The Year the Gypsies Came by Linzi Glass

The domestic suburban setting encapsulates the psyche of an entire nation. And the brutality of the regime is evoked with unsentimental candour through the unfolding story and perspectives of those who people it - black and white, Zulu, English and Afrikaner. Johannesburg in the high days of apartheid becomes as familiar as the shops around the corner. Glass takes you into her world, makes it alive in your own. The land leaps off the page and settles all around you as you read. Every character is as real as flesh and blood. This is a book that lives, breathes and speaks to the reader in a quiet, sure, bold voice, through the telling of utterly believable human experiences. It is not too long before an act of violence is committed, with appalling consequences for all concerned. The disquiet grows, blossoming as events unfold into dread and anguish. When it emerges that he keeps a 'knobkerrie', a Zulu execution weapon, in the back of the van, and he is not shy to use it on his eldest boy in particular, she starts to feel that something is very, very wrong. But the more that Emily discovers about the way Jock treats his sons, the more uneasy she becomes. Otis attaches himself to Sarah, while Emily and Streak develop a fast friendship. The Iris parents are only too ready to invite these visitors to stay for the spring to provide distraction from their own problems. And in the dark depths at the back of their van lurk their two sons, a 16-year-old lunk called Otis, slow of wit, and his younger brother, Streak. He is accompanied by Peg, his wife, who wears her pet python, Opalina, around her neck. Jock is a wildlife photographer from Australia. Emily so longs for her fractious family life to be glued together somehow.Īnd then the Gypsies arrive: a family of travellers in a caravan. It is to Buza that Emily turns for guidance, and he provides it in the form of stories, including the one about Ma-We who learned how to glue broken eggs with the wax of wild bees and fill them with sweet honey. Her other ally is Buza, the Zulu night-watchman who protects the family from the dark woods nearby with his knobbly stick containing the power of 60 dead warriors. Sarah is her safety net and kind, sensible ally. Their yelling in the middle of the night disturbs Emily's sleep so much that she has to creep into her sister's bed for comfort. Emily's father, an importer of luxury chocolates, is distant, preoccupied. She's a living, breathing Barbie doll who finds it easier to appreciate her older daughter, beautiful, flame-haired, clever Sarah, than her tomboyish youngest. Twelve-year-old Emily Iris has a mother with glossy black hair and lips painted pink as bubblegum.

The Year the Gypsies Came by Linzi Glass