A gentle coming-of-age tale of a young boy growing up in South Africa, in particular in Cape Town, in the 1960s. His school years, his family life in a loving family, his friendships and his daily activities, with no real upsets or adventures, up until he leaves for the UK. It’s a pleasant enough read but remarkably bland, narrated throughout in a flat documentary style, simply a chronicle of daily life. There’s no sense of interiority just description, all told in a matter-of-fact way. There’s a certain amount of historical and cultural detail but again no insights into the political situation or into the lives of those not so privileged as the boy and his family. I assume it’s autobiographical and if it had been written as a memoir I would have been more open to it, but as a novel it failed for me as I wasn’t invested in the characters and couldn’t enter into their world.

In this splendid bildungsroman the author writes of a near idyllic childhood in Cape Town. The prose is engaging and enchanting, recreating a lost world of almost perfect innocence. There's a great combination of intimate characterization and descriptive scene setting in a middle class family enjoying life in a landscape still new to them. A text full of poignant, endearing moments and well-placed empathy.