Ilze Hugo

I love to compare the style of The Down Days to a soap opera. If you enjoy getting into the meat of one main character, sitting on edge to find out what happens next, to be flipped to another character, you will love this book! I know that some readers will not appreciate the rambling and just enough details to make you what is really going on with the many characters, but it is like the thrill of putting together a huge complicated puzzle. The only part of the story I did not enjoy was the ending. There was so much action up until the end, that the end was so brief, and so many loose ends not fully explained, that I was left very disappointed. That is why I am giving four stars instead of five. I needed that great ending to go with the rest of the book. If you are lucky enough to read my review before you read the book for the first time, I will tell you two things that I did not do that will make it way more enjoyable and understandable. First of all, this book was not based at all on the COVID pandemic. I did not know that until AFTER I read the book, and the references to different things that US was experiencing was very troubling. I knew I had received the book before the US even knew it would be suffering. I wish the acknowledgements at the very back of the book were in the beginning. I think I could have let go of my disturbing feeling that South Africa knew about the pandemic well in advance. Also, there are a LOT of South African terms. I did not realize there was a glossary for the many terms, or I would have been religiously using it. It would have made for easier reading, although the different words they used, even if understood, did not take away the meaning in context. If you like extreme oddities, you will love this book! The author's imagination is off the scale. It is so off the scale that it makes you wonder about the writer! But I enjoy to write myself, and know that just because you put it in words, does not mean you have entertained those thoughts or initiated them. The cover is as equally wild. I wish all the characters repeatedly mentioned had all had equal billing from beginning to end. That being said, I think it is fun getting to know all of them from Sans the Ponytail Seller, security guard with a hyena (wait til you read the details for that one!), dead collector, drug pusher, junkie, girl whose brother is missing. If you can read fiction with an open mind, you will love all the rabbit holes you will be chasing in this story. If you have any grave mental illness, be warned this is probably not the book for you to read right now. I think my mind was going insane living through the characters as they were revealed. Enjoy!… (mehr)

A plague story -- which I've read a number of this plague year -- where society/civilization doesn't go tits-up but adapts in a haphazard, make-do, jury-rigged, duct-taped fashion.

In Sick City -- a new name for Cape Town, South Africa -- the Laughing Plague continues to kill dozens, or hundreds of people a day. Everyone wears masks, dips their hands in bleach, and checks in regularly as re-purposed post-boxes which check for elevated temperatures and distribute doses of some ineffectual medicine, which the rumor mill insists is part of a government conspiracy to do... something. Surplus mini-buses which used to be crammed with as many paying fares as possible are now used for carrying as many corpses as possible. Cults have sprung up bringing warnings of doom and/or salvation and community gardens have been cultivated, bringing food. The internet works sometimes and cellphone signals are available in well-known hotspots which are always crowded. About the only signs of government ar the horse-mounted Virus Patrol, rounding up the suspected sick and taking them off to hospital-crematorium complexes.

Amidst this backdrop, an orphan girl loses her infant brother; a black-marketeer dealing in human hair loses a great deal of money and, he suspects, his sanity; a former doctor-cum-junkie searches for drugs and redemption; and a sin-eater and a dead collector seek answers to real puzzles and spiritual mysteries. The main characters, their friends, and memories all pass by or bump into one another on streets, in crowds, in bars, underground tunnels, and a convent garden, their paths all spiraling in towards an apocalyptic event... But in this well-imagined and well-worn world, what comes after the apocalypse doesn't look much different from what came before.

A totally enjoyable read, with a good deal of authentic-seeming South African flavor, a plausible world, and rich and broken characters.… (mehr)

This book, from the 2021 Tournament of Books shortlist, is a good book for the current times, as it deals with an African city that has been devastated by a very contagious and dangerous laughing sickness. At the onset of the story, the citizens have adjusted to the new normal, in which everyone wears a mask and new professions like "dead collectors" and "sin eaters" have emerged. There is a lot going on in this novel, maybe a little too much, but I loved the crazy characters and the mix of science-fiction, supernatural and mystery elements.… (mehr)

TOB-2021 This is a book I would have never read. It's a first novel and I really enjoyed it. This book was published in May of 2020 and it's about a pandemic. Clearly this book was written before the start of our own pandemic so that's quite the coincidence.

But the plot of this book was so good. Faith, a dead collector, Sans, a pony tail seller, Tomorrow, an orphaned girl and others are woven into the story seamlessly. The book addresses how people can go a little crazy in a pandemic situation. It's spiritual in that some of the dead people's souls haven't yet left earth.

All in all a very good book.… (mehr)