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tessaays 's review for:
I struggled a bit with this book. Pockets of extremely lovely writing in a devastating context, and an admirable commitment to digging to the very bottom of every violent, traumatic, emotional trench, no matter how difficult. But I found much of the content a bit impenetrable as someone who doesn’t know much about South African history or the key players during the apartheid era. There is an index and a character list at the back (which I didn’t even realise until halfway through the book!) but it would have made for FAR easier reading if some of this info was put at the front and/or footnoted throughout the text, so that the detail was right there. I find it really annoying to constantly flip to the back of the book and/or research things on my phone while I’m reading.
Overall - worth reading, and Krog does a good job grappling with some of the more challenging and interesting elements of the truth commission. She doesn’t shy away from anything, including her own personal failings and the lasting emotional turmoil of reporting on the TRC, which makes the book surprisingly.. emotionally accessible, I want to say, given the toughness of the subject matter. Her respect for Tutu also shines through and is quite lovely.
However, expect to spend a lot of time trying to keep places and names straight in your head. Krog says it best herself, I think, in the acknowledgements: she wrote this book because she had to, because the words were forcing their way out. This makes for a beautiful, personal, heartfelt text, but doesn’t really feel geared towards any sort of imagined reader so much as Krog herself.
Overall - worth reading, and Krog does a good job grappling with some of the more challenging and interesting elements of the truth commission. She doesn’t shy away from anything, including her own personal failings and the lasting emotional turmoil of reporting on the TRC, which makes the book surprisingly.. emotionally accessible, I want to say, given the toughness of the subject matter. Her respect for Tutu also shines through and is quite lovely.
However, expect to spend a lot of time trying to keep places and names straight in your head. Krog says it best herself, I think, in the acknowledgements: she wrote this book because she had to, because the words were forcing their way out. This makes for a beautiful, personal, heartfelt text, but doesn’t really feel geared towards any sort of imagined reader so much as Krog herself.