A review by phumlani
Seven Steps to Heaven by Fred Khumalo

3.0

A disturbingly dark and challengingly deep plunge into the mind of split personality disorders and schizophrenia . The first two thirds of the book are simple enough and flow easily, as you draw to the end when Thulani’s body is taken over by the second then the third personality it gets very confusing, I had to go back and reread other pages in order to fully understand what was going on. Sizwe’s character is introduced to us as a drunkard in a Hillbrow shebeen along with some characters that are given a huge chunk of attention at the beginning but end up not making any contribution to the story in the end,it’s as if the author completely forgot about them somewhere along the book,he described them,built them up then just neglected them rather unceremoniously.

The author clearly researched the split personality phenomenon and it shows. The only slight problem with that is how much of the story he was willing to compromise in order to fit the split personality in. An example is how the Parents and the community seemingly lose interest in the protagonist to the point of not even finding out that he is in prison yet he made national news.

It’s a well written book,worth a read,quite entertaining and quirky. It’s a good read, I recommend it.