Writers Write Book Review

by Robin Oliveira (Penguin Books) R200 ISBN: 9781905490684 Mary Sutter is a midwife from Albany in 1861 who will leave no stone unturned to reach her goal: to become the first female surgeon in the United States. She faces prejudices against women in medicine and…

 by Edward St Aubyn (Picador) ISBN: 9780330435901 This is the final instalment in the Melrose family saga. St Aubyn's semi-autobiographical journey began with the trilogy Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope. The story continued with Mother's Milk and ends At Last.  Patrick Melrose watches his mother’s coffin in this caustically funny…

by Douglas Kennedy (Hutchinson) ISBN: 9780091795849 Thomas, an American writers, fall desperately in love with Petra when they are in Berlin. So deep is their involvement that the author tells of their affair with graphic descriptions of the need they have for each other. When…

by Simon Winchester (Harper Press) ISBN: 9780007341375 The Atlantic Ocean is at the centre of the human world. It has played an important role in our lives from the first explorers to the recent discovery of the tiniest creature that produces one-fifth of world’s oxygen.…

by Janet Evanovich (Headline Review) ISBN: 9780755384891 R190, 00 Life in Trenton continues for Stephanie Plum, the world’s worst bounty hunter. The writing is as good as ever. The wonderful characters are back.  But Stephanie’s ‘love’ for two men has been going on for too…

by Anthony Horowitz (Walker Books) ISBN 979-1-4063-1049-8 I was so sorry to learn that this was the last of the Alex Ryder books.  It certainly is fabulous and the story pulls you along page by page.  How the author manages to get his hero out…

by Mandivamba Rukuni (Penguin) ISBN: 9780143026808 Being Afrikan by Mandivamba Rukuni is the most inspiring, enlightening, educating piece of information I have read in a long time. The blurb says: this “is a book that will change your view of what of what it is…

by Alan Hollinghurst (Picador) ISBN: 9780330483247 R190, 00 This is an awesome read, covering a few generations of how the British Aristocracy lived. The central character, Daphne is bowled over as a sixteen year old by the poet Cecil Valance. Cecil writes her a poem…

by Naomi Wood (Picador) ISBN: 9780330530125 In this dystopian novel, a debut by Naomi Wood, an alternative reality of England in the eighties is created: people have been banned from England, where the Church took power and the non-believers are expelled to an island. Nathaniel…

South African Odyssey: The Autobiography of Bertha Goudvis edited by Marcia Leveson  (The Isaac & Jessie Kaplan for Jewish Studies and Research at the University of Cape Town and Picador Africa) ISBN: 9781770101029 Bertha Goudvis trekked across South Africa following her father who was a…