10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A STUNNING CREATION MOVING AND POETIC, June 22, 2003
This review is from: The Stone Virgins: A Novel (Hardcover)
Yvonne Vera is an artist - a painter with words. The images she conjures, her amazing gifts to the reader, that grace the pages of this incredible novel, come straight from her soul - which is obviously filled with a deep love and compassion for her homeland, Zimbabwe, and its people. In these few pages (less than 200), she manages, through the related experiences, thoughts and emotions of her four main characters, to enlighten the world about the joyous/painful rebirth of Rhodesia into Zimbabwe, and to comment with cutting insight on forces as universal to all of humanity as love, hate, peace, war, kindness, unspeakable cruelty, and selfless, unconditional devotion.
She does all of this by utlizing language that is some of the most poetic and beautiful I have ever been blessed to read - her prose is by turns stark and loving, sheltering and illuminating, protective of what is fragile and precious, and unflinchingly revelatory about what is shameful and despicable. Her writing style varies so subtly as the story demands that it sometimes shifts imperceptably between long, graceful, sweeping word-strokes and choppy thought-bursts that could be described as literary pointillism. With some of the incomprehensible violence that occurs in this story, the beauty of Vera's writing is even more of a blessing - without, it would be a great temptation to turn away. That being said, there are also examples within of some of the most wonderful depths of the human spirit.
On the first level a story about the effect of the struggle for (and after) Independence on four people - two women, sisters; and two men, one compassionate and one a killing machine - the novel expands in depth to address multiple layers of human emotion and experience. In just one example, Vera's work here delves deeply and inspiringly into the types and purposes of memory - its coexisiting roles that aid us in understanding, protecting us, connecting us with our past and our environment, and healing us.
A word of warning, to those who might be tempted to mentally shelve this wondrous novel in `African fiction' - to do so will do a horrible disservice, not only to this author and her work, but to yourself. This is a novel that can - and should - be experienced by sensitive readers regardless of their ethnic or national background. It speaks to the universality of the human soul - I cannot recommend it highly enough.
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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful ending, but for the rest hard work, September 4, 2005
Just outside Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, is the small township of Kezi, where life revolves around the bus that comes in from Bulawayo and the Thandabantu store, where everything can be bought and where the population gathers on the veranda to discuss the events of life. During the liberation struggle the old men are replaced by soldiers - both male and female- that take a rest here. But it becomes apparent in the book that a lot of these soldiers are quite deranged. One such soldier kills a girl, Thenjiwe, and mutilates her sister, Nonceba. After a long stay in the hospital, where she tries to regain her physical well-being and mental health, Nonceba follows the ex-lover Cephas of her dead sister to Bulawayo, where they live as brother and sister, two people forever wounded by the war of independence.
When written this way the book seems to hold a lot of promise for a very moving book. However, it took me nearly the whole book to get into the story. Yvonne Vera uses a lot of metaphors in which she couples different senses: she describes sounds in visual terms, tastes she compares to sounds etc and the book is really packed with this. I really had problems understanding what was going on to a point that it actually got me very irritated. However, the end of the book (with the least metaphors) is a very loving description of two hurt people trying to make the most of their lives.
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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Tries a bit too hard, September 21, 2005
This review is from: The Stone Virgins: A Novel (Hardcover)
I found myself lost in some of the imagery in this book. Vera's sytle is indeed lyrical. The problem is that in places, she becomes so entangled in poetic imagery that the point of the scene is lost. I couldn't understand what was happening for pages at a time. Still, she successfully employs this technique throughout most of the book.
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