The Innocence of Roast Chicken

Literature & Fiction

Richards, Jo-Anne

Contemporary

F. A. Thorpe Publishers

Touching the Lighthouse

Headline Book Publishing

Headline Book Pub Ltd

After  an idyllic childhood and magical holidays on her grandparents'  chicken farm, the conundrum is why  Kate, now married to Joe,  a human rights' lawyer, is  so cynical, closed and rigidly unforgiving. Kate's unrelenting attitude, combined with Joe's loss of faith in his ability to promote change, precipitates a bitter and painful confrontation.  The necessary expiation reveals a child's loss, a child's feelings of impotence, a child's anguish at her failure to pre-empt harm. Kate's salvation is painful, evocative, beautifully drawn and utterly absorbing.  Praise for The Innocence of Roast Chicken Jo-Anne Richards has the writer's eye, that natural ability to sniff out the telling detail and the right word. She is a delight to savour - one of the freshest voices to emerge from South African literature in years - Peter Godwin, author of Mukiwa A rapturous and tactile evocation of dust, food, noises and a childhood domain, rendered with a marked empathy for the child and the magical properties of a child's stamping ground. Elizabeth Buchan, The Times (UK) Jo-Anne Richards displays a wonderful feeling for place and period . . . her prose is sharply evocative, and she conjures up the child's powerful feelings with a vividness intensified by nostalgia. - Margaret Walters, The Sunday Times (UK)

Headline

<p>‘I was born on page 23 of my brother’s book. On page 52, before the whole world, I betrayed him.’My Brother’s Book tells a story of betrayal and atonement that spans the lives of two siblings from their nomadic childhood in the Eastern Cape in the 1960s, to their adulthood in 2004 in Johannesburg. While the nation struggles to come to terms with its past, Lily struggles with her guilt about her careless betrayal of her brother, Tom, which destroyed his life and their relationship. Tom confronts this fraught past by writing a memoir. But both Lily, and Tom’s former lover Miranda, take issue with the way his book remembers their shared pasts. The two women begin to unravel ‘the way it really was’. They tell a story of love and loss, of revolutionary fervour – and failure.As the past unravels, so do Tom’s certainties about his relationship to his estranged family and to his nation. His life is thrown into further confusion and chaos as Lily uncovers a secret that will force him to confront his past.Jo-Anne Richards has written a poignant and evocative tale of the ways in which seemingly minute choices can destroy lives and relationships. My Brother’s Book explores the most intimate aspects of betrayal and deception set against the backdrop of a nation striving to understand the consequences of its terrible and traumatic past. My Brother’s Book is both tragic and intensely hopeful as it charts its characters’ paths from guilt and betrayal to atonement and redemption.</p>

My brother's book

Picador Africa

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