Sunday Times Combined Metros 48 - 30/04/2019 05:44:38 PM - Plate:

Review
PHOTOGRAPHY
Sunday Times
Vuvuzela Dawn
BOOKS
★★★★
Page 48 May 5, 2019 Luke Alfred MOTORING
and Ian Hawkey,
Pan Macmillan, R295 LAST WORD

Book Thrills
The Silent Patient ★★★★
Alex Michaelides, Orion, R295

This is a well-crafted
psychological thriller.
There’s a mystery, a
femme fatale, a
sinister man lurking in
the shadows, a hidden
diary and a riddle in
the form of a painting.
At the heart of
Michaelides’ gripping debut is the
question: what drives a woman to
shoot her husband five times and then
never speak again? Forensic
psychotherapist Theo Faber is
determined to get Alicia Berenson to
Soccer fans cheer for Bafana Bafana on February 3 1996 in Johannesburg when SA played the final in the Africa Cup of Nations against Tunisia, the only unlock the secret of what happened.
major tournament the national team has won. Picture: Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images But the more he digs into her life — her
troubled childhood, her art, and her

GOAL NEWS IS GOOD NEWS

dysfunctional relationships — the
more he recognises parts of himself in
her … and the boundaries between

S
patient and doctor begin to blur.
In an age of media-coached risk aversion, this reminds us of the best the genre has to offer, writes Archie Henderson Smart suspense from start to end. ● LS .

Anna Stroud @annawriter_

ports stories are the modern-day
folk tales, usually told from a
partisan perspective. In the past
they were passed on from
generation to generation by
distant and often unreliable
witnesses.
Persuaded by the passionate
commentary in 1975 of Gerhard
Viviers on the wireless, we
believed our man, Pierre Fourie, to be beating
Victor Galindez handsomely until the
Argentine lightheavy was declared the
unanimous winner.
The same Viviers was carried into the
realm of ecstasy, his voice rising to a
crescendo of “Siddee! Siddee!” as Springbok
wing Syd Nomis streaked away from the All
Blacks’ cover defence at Loftus Versfeld in
1970 for what remains the greatest try ever
scored — Gareth Edwards for the Barbarians
against the ABs in ’73 be damned.
It’s different today; everyone can now be a
witness and everyone has an opinion. That
doesn’t diminish the power of the folk tale, it
just makes the retelling more difficult.
In their 25 Sports Stories that Shaped a
New Nation, Alfred and Hawkey, once
sportswriting colleagues at the Sunday
Times, prove to be not only reliable witnesses
but relentless, too. It must have required hard
work to retell a story that is no longer new
and that millions probably watched happen
live on their TV screens.
Luke Alfred and Ian Hawkey
All 25 stories are retold with a freshness
that’s invigorating. Hawkey, for example,
travelled from London to Bloemfontein to
interview Wayde van Niekerk’s mom and
uncover a little gem: she was named for a city
in the Ukraine, Odessa.
Sportswriting, also, is not the relaxed
occupation it once was. The dominance of
Twitter and TV, tighter deadlines and the
ubiquity of second-guessing know-alls have
made the job more demanding.
Even worse, the infamous suits who run
the various sports have taken control of the
message. Just watch a press conference
before or after an event, or the contrived
after-match presentations, and you will hear
the most anodyne and banal commentaries
on a game. One-on-one interviews are no
better. These events are nothing more than
the rote patter of media-coached risk
aversion. Heaven forbid that anyone should
come up with anything original or interesting
to say. The dark forces of the marketing and
sponsorship people have taken control.
This is why sports writing today can be
difficult. And this is why a well-known The Night Visitors ★★★
sports tale, such as the Boks’ wonderful Carol Goodman, HarperCollins,
triumph in the 1995 World Cup, can be R280
repeated in a riveting manner when it is
This slow-burning
revisited, as Alfred and Hawkey do. The
thriller builds to a
secret, as any sports writer will tell you, is the
spectacular finale that
angle. Interviewing the dressing-room
will keep you up into
attendant at Ellis Park was inspirational.
the wee hours. Alice
Robbie Schlemmer’s observations, more
and Oren are on the
than 20 years after the event, turn the
run from an abusive
mundane into the marvellous.
domestic situation.
It’s not only the new angles that Alfred
Penniless, they arrive
and Hawkey bring to their stories, but the
by bus in a small town in upstate New
skill of the written word, even though at
York. Alice calls a shelter for abused
times it is a little extravagant. It’s hard to
women, where Mattie, a middle-aged
imagine Shane Warne’s dismissed warning
social worker, is a volunteer. Alice is
to his team about Herschelle Gibbs’s
aggressive, jittery and suspicious,
dangerously early celebration of a catch
overawed by Mattie’s crumbling
floating across a Leeds hotel “with all the
mansion, while Oren is completely at
impact of uprooted fynbos on a Karoo
home. This brings back memories for
breeze”. The metaphor might be mixed, but it
Mattie, as Oren reminds her of her little
is still fun.
brother, Caleb, who died 35 years ago,
You will enjoy this book, as the late US
aged 10. Both women are harbouring
Supreme Court chief justice Earl Warren
secrets but Alice’s start to unravel
would have. It was Warren who memorably
when the following morning Mattie
remarked that he always turned to the sports
reads a news story that a man has
pages first, to read of people’s
been stabbed to death in New Jersey,
accomplishments, rather than the front page,
and realises this is what Alice is
which records all their failures. OK, there are
fleeing. As a massive snowstorm
some failures — Hansie Cronje corrupted for
starts to build, so does the tension. ● LS .
one — but the triumphs and the joy outweigh
Gabrielle Bekes
them. ● LS .

