What do You think about You Can't Get Lost In Cape Town (2000)?
The afterward to this book makes the point that fiction from the Global South is too often read *only* as a political/anti-colonial statement, rather than fiction in its own right. I agree, though I think in practice it's impossible to separate a work entirely from the context in which it was produced. You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town is a great read first--an engaging collection of stories. It's also an important political statement, and from what I understand Wicomb's work is deliberately political.
—Madeleine
Poetic - and yet not my cup of tea at all,, 29 January 2015This review is from: YOU CAN'T GET LOST IN CAPETOWN (Paperback)Published in 1987, this is a series of ten vignettes of life in S Africa. All ten are narrated by the same character, Frieda Shenton, a 'respectable Coloured', and are little chronological glimpses into her life in the apartheid state.I found it difficult to review this book: Ms Wicomb's writing is poetic with threads of deeper meaning, and yet I didn't find it at all interesting. I use the word 'vignettes' rather than 'stories' as many of them didn't seem to be the latter.Ten out of ten for creative writing, but I was glad to get to the end!
—Sally Tarbox
This is a dark & depressing story about a young girl born into & growing up in apartheid South Africa. There is much despair and dysfunction about her life that is told with immense bitterness and an odd determination to seek out her misery in everything that involves and affects her. She is fortunate have a university education where she can break the mould of a young coloured girl growing up in the 60s in South Africa and emigrate to a more 'unfettered' existence in the UK. When she returns after more than a decade, her relationship with her mother is still bitter.The story is a little confusing to read because the language vacillates between South African slang and very good vocabulary. It could be quite frustrating for readers without knowledge of South African slang. Also, until I read about the mother in the latter years, I thought she was dead because there was no reference to her in the earlier years!This book is in the same depressing category as 'Disgrace' by JM Coetzee.
—Jenny Newman
