Wow What a great book! Dark, full of satire and irony! High Recommend i! ( )

If you lived in Johannesburg and are a contemporary of Christipher Hope one approaches this novel from a slightly different perspective because it tells a story of home , one's own city and the political transition one has survived. if one is a fan of Hope's writing ...and I still consider his Love songs of Nathan J Swersky a portrayal of childhood memories of Sandringham in Johannesburg of the fifties, and an African homage to TS Elliott a superb work, , then each new novel raises high anticipation and Hope's work has to live up to all his previous good reads.

My Mother's Lovers is a rich tapestry of memory, action, biography and autobiography but it also portrays the outsider's / insiders view of childhood and place. ... Because like Hope himself , the narrator no longer lives in Johannesburg and has become an worldlt expat who has new adult other place criteria to judge his SAfrican up bringing and now returns to face his past and possibly future and encounters surprisingly new situations and people.

It's fictional, with larger than life characters who represent types rather than individuals . They are almost improbable but the funny thing is that in a city such as Johannesburg with its mining camp history and sophisticated cosmopolitan veneer you may just have met one or two of them .

The canvas is broad and the novel through the the device of an aviatrix mother whose memories and experiences stretch time sequences from the turn of the twentieth century and the Boer War to the post 1994 liberation and new South Africa . It sprawls from South Africa to the Congo from Kenya to West Africa and in that sense , breadth is sacrificed for depth of place. Encounters with Hemmingway, Beryl Markham, Karen Blixen, Albert Schweitzer , a Rain Queen of the Magaliesberg or a second world war Western Desert pilot are all here.... Its romantic and dreamlike ... All in the air of Africa. Believe it or not and believe it you do because it is fiction well told. Just don't fool yourself that it is all true.

Should one expect accuracy of place politics, hsitory, and geography ? . There are some errors but the pace and the interest of the novel with preposterous people and situations which are only slightly connected to the possible sustain one's interst. It is a novel that captures the mood and madness of the city Johannesburg, with it's sharp angles to living , the coping strategies of high walls and anti hijack tactics , at a particular moment in time ... early 21st century .

If you are or were a South Affican it is as likely to remind you in vivid and telling phrases why you left the metropolis of gold , the magnetic city of hopes and promises of riches but also why you are drawn back to live here, to love the excitement of transition and find that despite the "in your face contrasts between wealth and poverty" this can be a place to put down roots and where your life here sustains a dozen others. ( )

Tarina Afrikan muuttumattomuudesta ja muutoksesta, äidistä ja pojasta. ( )

My Mother’s Lovers
Christopher Hope
Grove Press
448 pages
Hardcover $24.00
978-0-8021-1850-9

Alexander is obsessed with air—how to move it, heat it, cool it and clean it. In late twentieth-century South Africa, where millions of people crumble under weighty issues such as race, colonialism, revolution and AIDS, Alex clings to nothing. His mother is none too pleased. “‘Oh dear me,’ she said, ‘Air? I really wish you wouldn’t.’”
Hope’s ninth novel is rife with this kind of overt symbolism. White policemen detonate explosives to kill a group of majestic beached whales. A former revolutionary turned conservative inherits a cache of old escape routes as a reminder of his hypocrisy. Fortunately, the author’s humor and inventiveness keep the novel from succumbing to cliché. Alex Healey is a wry and observant narrator, recalling the violent power-grab of the Boer War with the same cynicism that he uses to dissect his cigar-smoking, buffalo-hunting, Stinson-flying mother. As he struggles to understand his elusive national and family heritage, Alex toys with his readers’ stereotypes and challenges their concept of justice, creating a rich psychological history of one of the most troubled regions in the world.
Born in Johannesburg in 1944, Hope won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction for his novel Kruger’s Alp; while Serenity House was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Readers accustomed to the South Africa portrayed by authors such as J.M. Coetzee will find that Hope is a different animal altogether. While the former’s storytelling is loaded with silent intensity, Hope’s opinions explode onto the page. He is more of a teller than a shower, and although his ideas are provocative they can also feel digressive and overwhelming at times. The colorful characters that carry this story—including historic personalities such as Ernest Hemmingway, Beryl Markham, Albert Schweitzer, and Karen Blixen—seem more like types than real individuals, and the author uses them accordingly as springboards for various philosophical musings.
Still, one must assume that this exercise is intentional. The fickle nature of identity is a recurring theme throughout the novel as people try on new personas like winter coats to fit the turbulent circumstances of their lives. The Healeys’ conservative gardener turns to boozing and hookers when he discovers that his wife has slept with another man, while Alex’s girlfriend transforms from a jaded suburbanite into a figure of forgiveness after becoming obsessed with rehabilitating her son’s murderers.
The only constants in this shifting landscape of national borders and identities are Alex’s mother Kathleen and Africa herself. Tender and savage, each is blind to race and evokes fierce love in others without overtly giving back. In this context, the title of the book takes on a different meaning. My Mother’s Lovers refers to every merchant, missionary and dreamer in Africa who hunts for a place to call home. (August)
Aimee Sabo