Perth Words… exploring possibilities.

Sometimes when I finish a really good book I just can’t wait to dash off to the computer and write my review – I want to tell everyone about it.  That’s the way I feel about A Blade of Grass by South African/Canadian author Lewis Desoto, which was longlisted for the Booker in 2004.  It’s a story of an inter-racial friendship set on the contested South African frontier in the 1970s during the apartheid era.  I found it to be a remarkable debut novel that was engaging from the very beginning yet managed to raise complex issues about entitlement to land; about power and gender; and about the destructive effects of fear of The Other.

So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered from some outraged comments at GoodReads that some readers are very cross about this book. For some, there is too much lyrical description, for others too much symbolism.  One who…