I’ve been meaning to write this post for nearly a month, on books perfect for that weird zone between Christmas and New Year, when time stretches and hazes and the brain is equally fritzy. For those lucky enough to be on holiday over this period, here are some easy and entertaining reads. You may have noticed something about these Festive Booky Posts: with one exception so far (and there were SA connections in that case), all have featured local books. This is (as I’ve said before) not because South African writing and writers need any special pleading; but our publishers can’t even begin to compete with the marketing departments of big international outfits. Yet we have every kind of reading material to tickle your fancy, including in the commercial genres: so whether it’s historical fiction or romance or thrillers or police procedurals, we’ve got it all. To make this even more fun, while today’s post features beach and/or sofa reads by local authors and set in localities many will recognise, they’re also all by women authors. Then I decided to make a rule that all those featured had to have written two or more books in the chosen genre, because of that feeling of reading the last word of a really entertaining book and looking around hopefully for more of the same. So here you go.

First, 2019 saw the near simultaneous publication, by newly established Karavan Press, of Melissa Volker’s first two novels — Shadow Flicker and A Fractured Land. What a breath of fresh air: billed as eco-romances, they’re also pretty gripping thrillers. Shadow Flicker deals with wind turbines and A Fractured Land with fracking in the Karoo, but neither book is remotely preachy, nor do they bog down in technical details. The green issues are used simply to get the plots rolling downhill, gently at first, then at increasing speed. Brilliant concept, if you think about it: the tension is set up right from the get-go, and is highly relatable. As are the characters — human, wrestling with demons we all recognise (debt, anxiety, family strife) — and a few of them turn out to be psycho murderers, too. Let’s not forget the romance, either: good quotient of hunky (but flawed) heroes and love triangles. I haven’t seen anything like Volker’s novels elsewhere, and highly recommend them: she’s interesting about everything, whether it’s live music or surfing. Never a dull moment. The books also have beautiful covers, designed by Megan Ross.

Then, for Marian Keyes and Jojo Moyes fans, on to Qarnita Loxton’s Being series: Being Kari, Being Lily and the recently released Being Shelley. I’ve only read the first one, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it had what I especially like in this category of fiction: fun, even fluff, but with a good, chewy centre with some crunch to it. Being Kari deals with a Muslim woman who marries “out” and moves to a conventional and mostly white suburb on Cape Town’s coast — and then has to go home again because of a death in the family. The navigating of two worlds, the issues of identity and belonging give this highly readable romance some heft. Kari/Karima is part of a tight group of friends responsible for much of the novel’s fun (all the sex and shopping jokes), and the next two in the series deal with others in this group, so I’m really looking forward to meeting the gang again. Yet they’re all stand-alone novels. Oh, and the covers are gorgeous and suitably festive.

For real, proper grown-up “chick-lit” (what I prefer to call “domestic drama”), that will suck you in like a vacuum-cleaner, read Gail Schimmel’s The Park and The Accident. Be warned; although they’re not thrillers, both books had me reading until 2am. Once again, super-entertaining. Both involve moral and legal dilemmas that will have you wondering “What if that was me?” I also like Schimmel’s dry sense of humour and lean writing — not a word wasted.

Hawa, gorgeous as always. Picture found on the Liberian Observer site, no photographer credited.

Although Liberian H. J. Golakai isn’t strictly speaking a South African writer, she lived here long enough for me to claim her (I hope she doesn’t mind), and her crime novels featuring reporter Vee Johnson, The Lazarus Effect and The Score, are set in Cape Town and Oudtshoorn. An immunologist, she’s a superb writer, with my absolute favourite her non-fiction essay “Fugee”, but for holiday reading, I recommend her novels, recently reissued by Cassava Republic Press. She doesn’t shy away from the tough stuff, but falls firmly into the “let me escape for three hours” category of reads.

So everything I’ve recommended so far has some crunch; the issues are thought-provoking, even if the treatments are effortlessly smooth and highly digestible. But your brain is utterly fried, you never want to see your rellies again, and there will be murder if you have to resurrect that turkey carcass, then you need pure candyfloss. In which case, try Fiona Snyckers’s two e-book series: the H mysteries, featuring PI Eulalie Park, and the Cat’s Paw Cosy Mystery series (I just checked and the first in both is free!)

Snyckers is a local writer, but in this case, the two series are set on imaginary islands; one a semi-tropical one in the Indian Ocean; the other off the coast of Cornwall. The H books have a bit more weight (I loved the kick-ass, slightly fey heroine and her unusual love interest, as well as the location and all the FOOD), but the Cat’s Paw books feature kittens, so I am completely biased in their favour, and probably shouldn’t be trusted. But if, like me, you like a well-oiled plot and go all squiffy-eyed at cats in starring roles, get out your e-readers NOW. Six in each series, so that should get you safely past New Year.

