Lavina
Everything was better back in Blouvlei. It was a life worth living, now it's just a life hoping to survive. In Guguletu, where no one is safe. Especially not save from their own people killing someone just for the sake of violence. The situation Mandisa and her children are in seems hopeless. Just like their situation was better in Blouvlei than it is in Guguletu, the story was also better when it came to the past. It was ok rather than the whole story around that childhood retrospection. I really hated the beginning. Except for the letter Mandisa wrote to the dead girls Mother, which she referred to in each following chapter of the novel - I really liked that - the beginning was boring. Nothing exciting happened in this large part of the book. And then suddenly everything happened at once. It was confusing and because of this took the whole tension that was supposed to be in the story out of it again. You can say it was hard to read and stay focused, because every time I looked at this tiny written pages for which it took me a whole 5 minutes to read just two of them, I really wanted to throw this book away, so I didn't have to look at it anymore. Didn't have to be angry anymore that I had to read this really bad book. I wanted to throw it against a wall or rip it into tiny pieces and throw it into a fire to watch it burn. The plot was bad. Really bad. But what I liked more was the setting in place and the feeling this book conveys. You could really imagine what it must feel like to be exposed to an arbitrary and violent government. You could sympathize or kind of understand the murderer and what it was that made him act like he did. This was also shocking, but it shows the good side of the book. Unlike Mandisa's life, the book got better in the end. The (almost) last few sentences were what I liked most about 'Mother to Mother' by Sindiwe Magona. I don't know if it's just because of the sake of a good quote or because of the relief I felt to finally finish this book, so have a look yourself. 'My son, blind but sharpened arrow of the wrath of his race. Your daughter, the sacrifice of hers. Blindly chosen. Flung towards her sad fate by fortune's cruellest slings.'
