Philida ~ Andre Brink

One of the Man Booker Prize long list, this is the story of a slave in South Africa in the 19th century, set in the period leading up to the end of slavery. Interestingly, the author is a descendant of the family who ‘owned’ Philida, and his familiarity with the country and its history are apparent in the details of the government actions and the turbulence among the Boer settlers as slavery is about to be banned.

The book begins in first-person format, and opens with the compelling line: “Here come shit.”

Philida, who has walked many miles from the property of her owners, must confront an unhelpful public servant ‘with deep furrows in his forehead, like a badly ploughed wheat field, and a nose like a sweet potato grown past itself’ with her complaint of rape by Francois, the son of her master.

She had decided to lay the complaint, having borne four children to Francois, because he has reneged on his continual promise to buy her freedom – he is to marry a white woman, and Philida and her children are to be sold to a distant landowner to avoid any ‘offence’ to the wife.

Here come shit, indeed – the reaction of the Brink family to the sheer audacity of a slave’s action in lodging such a report, and Philida’s own feelings about the white man she is clearly quite fond of, make compelling and often cringe-inducing reading.

The story follows the gritty fight for her children’s future amid the insecurity of everyone’s struggle to find a new life, and Philida’s physical and emotional journey away from her familiar life is well worth following.

 

Helen

The Help ~ Kathryn Stockett

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger.

Skeeter would normally find solace with her   beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

 

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

Robyn S

The Briny Café ~ Susan Duncan

Ettie Brookbank is the heart and soul of Cook's Basin, a sleepy offshore community comprising of a cluster of dazzling blue bays. But for all the idyllic surroundings, Ettie can't help wondering where her dreams have disappeared to. Until fate offers her a lifeline - in the shape of a lopsided little café on the water's edge. When Bertie, its cantankerous septuagenarian owner, offers her 'the Briny' for a knockdown price, it's an opportunity too good to miss. But it's a mammoth task - and she'll need a partner. Enter Kate Jackson, the enigmatic new resident of the haunted house on Oyster Bay.

Kate is also clearly at a crossroads - running from a life in the city that has left her lonely and lost. Could a ramshackle cafe and its endearingly eccentric customers deliver the new start both women so desperately crave?

Robyn S