The Neighbour ★★★

The Glass Woman ★★★★
Caroline Lea, Michael Joseph,
R290
Dark secrets in a time of transition
offer of marriage, with her father
dead and her mother old and
ailing. Jón Eiríksson is a wealthy
is a conservative and pious man,
and she is expected to be silent
and obedient. When she sets off
Fiona Cummins, Pan Macmillan,
R290
It’s action a go go from
grandmammas drowned by a the first page. As soon
merman for the sake of a good as the Lockwoods
story.” move into a lovely big

S
eventeenth-century Iceland
was a strange, preternatural
place. A place of superstition
and violent landscape, of
brutal weather and scant
food. It was the time of transition
between the old beliefs, with
their spells and haunting folk
tales called Sagas, and the
forbidding new Christian faith.
In the south of the country, a
young woman named Rósa is
leaving her village to join her
new husband in the west. She
farmer and trader who will
provide for her mother. He is also
the leader of his village, but there
are worrying rumours about him.
He has only recently buried his
first wife, who died inexplicably.
Rósa is, unusually for women
at that time, well-
educated. Her father was
a bishop and insisted on
her learning to read and
write. She is also still
influenced by the old
ways, the great Sagas and
runes of folklore. Her
with his manservant on the long The book opens with a body house — which comes
journey to her new home, she is floating to the surface of the ice- cheap because so far
petrified of what lies ahead. crusted sea: “Bone-white fingers there have been five
Lea brings this ancient world waving, as if alive.” In the village, murders in the
brilliantly to life, from the bone- “smoke from the fires in the neighbourhood,
breaking cold and desolation of nearby crofts sends a black another body is found in the woods
the countryside, to the warmth scrawl into the icy air — dark near their home. This time it’s a police
and, at times, poison, of runic scribbles against the officer. His wife (also a detective) is
the community. As an villagers’ excited white breath”. committed to finding the murderer. But
outsider Rósa is treated As the story unfolds, it everyone in The Avenue is a suspect as
with suspicion and becomes apparent that Jón is they are all hiding secrets — even her
contempt. hiding some dramatic secrets, husband. Not top shelf by any means,
“Whispering warms but is he evil or is he a good man but its short chapters, creepy cast of
them in the dark at heart? We are kept guessing neighbours and fast pacing make it a
winters. They would until the end. ●LS . Michele Magwood worthwhile cosy mystery. ● LS .

had little choice in accepting his new husband, however, watch their own @michelemagwood Jennifer Platt @Jenniferdplatt

48 LifeStyle 5•05•2019 Sunday Times