Reviews

The Night Country by Bryce Courtenay

nongshaw's review

3.0

nah yeah

madeleinecl's review

dark reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

follows a young white boys life in northern transvaal, sth africa and his experience of apartheid when a monkey man picked out the thieves, “who would each lose an arm in the name of the white man”.
beautiful writing, captures the wonder and mystery in a small childs world.

hoserlauren's review

3.0

This book is described as "A little boy witnesses the ugliness of apartheid", which is as good of a description as I can give because it's a very short book and you sort of wonder where Courtenay is going with it since he has so little space. It's set in South Africa, on a farm when a boy is taken away from his mother once she comes down with malaria.

I've never read a Bryce Courtenay before but my mom was always a huge fan. This book allowed me to get a taste of his writing without having to sit down to a 1000 page book. His writing style flows very nicely which makes this book incredibly easy to digest. However, once I came to the end of the book, I wasn't really sure what I should be taking away from it.

jacqui_des's review

4.0

Memorable Quotes

"It was the first time I'd realised that the giant in 'Jack and the Beanstalk' was an Afrikaner."

"Oupa took no notice of us just as he took no notice of his real grandchildren."

"While being beaten by the other kids encouraged me to learn a new language, it wasn't doing my confidence a lot of good."

"Life has a habit of going on."

"It is time to go to her. Only she can reach the gods now, and please them with her voice and beauty and cunning female ways..."

"For even at my age I felt a palpable guilt, a guilt of white skin and blue eyes. I felt a guilt about the way I was expected to think of the dark people around me."

"...see how it rises silver from the water, the moon over the Night Country. It is here you can come whenever you are sad, or frightened. It is here where you can re-think your courage and find the way to go and the path to take. It is here where you can meet your shades and speak to them. They are the spirits of your ancestors - they will be your guides."

“You may come back here to the Night Country whenever you wish… This place will always be yours, little white boy who has tears enough for a black man’s mourning.”

“Fear is like that; it starts in a dry mouth and it works its way down through the inside of a man and everything it touches dries up, so that finally even the soul shrivels away and a man consumed by fear is as good as dead.”

“Through the use of the pebbles, the Monkey Man had picked the two thieves, who would each lose an arm in the name of the white man’s god, a white man’s truth and a white man’s justice.”