Page 63 - Phonebox Magazine August 2011

Book Review
By Oxfam Bookshop, Olney The Other Hand by Chris Cleave
The sTory Begins in the Black hill immigration removal Centre with Little Bee, a young nigerian girl as the narrator. she has spent the last two years there, but is now being released with her few belongings and a travel voucher, together with three other girls. Among her few possessions are a driving licence and a business card, neither of which are hers. however, the name on each of these is that of one of the two British people she knows, and she phones him before leaving the detention centre.
The story is taken up by sarah; her husband committed suicide five days after receiving that phone call from Little Bee, who arrives on the day of the funeral. They renew their acquaintance, made on a beach in nigeria, where sarah and Andrew had gone on a once-in-a- lifetime holiday. From this point the two females alternate in recounting the events which brought them together, and as the story unfolds the reader is brought face to face with injustice perpetrated both in this country and in nigeria.
The characters are skilfully drawn, most memorably that of four year old Charlie, who would only answer to the name of Batman. his reaction to his father’s funeral is one of the most poignant incidents in the novel, though not the most harrowing.
This is a fascinating book, one which begins simply and slowly, but which gathers momentum as events take their course. it moves back and forth between nigeria and Britain, between past and present, gradually revealing the relationship between Andrew and sarah on the one hand, and Little Bee on the other. it also tugs at our heartstrings, and i defy anyone who reads it to remain unmoved by what it contains.
Chris Cleave’s novel was shortlisted for the 2008 Costa novel Award. he is a masterly writer and i look forward to reading more of his work.
Review by Thelma Shacklady
Sex and Stravinsky by Barabara Trapido
Review by Sandra Metcalf
Stravinsky’s ballet, Pulcinella, which runs through this book like a leitmotif, is about things not being what they seem; about layers of illusion, masks, disguises and deceptions. So it is no surprise that the characters in Barabara Trapido’s latest novel are not always who they seem to be.
Central to the story is Josh who is the adopted son of Bernie and Ida Silver, human rights activists in 1950’s South Africa, and like them blithely non- conformist – favouring French and drama studies over a degree in engineering or accountancy. Leaving South Africa and his first love, Hattie, (who has deserted him for the alpha-
male architecture student Herman Marais) to studying in London in the 1970’s, Josh meets and marries
which includes various family members and some of the people Bernie and Ida have tried to help in the past, particularly Jack whom they helped to educate and then who so mysteriously disappeared.
By the 1990’s Caroline’s relationship with her own daughter Zoe, is under stain but has not yet reached the level of antagonism that exists between Cat and her mother Hattie - who still lives in South Africa and is still married to the astoundingly successful Herman. Josh has become a producer and what interests him most is early opera - tightly plotted comedy in which everyone is in love with someone else’s betrothed, where the entire dramatis personae is cheating, spying, playing dead, and dressing up in other people’s clothes; which is full of stagy assignations and secret love letters picked up by the wrong people and which is marked by precipitous conclusions where all is resolved by timely revelations.
Trapido’s story employs similar choreography so that events weave and interweave until they conspire to bring most of the main protagonists together. Caroline finds out who she really is, on several levels; Zoe and Cat begin to get what they think they want; Josh and Hattie meet again, some of the mysteries of the past are explained and Jack’s identity is finally revealed.
Caroline, an Australian graduate student and prodigious manager of everyone and everything – except her manipulative mother who becomes the bane of both their lives. Around these central relationships is a web of others
Phonebox Magazine 63
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The books reviewed above are from Oxfam Books and Music, Olney, which sells donated books, records, CDs, tapes and music to raise money for Oxfam’s work in combating poverty around the world.