Category Archives: Books

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The Theory of Flight – Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

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This book was a birthday gift. I’d never heard of the title before I received it, nor of the Zimbabwean author. I finished the book a few days ago, and have been thinking of it ever since.

One point to make right at the start is that I almost put the book down when I read the prologue, and realised that one of the story’s foundation stones is the shooting down of a passenger plane.

However … I read on, and I was fascinated. The writing is beautiful.

At the heart of the story is Genie – beautiful and defiant, and profoundly giving. She knows love and gentleness, and always holds true to those, despite the dislocation, disloyalty, and disease that follow her into adulthood. It is her life that links together the many other characters in the book who surround her, some intersecting with her only briefly or indirectly but each of them adding their own flawed humanity to the context through which Genie evolves.

That, for me, is the chewy soul of this book – the way it gives villains and heroes alike, lives and hopes and dreams. No person is right or wrong, regardless of whether they are navigating or inflicting trauma. They are simply revealed, their day to day sharply focused, but their roles smudged around the edges with magic realism. There is real trauma, but it is blurred in a way that spares the reader.

The impression I’ve been left with is of a book that is gentle, but also devastatingly powerful. I loved the writing, and would rate it as one of the most striking novels I’ve read by a Zimbabwean author.

(The copy I have is published by Catalyst Press. The novel was originally published by Penguin Books in South Africa in 2018. It won the Barry Ronge Prize for Debut Fiction in South Africa.)

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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Life at Full Tilt

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Edited by Ethel Crowley – Foreword by Colin Thubron ( Published by Eland)

“Few people, in any age, can have travelled a wider range of countries so arduously.” Colin Thubron, London 2023

The first book of Dervla Murphy’s that I read was her autobiography Wheels with Wheels. From the start I was gripped by her courage. An only child, born in 1931 in Lismore, Ireland, she had to leave school at the age of 14 to look after her invalid mother. She continued that duty until her mother died in 1962, and then she began to travel.

In this book Ethel Crowley has selected extracts from 24 of Dervla Murphy’s books, arranging them in decades dating from the 1930s to 2015, when she travelled to the Middle East.

Dervla Murphy went just about everywhere, and she never took the easy route anywhere, often preferring to travel by bicycle, or on foot, or with a mule. There was real hardship and there were unenviable lodgings. There were perilous crossings of mountains and rivers. There was danger and isolation, but somehow she just kept going, kept trusting that people would look after her and that all would be well.

“Attempts to control the future seem needlessly to limit its possibilities. If this view were general, anarchy would overtake the world. But one hopes there is room for a minority of non-planners.”

In an extract selected for this book from Wheels within Wheels by Dervla Murphy

Thankfully all was well, or became so, and despite suffering everything from attempted robberies and rapes, to many bone breaks, including a fractured pelvis, and any number of illnesses, she did return from her travels with her notebooks full of observations and conversations to then pass on through her books – the books and her body bearing witness to all that she did.

The privilege of reading Life at Full Tilt is that it selects extracts from each of her books. Until reading this selection I had no idea that Dervla Murphy had travelled to, and written about, places such as Northern Ireland, and Bradford and Birmingham, as well as Cameroon, and Cuba, Afghanistan, Siberia and beyond. I found it fascinating to hear her voice in each, and to see the places through her eyes.

For me, the other pleasure of Life at Full Tilt, are the pages at the beginning and end, all written by those who knew Dervla Murphy well. I loved hearing more about her life and who she was.

Now I have finished reading I am sad to have to put the book down. I shall miss being in the company of such a truly extraordinary traveller, researcher, writer, survivor and genuine voice. The good news is that all the books I have caught glimpses of are out there waiting to be read.

My thanks to Eland for sending me this copy of Life at Full Tilt.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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The things you can learn with a little book-talk

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If I had to name one character who could imagine their way to anywhere, it would be Calvin from the Calvin and Hobbes books by Bill Watterson. This boy and his patient tiger survive all kinds of torments, from boredom to homework to bedtime, by imagining worlds only they can see,where all logic is theirs. The pair of them have made me laugh so much.

What’s the magic? For me it’s the way they explore anything from whatever angle. It looks so easy and obvious when they do it.

Today a group of us older readers tried to dig into the thick web of possibilities that lead in and out of every book. Our brains were sluggish and adult, but we did find a way through to somewhere new by doing a couple of quizzes, each triggered by an incident in a children’s book.

The final quiz was on poisonous creatures. We listed a few, rattling off snakes, spiders, frogs, and fish, but we had no idea about the creature placed right at the top of the list of answers – the male duck-billed platypus. It turns out that this innocent, furry swimmer, with rounded beak and webbed feet, has spurs just above the heels of his back legs with enough poison in them to kill a small animal.

Who knew? We didn’t. Perhaps Calvin and Hobbes would have.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023