Black Dog Summer

December 8, 2014
Sherry’s debut is an evocative coming-of-age story in the vein of The Lovely Bones set in modern-day South Africa. Violence erupts on an ordinary morning at a remote communal farm, killing narrator Sally (known since childhood as Monkey for her “long, too skinny fingers”). Three days of “not being Sally anymore,” yet “still here,” she begins to understand that the din she hears as she navigates high above ground are “Africa’s stories being told”; like hers, many are “full of violence and blood and fury.” Through her 11-year-old niece, Bryony, Sally finds a way to follow her traumatized teenage daughter, Gigi, who fails to adjust to her new circumstances in Johannesburg with a family she hardly knows. Sally follows as her estranged sister, Adele, and husband, Liam, each cope with their grief and regret, and with the difficulty of incorporating Gigi into their tense home life. As the family aches, Bryony meets her intriguing neighbor Lesedi, a sangoma (healer) who senses that Bryony is in danger. The story is a familiar portrait of a family with secrets and the unavoidable loss of innocence that accompanies tragedy. Sherry’s sense of pacing—moving back and forth from the present to Sally’s childhood and time on the farm—and her keen ear for dialogue make for a good read.

February 1, 2015

Set in the steaming heat of a Johannesburg summer, this debut opens with a brutal farm killing that leaves teenage Gigi without her mother, Sally. The traumatized girl is brought from the only home she knows, a communal wildlife refuge, to Johannesburg to live with the family of her estranged aunt. The novel skirts most issues of race to explore the dynamics of this white South African family. With the disembodied spirit of Sally, who can follow the strands of loved ones' ongoing lives, readers peer into the hearts and minds of various family members as they deal with their individual feelings of loss and guilt. As events build to a crisis with Gigi and her young cousin Bryony--forced to share her bedroom with a stranger--the past is gradually revealed. VERDICT The story succeeds as a dysfunctional family drama, but despite being infused with mysticism through the thread of the group's sophisticated, stylish, black neighbor, Lesedi, who practices secretly as a spiritual healer, or sangoma, it ultimately fails to capture the complexity of South Africa's deep culture and traditions.--Laurie Cavanaugh, Holmes P.L., Halifax, MA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2014
A bright summer morning in the South African bush darkens suddenly as the inhabitants of an animal sanctuary are brutally cut down by machete-wielding men in this debut from a Johannesburg-based novelist.The massacre leaves Sally's spirit drifting away from her body but unable to leave the Earth. She's pulled inexorably toward the eternal humming of all the stories of Africa, old and new. Unable to rest until her own tale is told, Sally's spirit pushes inside her family members' bodies, seeing through their eyes the aftermath of grief, remembering through their lives her own past. As Sally's spirit wanders, a nightmare of long making and shattering resonance unfolds. Sally's death leaves her only daughter, Gigi, orphaned; Sally's sister, Adele, reluctantly takes her in. Adele's 11-year-old daughter, Bryony, resents sharing her bedroom with her cousin, and Gigi's refusal to get out of bed, choosing instead to drug herself into a dull twilight sleep, doesn't help matters. While she sleeps, Adele's family struggles to sidestep the tectonic shift in their lives. The pre-existing rift between Adele and her husband, Liam, widens. As Adele tries to honor her obligation to her niece, Liam is wracked with a bone-deep grief that his wife can't fathom. But when the tranquilizers run out and Gigi returns to life, the nightmare deepens, rage percolates, and the horrors of what happened to Sally wait patiently to erupt. Sherry's novel fairly vibrates with tension. Why did Adele banish Sally from her home? Why did Sally then exile herself to the dangerous hinterlands? What horrors did Gigi witness? Why can Lesedi, the carefully circumspect sangoma, or healer, next door, see Sally's spirit? And why do shadows and ominous black dogs suddenly lurk at the edges of Bryony's world? A hauntingly beautiful tale from a writer to watch.

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February 1, 2015
In a brutal massacre at an animal rescue center on a South African farm, Sally is killed. But her spirit remains snagged to the world because of concern for her 14-year-old daughter, Gigi. Traumatized by the incident, Gigi is sent to the Johannesburg home of Sally's younger sister, Adele, who threw her sister and niece out of her home nine years earlier and had remained estranged since. At the center of the estrangement is Liam Wilding, Sally's close friend in college, who married Adele but didn't want to give up Sally, to whom he had been making innocent although clandestine visits over the years. As the Wildings try to reconcile the past, the safety of their 11-year-old daughter, Bryony, is at risk, a threat foreshadowed by the appearance of a black dog in a cloud, which signifies murder to their neighbor, a psychic healer who communicates with Sally's spirit. Sherry builds suspense as she explores the bonds between siblings, spouses, and parents and children. A beautifully written literary debut centering on the power of love and memory.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)