Crooks and Straights

I really enjoyed this book. I picked it up when I saw the author mentioning on Mastodon about how it's been selected as a High School English set work, and I'm glad I did.

I love authenticly South African stories. The cultural references, the language, the names and places... it's just all so SATISFYING, man! I guess this is how other people feel when they read stories set in the places where they live, but I think it's stronger for us because there's relatively few of them. I suppose the people who identify with that sentiment the strongest might be those from places in the Global South, and I'm particularly thinking of people from Australia and New Zealand here, because I've read a few stories set in those places too, and their culture is also quite unique compared to, say, the Americans or the Brits.

Anyway, I digress. I don't live in Cape Town, which is specifically where this story is set, but I've been there, and I'm familiar with the places, and I know the sorts of people. And it... well, once again, it just gave me such a warm feeling.

The story is set in South Africa, shortly after the advent of democracy. I'm not sure how recent that was, but it seems fairly recent because there are references to how, "a short while ago", you wouldn't find white people and black people sitting next to each other in the same school assembly, for example. The protagonist is a teenage girl, the product of a mixed-race relationship. But she was actually born in Italy, also because her parents' relationship would've been taboo in South Africa.

But while our racial issues seem to mostly be a thing of the past, in this story, we're now faced with a similar thing, in terms of magicals and non-magicals. See, magical beings exist in this world. Some sentient, some not, some malicious, and some not. And in the world, we're on the cusp of a referendum to decide what to do about them, very much akin to our real-world referendum where we decided whether non-white people should be allowed to vote.

It's fascinating, and to me it reminds me of books like Dr Seuss' "The Sneetches", which show us that human beings will always find things to hate in other people, reasons to oppress them, and reasons to view them as "Other".

It's not heavy, though. It's lighthearted and fun, easily digestible for teenagers, but there's deep meaning in there if you'd care to look for it.