The Cat’s Paw series does exist in print as well, but in this case, e-versions are probably the way to go.

Festive quotient for all of the above: off the charts. Romance, interesting settings, humour, and some interesting ideas on how to bump off one’s relatives. Or understand them better.

There’s been quite a buzz about the ten best-selling books of the decade, with the Fifty Shades trilogy taking the top three slots, but what interested me was seeing The Girl on The Train (Paula Hawkins) and Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn) neck-and-neck in sixth and seventh positions. I read both with an uneasy kind of fascination, and can’t say I enjoyed them — not a single likeable character in either — but they (and other similar books) have had me pondering the rise of the unreliable woman narrator. Clearly this makes books sell like hot cakes.

It’s been especially interesting placing the woman narrator who can’t be trusted in fiction alongside the parallel social and cultural explosion of the #MeToo movement and its auxiliary #BelieveHer. The overlapping of these arenas raises the thorny question of how to write about sexual violence, always tricky territory for writers, but equally an area in which novels of every stripe are supplying refreshing, disruptive and subversive treatments of what is, appallingly, a ubiquitous experience for many women, far too many children and some men.

In 2019, two South African novelists wrote gripping novels in which rape is the generating event: Fiona Snyckers produced the extraordinary Lacuna, a response to J. M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace (except that it’s so much more); and Alex van Tonder launched A Walk at Midnight, a noir semi-thriller full of spiky twists. Although both books explore the long-term effects of rape in detail, both are highly entertaining reads, with page-turning pace. They’re not unduly bleak or distressing; in fact, there is something to celebrate in the ways their slippery, sometimes infuriating, but always intriguing heroines pursue the conclusions and closures they need, or think they need. Snyckers’s novel is often laugh-out-loud funny, as she skewers one sacred cow after another. Van Tonder provides a backdrop of sparky and quirky commentary on modern trends and values; set in the USA, it clearly reflects the climate of the Stanford sexual assault case and the Kavanaugh hearings.

Both novels have central woman characters who, the reader swiftly learns, cannot be trusted. And yet, and yet: they can. One thing that moved me about both books is that in a world where women’s accounts of rape are automatically distrusted, it becomes necessary when telling these painful truths to “tell it slant” — as Emily Dickinson said. Both novels use multiple voices to present different perspectives; in Lacuna the voices are mostly in Lucy’s head, including some very funny and often poignant imaginary (or are they?) conversations she has with her therapist. In van Tonder’s novel, a cast of family members and friends all chime in with contradictory accounts of a troubled marriage.

Snyckers’s project is explicit and political: at the very beginning, she announces her intention to give a voice to the silent, stoic character of Lucy Lurie, who in Coetzee’s Disgrace is gang-raped and impregnated by a pack of feral, faceless black men. She boldly tackles and disrupts the highly problematic gendered and racial readings this narrative seems to endorse, to provide a complex and yet compulsively readable response to the disturbing (to me, anyway) use of rape as a metaphor for post-apartheid retribution and reconciliation.

A Walk At Midnight begins like a conventional whodunnit: the police are interviewing the apparently flawless Jane Robson, whose husband has just died in circumstances near-identical to a murder described in her forthcoming novel. It’s almost impossible to describe what happens next without giving spoilers, especially in a novel this twisty. I did struggle at first with the premise that one could become a very senior political figure with two past rape charges to one’s name — until I remembered the pussy-grabbing monstrosity currently inhabiting America’s White House. So although there are plot elements that stretch credulity, nothing in van Tonder’s story hasn’t already happened in real life — and right under our noses.

One of the most devastating things about sexual violence is how often it happens at the hands of those we trust; in which cases it can be the betrayal more than the assault that does the damage. Both these novels focus our gaze on the monster nearby; unsettling, and yet somehow also a relief. These are not exactly beach reads; but they’re absorbing, satisfying, and bound to start some lively debates, with Lacuna in particular a layered work that is richly rewarding to re-read.

Festive quotient: excellent for when you emerge from a plum pudding coma and want something a little more dark and stimulating than Lindt Intense. Also great for warding off uncles who get a little hands-y after two rounds of brandy and coke. In fact, both books will put a steely glint in your eye that will make creepy relatives give you a wide berth.

*Disclaimer/disclosure: I edited Lacuna (and have also edited several other of Fiona’s novels); and although I had nothing to do with the production of A Walk of Midnight, I’ve assessed other manuscripts by Alex in the past. I’m thrilled to witness the development of their writing careers.