A bookworm's guide to finding rare reads

One of my favourite things to do is shop for second-hand books. I love the thrill of scouring dusty shelves for rare gems that end up costing a fraction of their original price because they once belonged to someone else. I've put together a little guide of the best places to go second-hand bookshopping in Pretoria. Each shop has been rated out of five based on the variety, price, organisation and condition of books.  

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Avec Le Coeur

A while back I did a post on French photographer Théo Gosselin and I've been following his work with a keen interest ever since. He recently came out with a book called Avec Le Coeur, which is a collection of all his best photographs.

I found this great blurb for Gosselin's book that I really think hits the nail on the head:

Originally from Le Havre in the Haute-Normandie region of northern France, photographer and filmmaker Théo Gosselin currently divides his time between Paris and Amiens. 

Whilst clearly indebted to the photography of Ryan McGinley, Nan Goldin and Larry Clark, unlike the self-confessed "pseudo-fiction" of McGinley's work, the subjects in Théo Gosselin's images are friends rather than models, and the situations are not mythic constructions but glimpses of an underground lifestyle in a post-9/11 and post-AIDS world in which social media has blurred the boundaries between public and private, and between being documented and simply being. 

At times, Gosselin´s work approaches something akin to poésie bucolique; his photographs representing modern day pastoral landscapes that resemble 21st century equivalents of Poussin's Et in Arcadia ego, Manet's Déjeuner sur L'herbe or Cézanne's Les Grandes Baigneuses. At other times, his images capture moments more resonant of Bacchanalian scenes painted by Titian, Rubens or Levêque.

Deliberately cinematic, Gosselin's photography reveals friends in the act of escaping from their regular lives into newly enticing and perilous modes of existence, ever in search of the persistent though elusive idea of freedom. 

I would kill to get my hands on one of the 460 limited first edition copies but until then I'll settle for the magic of the interwebs. 

You can too by checking out Gosselin's work on his blog or on Facebook.

The Shining Girls: Beukes's constellation of murder

This review was originally published in Perdeby on 6 May 2013.

A tweet about a time-travelling serial killer is the saucy idea behind Lauren Beukes’s new novel. After her lightbulb moment, the darling of South African modern fiction quickly deleted the tweet and promptly got to work on The Shining Girls. 

Set in Chicago, it tells the story of Harper Curtis, a twisted, despicable sort of man who stumbles upon a house that allows him to travel through time. He uses it to stalk and kill “the shining girls”, women who beam gloriously with potential. 

When one of his victims survives, Harper’s plan unravels horribly. With the help of cynical sports hack Dan Velasquez, gutsy Kirby Mazrachi doggedly tries to find the man who almost took her life and she won’t let anything stop her. What ensues is a grim, disturbing tale about a serial killer’s insatiable bloodlust and what happens when the roles of the hunter and the hunted become violently entangled. 

Each chapter of The Shining Girls is told from a different person’s perspective, providing a ticket to the inner workings of every character’s mind. We learn that the kooky Kirby is deeply frayed by her kiss with death and this triggers her unrelenting mission to find her would-be killer. Beukes offers another strong female protagonist, much like the flawed Zinzi December in Zoo City, who ultimately displays quite heroic and admirable qualities. 

Lauren Beukes reading an extract from The Shining Girls. 

In this way, we also co-inhabit Harper’s perverse mind. This insight into what makes him tick and what fuels his killing spree through the decades offers a refreshing take on the archetype serial killer because Harper is in no way glamorised. Throughout the novel, there is no doubt that he is an appalling human being and this makes him all the more frightening. 

Similarly, the deaths of Harper’s victims aren’t glamorised either. Beukes devotes at least one chapter to each victim, which allows their minds to be interrogated. The focus is more on their lives and what made them shine, rather than their grisly deaths. 

At the heart of it, The Shining Girls is a novel about violence against women and how this violence has a ripple effect through a community, even though the extent to which it is a socially corrective can be debated. It’s a novel that reflects who we are and interrogates the present by transporting us to an alternate world that is, in many ways, not too different from our own. This is perhaps a difficult pill to swallow, but The Shining Girls is the sweet spoonful of sugar that helps the bitter medicine go down.

Zoo City: Review

I am officially an entertainment journalist for Tuks' varsity paper, the Perdeby. For my application, I had to do a movie, book or film review. I am so super excited about this new venture and the chance to write about things that I really really enjoy. As per the request of a certain special friend who lives far away (ok, not that far but Cape Town is far enough), here's what I wrote.

Zinzi December is former junkie who lives in a dingy little flat in the heart of Hillbrow’s squalor. She makes a living by conning the unsuspecting through internet scams and has a knack for finding lost items. Zinzi is also a murderer. The sloth on her back, her animal familiar, is a reminder of her crooked past and the mistakes she has made. It is against this backdrop that Zinzi finds herself helping music producer, Odi Huron, to locate the missing half of a popular teenage singing duo. 

With an unconventional heroine like Zinzi, it’s no surprise that Zoo City has caused quite a buzz in the literary world. Local author, Lauren Beukes, recently won the Arthur C. Clarke award, which is equivalent to the Oscars in the sci-fi world. Beukes combines her wild imagination with a witty narrative, to transport the reader to an alternate version of Johannesburg. It’s an eerie Jozi where criminals are identified by the animals that follow them, where muti is rife and crime and poverty are plentiful. Perhaps what makes Zoo City so captivating is that it is set in a Joburg that, although different, is not far off from the one we know now. Beukes uses the novel to mirror reality from a different perspective and to comment on topical political and social issues. 

Zoo City is one of those books that you’ll find very hard to separate with once you start reading it. Suspense absorbs you with every unexpected twist in the tail and you feel a strange sense of comfort as you engage in a supernatural world filled with tik, taxis, moegoes, chiskoppe and spaza shops. Beukes’ powerful blend of magical realism makes it very difficult, or rather impossible, to fault her writing. Zoo City is Beukes’ second novel after Moxyland, her highly-acclaimed debut novel. Beukes has followed in the footsteps of Neill Blomkamp’s film, District 9, when it comes to putting South African science fiction on the map. I suspect that Zoo City will have a cult-like following sooner or later. Once you’ve read the book, there’s no questioning why. Orwell and Adams better make some room for Lauren Beukes. Her world-class writing represents the future of South African literature while proving that local really is lekker.