Love, David

Gr 4-6-- Anna Jantjies is the bright and hopeful young narrator of this first-person family story. A member of a mixed-race or (in South African usage) ``colored'' squatter community in that bleak, sandy stretch of land outside of Cape Town known as the Cape Flats, she tells of the grinding poverty of her life: the cold, damp winters; the lack of space and privacy; the shortage of money. The girl has never attended school; instead, she cares for her baby sister while her parents work. When her adored older stepbrother, David, rescues a three-legged dog from drowning and tries to keep it, the simmering conflict between him and his alcoholic stepfather erupts. David leaves home and turns to illegal activities. Anna tries desperately to hold onto her relationships with both David and her father, and to act as a peacemaker. Her story, told in a conversational style, has some of the meandering quality of everyday life rather than the tight construction of a novel. Unfortunately her voice as narrator is not always consistent with that of a young girl, especially an unschooled one. The squatter camp setting is well integrated into the story, but the issue of language (the status of English-speakers versus Afrikaans-speakers), which Case addresses in an introduction, does not emerge clearly. The sociological interest is stronger than either plot or character development in this book originally published in South Africa.