Verdict: carrot
Nifty! We don’t normally link to reviews posted on blogs, but this one, by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, of Erica Emdon’s Jelly Dog Days, is too infectious not to bring to the world’s greater attention:
Have just finished reading Erica Emdon’s ‘Jelly Dog Days’. Wow. This excellent piece of fiction is simply unputdownable. This is definitely one of the best novels I have read this year- Erica Emdon really comes out with a high flier- the novel is vicious, gripping, domineering. Unputdownable.
‘Jelly Dog Days’ is told in first person. The protagonist, ‘Theresa Stephanie Victoria Mary Ryman’, fondly ‘Terry’, gets under your skin right from page one. We go with her through her violent and dysfunctional childhood, with an alcoholic mother and a wickedly dangerous stepfather, and the many responsibilities she has to bear as the first of five siblings. The story is set in Johannesburg in the 1970s, with powerful and relevant links to the events of that time, such as the Soweto students uprising. One of its many strengths is its expert build up of a brutal reality- the pieces are not too neat, as tales usually are, but jagged and chipped, as life really is, and I think this is one of the many brilliant aspects of the novel, one of the reasons why the book is so unputdownable, why there is a surprise in every corner. The way the tale unravels is unpredictable, and this holds one suspended, hooked to the dangling morsel moving along the pages.
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