I think I am going to have to condense my reviews down if I am going to keep up with my reads... I'm reluctant to use a scoring system which I find too suffocating. A linear numerical system to describe the thoughts, emotions, concepts, characters, etc etc within a novel? How to indicate depth? But maybe I'll try it out... so shall I use the conventional 5 star system? I'm contorting my face and groaning, but yes, fine, I'll use that. That way if I get really lazy or time poor I can simply record the score for the novel and move onto my next one.
So, The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs. I had forgotten (until I read the bio on the book cover half way into the read) that I have actually read one of Damon Galgut's books (The Quarry) and really enjoyed it. What actually attracted me to randomly select this book off the library shelf was not the author, but the title. It really grabbed me, the incongruity of the words, the imagery they conjured up of suffering, shit, death and blood and of someone finding that beautiful? It made me feel uneasy and I wanted to know more. And then I read in the fine print that Galgut is a Man Booker Prize winner and I was sold. I not a literary snob, but for some reason I always seem to like Man Booker Prize winners...
I was rewarded. I really enjoyed this book. I read it extremely quickly but that's not to diminish the depth of the content. In the Beautiful Screaming of Pigs, we travel with Patrick Winter on two journeys to Namibia. One in the present with his mother a divorcee on her way to experience the country's first free elections and to see her new, trendily taboo, black, SWAPO member boyfriend; and one in the past as a soldier completing his military service and fighting against the liberation of an independent Namibia. Patrick Winter has issues. He's on medication for anxiety issues, his family life has been and still is dysfunctional, he's dealing with the changing face of his country and all the racial complexities that are inevitable when a new country is finding it's feet and the fact that he once faught against a people with whom he now sympathises. (Plus a few other issues but I don't want to spoil it!)
The story behind the title becomes clear as we look into Patrick's past and as do the feelings it conjured up in me when first I saw it. There is symbolism in the title that carries through the book, the idea that something horrific and frightening like the screaming of pigs, or a war, or a dysfunctional marriage, or a volatile relationship can often have beautiful consequences is a difficult but unavoidable truth. It's a book that makes you think. I like that.
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