Perfect for readers of The Secret Life of Bees and The Help, a perceptive and searing look at Apartheid-era South Africa, told through one unique family brought together by tragedy.
Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a nine-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred . . . until the Soweto Uprising, in which a protest by black students ignites racial conflict, alters the fault lines on which their society is built, and shatters their worlds when Robin s parents are left dead and Beauty s daughter goes missing.
After Robin is sent to live with her loving but irresponsible aunt, Beauty is hired to care for Robin while continuing the search for her daughter. In Beauty, Robin finds the security and family that she craves, and the two forge an inextricable bond through their deep personal losses. But Robin knows that if Beauty finds her daughter, Robin could lose her new caretaker forever, so she makes a desperate decision with devastating consequences. Her quest to make amends and find redemption is a journey of self-discovery in which she learns the harsh truths of the society that once promised her protection.
Told through Beauty and Robin's alternating perspectives, the interwoven narratives create a rich and complex tapestry of the emotions and tensions at the heart of Apartheid-era South Africa. Hum if You Don t Know the Words is a beautifully rendered look at loss, racism, and the creation of family.
Here is my review from goodreads.
"When was the last time I picked up a 400+ page book on a Saturday afternoon and didn't go to bed until I'd finished reading? The publication date for Hum If You Don't Know the Words isn't until the middle of next month but I believe at some point in the not too distant future this book is going to appear on so many "best book club titles" lists. It's a multi-layered book with much to talk about. But unlike some other books I've read recently that begged to be talked about, this book can be read alone. Without added benefit of a book club discussion. Just be prepared to do a lot of thinking about what you're reading while you're reading it - and after you've finished the book. I'm going to be thinking about what I read for a long time to come.
I was able to read Hum If You Don't Know the Words by Bianca Marais prior to publication thanks to an ARC from Penguin Random House and G.P. Putnam's Sons. What a wonderful book. So thrilled that I will be able to say I read it before it becomes one of this year's most talked about books.
I thought I knew a lot about apartheid and I thought I was able to adequately imagine what life must have been like in South Africa in the late 1970s. I was a college student, witnessed protests on the streets of Philadelphia against apartheid. Had been an overseas student at Tel Aviv University side-by-side with many students from South Africa. I knew all those students had household servants. That's what I thought was different between "us" and "them." I never imagined that those household servants weren't allowed to use the bathrooms - or even the dishes and silverware - of the family that they worked for. On an intellectual level, I knew how horrible apartheid was. I knew it was on par with the United States South in the days of Jim Crow. But I simply didn't know on a real level what this translated to in everyday life. This book gave me a window into that world. Into South Africa of the 1970s, at a time when real change was on the verge of taking place.
Why is is that I never thought to ask those South African students in Tel Aviv about their Jewish lives back home, since I presume many of those students were Jewish? One of Robin's closest friends is a Jewish boy who is forced to be home-schooled because of anti-Semitic bullying at the school he had attended. Were my former fellow students bullied like that? And how is it that I didn't realize that these same fellow students didn't grow up watching television the way we did in the United States? Once a week, a group of us would go down to the lounge in our "F" dorm and watch The Muppet Show. Television had only come to South Africa a few years prior. Was being able to watch something like The Muppets a big, huge deal to those who had only started watching television? How did I not know?
When I think about the Civil Rights era in the United States, I think of something that happened before I was born (even if that's not quite true). But this story took place at a time when I (thought I) was aware of what was going on in the world around me. We boycotted companies that did business in South Africa. We protested. We signed petitions. My contemporaries marched. This was a horrible period of history in my lifetime. I likened the stories about the activists in this novel with stories I'm familiar with about our Underground Railroad.
Hum If You Don't Know the Words is a complex, rich novel. It's a story of apartheid. It's also a coming of age story. It's a story of creating family from the people you choose rather than those you are born to. It's a story about motherhood. And finally it's a story about love. It's a story of hope in a world where violence and hatred have taken a firm hold.
I try not to read reviews of books prior to picking up a book so it wasn't until after I'd finished reading that I explored some of the reviews on goodreads. Overwhelmingly, readers loved the book. A few people complained about the telling of Robin's story. She's telling the story of the year she turned 10 from the perspective of an older person. Her narration alternates between sounding like it's being told by a child and being told by adult Robin. I had no problem with that. Or the ending of the book? That it was just too neat and pretty (Did you really think for a moment that I am going to tell you how it ends?) The book wasn't perfect, but none of those issues detracted one moment from my full immersion and enjoyment of the book.
Bianca Marais' language is delightful. Her storytelling is seamless. I look forward to reading more of what she chooses to write. I will recommend this book to anyone, the highest compliment I can give to an author."
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