Book review: The Village Indian
Author: Vanessa Govender
Publisher: Jacana
In The Village Indian, Vanessa Govender catches readers up with all the quirkiness that’s been happening in her life after her controversial first book Beaten Not Broken was published in 2018. Beaten Not Broken, which I have googled but not read, chronicled Govender’s difficulties in an abusive relationship with a well-known media personality.
Since then, Govender, who many will remember as the television reporter who broke boundaries in South Africa’s fledgling democracy, has remarried and moved to a small Western Cape town.
Village life, Govender finds, is anything but dull and she chronicles the oddities of her small-town existence in this hilarious book. Peppered with Indianisms, bits of Afrikaans and the occasional breaking of the fourth wall, this biographical narrative had me cackling. Govender is a witty writer and can craft a good story. She had me on the edge of my seat waiting for the climax of some of the “skinder” stories she recounted about people I could never have known and would ordinarily not have cared about, had it not been for her colourful characterisation.
Not all of the book is about Govender’s move to the unnamed village. She gives depth to the narrative by also telling about her childhood and youth in Chatsworth before touching briefly on what was most likely described in deeper detail in her first book. The reader is then taken along for a ride on the mind shift that needed to happen for the “bolshie” city girl to gradually gravitate towards the idea of a quieter country life. When the story eventually reaches the village, the reader, like Govender, finds that country life is anything but quiet.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who is in the mood for a good dose of South African story-telling.
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