This came highly recommended, and maybe I had unrealistic expectations, but it did not knock me out. As is typical with me, I have most trouble with characters who strike me as incompletely formed, and so it is with David Laurie. It's not just that I don't really sympathize, though there's that; I just don't think the author pulls the pieces together. Same goes for the other characters, especially the daughter and the cipher for the African part of South African society, Petrus. None of these characters strikes me as fully realized.

Maybe that's the point about contemporary South Africa, but I just don't think it's a very compelling way to proceed, to lay out a handful of unrelated fragments. At least, it didn't work for me in this case.

Anyway, as I say, disappointing.