Page 26 - Dainfern Precinct Living Issue 7_2023

Book Reviews

Greenlights

By Matthew McConaughey

From the Academy Award-winning
actor comes an unconventional memoir
filled with raucous stories, outlaw wis-
dom, 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.
desert and wrote this book: an album,
“Recently, I worked up the courage to a record, a story of my life so far. This is
sit down with those diaries. I found fifty years of my sights and seens, felts
stories I experienced, lessons I learned and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls.
and forgot, poems, prayers, prescrip- Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality.
tions, beliefs about what matters, Getting away withs, getting caughts,
some great photographs, and a whole and getting wets while trying to dance
bunch of bumper stickers. I found a between the raindrops.
reliable theme, an approach to living The Covenant of Water
that gave me more satisfaction, at the “Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes
time, and still: If you know how, and good, a couple of aspirin instead of the By Abraham Verghese
when, to deal with life’s challenges – infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without
how to get relative with the inevitable needing your pilot’s licence, going Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The
– you can enjoy a state of success I call to church without having to be born Covenant of Water follows a family in
‘catching greenlights’. again, and laughing through the tears. southern India who suffers a peculiar
affliction: in every generation, at least
“So, I took a one-way ticket to the Price: R365.00 one person dies by drowning – and in
Kerala, water is everywhere.
Daisy de Melker At the turn of the century a 12-year-old
girl, grieving the death of her father,
By Ted Botha is sent by boat to her wedding, where
she will meet her 40-year-old husband
A true crime classic about Daisy de for the first time. From this poignant
Melker in ragtime Joburg – a city of beginning, the young girl and future
murder, mayhem and gold. Ted Botha matriarch – known as Big Ammachi –
takes the reader into the underbelly will witness unthinkable changes at
of Johannesburg in the 1920s and home and at large over the span of
’30s as he traces the fascinating story her extraordinary life, full of the joys
of the mysterious Daisy de Melker, and trials of love and the struggles of
who was hanged for poisoning her hardship.
son. Many also believed she poisoned
two husbands for their life insurance A shimmering evocation of a lost
money. India and of the passage of time itself,
The Covenant of Water is a hymn to
In the shadow of ever-growing mine progress in medicine and to human
dumps, she went about her business understanding, and a humbling
quietly and unnoticed – the most testament to the hardships undergone
unlikely of killers. Even though people by past generations for the sake of those
close to her kept dying, no one suspect- who are alive today.
ed a thing for 20 years. When someone
finally spoke up, it led to one of South Imbued with humour, deep emotion
Africa’s most sensational trials. Bosman, the dashing conman Baron and the essence of life, this is one of the
von Veltheim and a Bonny and Clyde- most masterful literary novels published
De Melker’s story unfolds in tandem style couple, Dicky Mallalieu and Gwen in recent years.
with those of colourful Johannesburg Tolputt.
characters of the same period, such Price: R370.00
as the Foster Gang, Herman Charles Price: R300.00
26 DPL issue 7 2023