A review by barrynorton
Gem Squash Tokoloshe by Rachel Zadok

3.0

Bought a while ago without spotting the 'Richard and Judy' sticker. Worse, R&J 'How to Get Published'. To be fair, it was later short-listed for a Whitbread Book Awards First Novel. It didn't win. Rightly so. Some interesting South African references, but fails if it had the aim to either explain South African culture - not even contextualising properly the tokoloshe of the title - or say anything new about the apartheid era. As literature it falls down by the first 'half' (most of the book, in fact) being in an utterly unconvincing narative voice - supposedly that of an infant girl.