resist, defy, expose, even when fighting back seems futile agains the might of a wealthy, armed regime. It is the shedding of ignorance, innocence, passivity. It is a story of betrayals and loss, of courage.
There are some awkward stylistic choices-insertions of Ben's diary that seem to want to lend more humanity and color to an otherwise monochromatic personality-but the prose is refined and confident and careful. I squirmed a few times at the drifting of Ben's narrative toward the White Savior, but I wonder how much of that is my own baggage and an armchair reflection of this history, nearly forty years later.
I am so glad to have read this book, a classic indictment of apartheid that has not lost its power or relevance in a time when race dominates our national conversation and international imperatives.
drsarahp's review
3.0
As an account of apartheid era South Africa , this is brutal and damning - small wonder it was banned in SA after its publication.
A shame then that the author is so focused on the female characters' boobs. Seriously. If you've ever seen the hashtag #breastedboobily you'll know exactly the kind of writing I mean. I feel like there was a description of the boobs of every single female character, alive or dead. I'm not joking about the dead boob description either. Pointless and off putting, and sadly probably the main thing I'm going to remember about this book as it annoyed me so much.
A shame then that the author is so focused on the female characters' boobs. Seriously. If you've ever seen the hashtag #breastedboobily you'll know exactly the kind of writing I mean. I feel like there was a description of the boobs of every single female character, alive or dead. I'm not joking about the dead boob description either. Pointless and off putting, and sadly probably the main thing I'm going to remember about this book as it annoyed me so much.