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Dee’s twin brother, Marsden, is killed in an accident on the
Cape in South Africa in 1976, struck in the head by a ball
while playing cricket. Dee remembers: “My mother’s cry is a
sky full of gaping-beaked seagulls.” As an identical twin,
Dee loses the mirror half of himself, his anchor. His mother
can’t forgive her husband, who threw the ball, determined to
make him suffer for the tragedy.
In Cape Town, “an un-African Africa, death catches the
unsuspecting off guard, dealing the cruelest blow.” Dee soon
realizes that every time his father looks at him, he sees
the boy he killed, a constant reminder of his twin. The
small family unravels after Marsden’s death, the parents
drifting away from each other in their grief.
Dee’s mother leaves the Cape for the desert landscape of
Klipdorp south of the Free Orange State border, and the
bright-haired Afrikaans child finds himself in unfamiliar
territory, a Karoo boy. The Freedom Movement has already
begun and is growing in momentum, crowds chanting, the
authorities responding with violence, bulldozing the
Crossroads shanty town, apartheid not yet defeated.
Caught between his affection for an old garage man, a black
appropriately named Moses, and his friendship with Marika, a
white girl his age, Dee’s wants are few, mainly to live
without conflict in his new environment. Moses is a precious
commodity, although his willingness to make friends with the
white boy puts him in constant danger of reprisal. For her
part, Marika is careless and impulsive, used to doing
exactly what she wants.
The black shanty town is not far removed from the white
enclave; Dee is curious about the township and wishes to
make friends with the Xhosa boys who live there. Marika
defies her father to visit the township with the Dee,
precipitating a series of unfortunate events that could have
been avoided, had the adolescents realized the inherent
danger of their excursion.
His young world already broken apart by the loss of his
twin; Dee’s coming-of-age is painful, a rude awakening for a
boy of generous heart in an uneasy land; Dee hasn’t reckoned
with the harsh lessons of apartheid. The author handles his
protagonist sensitively, exposing the boy’s vulnerabilities,
as he is transplanted from the relative security of Cape
Town to the chaos of his new home, where a carefully
constructed world is transformed almost overnight and a
fourteen-year-old boy crosses the boundary from child to
man.
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Luan Gaines/2005 for curled
up with a good kid's book |
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For grown-up fiction, nonfiction and speculative fiction book reviews, visit our sister site Curled Up With a Good Book (www.curledup.com)
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