Rhys is in prison for murder. The plunge into this bleak milieu is in media res. We are informed about the murder right away but not what caused it nor the circumstances surrounding it.
Rhys is a white Zimbabwean, a minority in a mostly all-black community. Thinking of a person as being part of a minority automatically has us seeing them in a box…in this case, a literal one. But having a white person as a minority poses all sorts of questions. Does he suffer discrimination? Is he an outcast from the wider black community? Are his job options limited? Is he automatically viewed with suspicion when out and about in public? Do security guards follow him in stores?
We don’t really know from these opening chapters the answer to any of these questions. Instead, we are forced to think of him as a) a murderer and b) a prison convict. This immediately slants our opinion of him. Yet we are given the story initially from his POV. The focus on his exhaustion after eight months of trial, his mother Doris’s mental and physical deterioration renders them objects of pity. Since we know nothing at all about the murder victim (yet), we feel nothing at all for him.
The author’s tactic causing us to feel sympathy for murderers is more than a clever trick but a narrative plot that will lead subtly to a wider view of Rhys and Doris’s predicament. Their passionate speech by their attorney hints at an unseen pressure that forced the two to murder Julian, Rhys’s brother and Doris’s youngest son.
Then we meet Marina. While Rhys came off as being increasingly morose as his sentencing was interminably delayed, the gorgeous Marina is a burst of sunshine. Their incongruous friendship within prison walls is a feverish bright spot, one that has other inmates looking on in envy and the prison guards demanding that they maintain the appropriate propriety. Their camaraderie is so infectious you smile as Marina recounts their lively conversations, her admiration of Rhys’s skill as a raconteur and her secret lust-filled nights as she imagines him in bed with her.
Her attitude is the polar opposite of his and is so uplifting it’s difficult to believe they’re prison inmates. They could be two work colleagues meeting for coffee and pastries.
The abrupt change of tone from the first chapter reveals Mr. Chatora as an author of surprises, of astonishing versatility and an adept mimic of human “voices”. The writing is deft, the pacing is superb and the premise intriguing enough to keep the reader riveted to the page.
Rhys is a white Zimbabwean, a minority in a mostly all-black community. Thinking of a person as being part of a minority automatically has us seeing them in a box…in this case, a literal one. But having a white person as a minority poses all sorts of questions. Does he suffer discrimination? Is he an outcast from the wider black community? Are his job options limited? Is he automatically viewed with suspicion when out and about in public? Do security guards follow him in stores?
We don’t really know from these opening chapters the answer to any of these questions. Instead, we are forced to think of him as a) a murderer and b) a prison convict. This immediately slants our opinion of him. Yet we are given the story initially from his POV. The focus on his exhaustion after eight months of trial, his mother Doris’s mental and physical deterioration renders them objects of pity. Since we know nothing at all about the murder victim (yet), we feel nothing at all for him.
The author’s tactic causing us to feel sympathy for murderers is more than a clever trick but a narrative plot that will lead subtly to a wider view of Rhys and Doris’s predicament. Their passionate speech by their attorney hints at an unseen pressure that forced the two to murder Julian, Rhys’s brother and Doris’s youngest son.
Then we meet Marina. While Rhys came off as being increasingly morose as his sentencing was interminably delayed, the gorgeous Marina is a burst of sunshine. Their incongruous friendship within prison walls is a feverish bright spot, one that has other inmates looking on in envy and the prison guards demanding that they maintain the appropriate propriety. Their camaraderie is so infectious you smile as Marina recounts their lively conversations, her admiration of Rhys’s skill as a raconteur and her secret lust-filled nights as she imagines him in bed with her.
Her attitude is the polar opposite of his and is so uplifting it’s difficult to believe they’re prison inmates. They could be two work colleagues meeting for coffee and pastries.
The abrupt change of tone from the first chapter reveals Mr. Chatora as an author of surprises, of astonishing versatility and an adept mimic of human “voices”. The writing is deft, the pacing is superb and the premise intriguing enough to keep the reader riveted to the page.