Page 31 - FWG July Issue 2023

Book Reviews

Daisy de Melker
BY TED BOTHA
A true crime classic about Daisy de Melker in ragtime
Joburg – a city of murder, mayhem and gold. Ted Botha
takes the reader into the underbelly of Johannesburg
in the 1920s and ’30s as he traces the fascinating story
of the mysterious Daisy de Melker, who was hanged for
poisoning her son. Many also believed she poisoned two
husbands for their life insurance money.
In the shadow of ever-growing mine dumps, she went
about her business quietly and unnoticed – the most
unlikely of killers. Even though people close to her kept
dying, no one suspected a thing for 20 years. When
someone finally spoke up, it led to one of South Africa’s
most sensational trials.

De Melker’s story unfolds in tandem with those of
colourful Johannesburg characters of the same period,
such as the Foster Gang, Herman Charles Bosman, the
dashing conman Baron von Veltheim and a Bonny and
Clyde-style couple, Dicky Mallalieu and Gwen Tolputt.
The Covenant of Water Some cross paths with each other as well as with famous
BY ABRAHAM VERGHESE writers of the era such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sarah Gertrude Millin.
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Price: R300.00
Covenant of Water follows a family in
southern India who suffers a peculiar
affliction: in every generation, at least
one person dies by drowning – and in Greenlights
Kerala, water is everywhere. BY MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY

At the turn of the century a 12-year-old From the Academy Award-winning actor comes an
girl, grieving the death of her father, is unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories,
sent by boat to her wedding, where outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about
she will meet her 40-year-old husband living with greater satisfaction.
for the first time. From this poignant
beginning, the young girl and future McConaughey explains what inspired him to write: “I’ve
matriarch – known as Big Ammachi – been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its
will witness unthinkable changes at riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to
home and at large over the span of that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes
her extraordinary life, full of the joys and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me
and trials of love and the struggles of marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to
hardship. 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
A shimmering evocation of a lost man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.
India and of the passage of time itself,
The Covenant of Water is a hymn to “Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with
progress in medicine and to human those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons
understanding, and a humbling I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions,
testament to the hardships undergone beliefs about what matters, some great photographs,
by past generations for the sake of those and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more
who are alive today. satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges – how to get
relative with the inevitable – you can enjoy a state of success I call ‘catching greenlights’.
Imbued with humour, deep emotion
and the essence of life, this is one of the “So, I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so
most masterful literary novels published far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths,
in recent years. and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance
between the raindrops.
Price: R370.00
“Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars
without needing your pilot’s licence, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing
through the tears.
“It’s a love letter. To life.

“It’s also a guide to catching more greenlights – and to realising that the yellows and reds eventually turn
green too.”

Price: R365.00

Fourways Gardens • 29 • July 2023