"No, this is
not a 'feelgood' book, but it did make me feel good - feel joy, in fact, at its
precise pursuit of its vision, at its grownup complexity and at the way Deidre
is such a perfectly realised fictional creation ... Outstanding." John Self, The Guardian
"'Crooked Seeds' is hard to read and impossible to look away
from" Ron Charles, The Washington
Post
"Deidre's the kind of character who gets under your skin:
furious, flawed and utterly unique. Jennings writes about broken people with
unflinching honesty and deep compassion. A quietly devastating novel." Jan
Carson, author of The Raptures
"...an unsparing, yet profoundly beautiful novel." Chigozie
Obioma, f The Fishermen, and An Orchestra of Minorities
'This is an
extraordinary novel. It is shattering, almost unbearable, yet - so good,
so clear - it is unputdownable.' Roddy Doyle
Deidre is a victim, of her
family, her society, her history. That is how she sees
herself, and so she feels free of all obligations, moral and practical. Until
the police take her back to her family home...
In a Cape Town where water
is rationed and has to be collected from trucks each day, with the consequences
of apartheid and the ending of it still evident, Deidre lives from day to day
in squalor - largely created by herself
- borrowing, persuading, cadging her way from
the water trucks to the bar, testing the tolerance and pity of everyone
she knows. Then she is contacted by the police, and taken by a respectful
constable to the house where she grew up and where she lost her leg in a
shattering explosion while still young. Faced with what is found there, she has
to accept the truth of her past, and of her older brother, her parents' golden
boy. Then she must confront herself and her responsibility, and what it truly
is to be a victim.
