Rhodesia - a place of great beauty, but also of terrible, man-made, tragedy.
The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam is, above all else, a magical evocation of childhood; at times laugh-out-loud funny, at others heartbreakingly sad. It tells the story of two young sisters, Nyree and Cia O’Callohan, who live on a remote farm in the East of what was Rhodesia in the late 1970s. Beneath the dripping vines of the Vumba rainforest, and under the tutelage of their heretical grandfather, Oupa, theirs is a seductive world laced with African paganism, bastardised Catholicism and the lore of the Brothers Grimm - until their idyll is shattered forever by their orphaned cousin, Ronin. His arrival at the farm sets in motion a chain of events that result in tragedy and the loss of innocence.
- 'Full of memorable characters and flavoured with the intensity of childhood, this is a debut that stays with the reader long after the last page is read' WATERSTONE'S BOOKS QUARTERLY
- ‘An evocative debut . . . told from the vantage point of an eight-year-old girl growing up on an isolated farm: a small world in human terms but enriched by the sights and smells of Africa’ MAIL ON SUNDAY
Hardback
Published 31/03/2008