Page 24 - Cornwall Issue 4_2023

BOOK REVIEWS

Greenlights

By Matthew McConaughey

From the Academy Award-winning actor
comes an unconventional memoir filled
with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom,
and lessons learned the hard way about
living with greater satisfaction.

McConaughey explains what inspired
him to write: “I’ve been in this life for
fifty years, been trying to work out its
riddle for forty-two, and been keeping
diaries of clues to that riddle for the last
thirty-five. Notes about successes and
failures, joys and sorrows, things that
made me marvel, and things that made
me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How
to have less stress. How to have fun. How
to hurt people less. How to get hurt less.
How to be a good man. How to have
meaning in life. How to be more me.
and wrote this book: an album, a record,
“Recently, I worked up the courage to sit a story of my life so far. This is fifty years
down with those diaries. I found stories of my sights and seens, felts and figured-
I experienced, lessons I learned and outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces,
forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting
beliefs about what matters, some away withs, getting caughts, and getting
great photographs, and a whole bunch wets while trying to dance between the
of bumper stickers. I found a reliable raindrops.
theme, an approach to living that gave The Covenant of Water
me more satisfaction, at the time, and “Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes
still: If you know how, and when, to good, a couple of aspirin instead of the By Abraham Verghese
deal with life’s challenges – how to get infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without
relative with the inevitable – you can needing your pilot’s licence, going to Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The
enjoy a state of success I call ‘catching church without having to be born again, Covenant of Water follows a family in
greenlights’. and laughing through the tears. southern India who suffers a peculiar
“It’s a love letter. To life.” affliction: in every generation, at least
“So, I took a one-way ticket to the desert Price: R365.00 one person dies by drowning – and in
Daisy de Melker Kerala, water is everywhere.
At the turn of the century a 12-year-old
By Ted Botha girl, grieving the death of her father,
is sent by boat to her wedding, where
A true crime classic about Daisy de she will meet her 40-year-old husband
Melker in ragtime Joburg – a city of for the first time. From this poignant
murder, mayhem and gold. Ted Botha beginning, the young girl and future
takes the reader into the underbelly matriarch – known as Big Ammachi –
of Johannesburg in the 1920s and will witness unthinkable changes at
’30s as he traces the fascinating story home and at large over the span of
of the mysterious Daisy de Melker, her extraordinary life, full of the joys
who was hanged for poisoning her and trials of love and the struggles of
son. Many also believed she poisoned hardship.
two husbands for their life insurance
money. A shimmering evocation of a lost
India and of the passage of time itself,
In the shadow of ever-growing mine The Covenant of Water is a hymn to
dumps, she went about her business progress in medicine and to human
quietly and unnoticed – the most understanding, and a humbling
unlikely of killers. Even though people testament to the hardships undergone
close to her kept dying, no one by past generations for the sake of those
suspected a thing for 20 years. When who are alive today.
someone finally spoke up, it led to
one of South Africa’s most sensational as the Foster Gang, Herman Charles Imbued with humour, deep emotion and
trials. Bosman, the dashing conman Baron the essence of life, this is one of the most
von Veltheim and a Bonny and Clyde- masterful literary novels published in
De Melker’s story unfolds in tandem style couple, Dicky Mallalieu and Gwen recent years.
with those of colourful Johannesburg Tolputt. Price: R370.00
characters of the same period, such Price: R300.00
22 Cornwall View • Issue 4 2023