Brilliant Debut Novel - Gem Squash Tokoloshe

I just finished reading the most beautiful debut novel I have read in a long time. It's called Gem Squash Tokoloshe and it's by Rachel Zadok. I think she won some sort of competition to have the book published.

It's narratted through the eyes of a seven year old girl, Faith, who lives in an isolated world populated by dark faries that her mother, who is slowly going insane, has invented in her paintings. It really makes you think about reality, and how children trust their parents so much that they literally believe almost everything they're told when they're young. The child's view point is so strong that it made me remember perspectives from my childhood even though the book is set in South Africa and I have never set foot in Africa. The landscape is beautiful and the writing is lyrical, crisp and just draws you in completely.

In the second half you catch up with Faith as an adult, and what I found amazing was how the voice of the character -it's all told in the first person- remains the same though matures into adulthood.

Zadok intertwines a world or magic and insanity with reality so that everything blurs and what is real and what is not becomes difficult to distinguish. It's a dark book which looks at insanity and belief systems.

There aren't many books that make you cry, not just a tear, but really cry and this is one of them.

I hope she writes another one soon.

Ling