Description

AD Donker [Published Date: 1971]. Hardcover, 183 pp. Stated First edition. Acceptable+ in Acceptable+ dust jacket. Yellow Paper over Boards have a 3/4" circular stain in the middle of the front cover and a 1/2" chip to the paper over the bottom of the spine near the front hinge. Light bumping to edges and light overall scuffing, and soiling to covers as well. Binding tight. Pages are lightly aged but otherwise unmarked. Dust jacket also has a 3/4" brown circular stain on the front cover and several 1" or less chips and tears and creasing along edges. Moderate overall scuffing and soiling to jacket as well. NOT Ex-Library. NO remainder marks. Now in an archival-quality (removable) Brodart Cover. [From jacket flaps] A Life to Live is a first novel by a new South African novelist and it has a true local background. Set in the Karoo and Port Elizabeth, it is the story of Nel, the girl who leaves home to work in town to earn a living and support her family. Though life is hard, the boarding house dirty, the people poor, Nel lives her life as best she can, marries, but only finds more problems. The book's last part is again set in the Karoo when Nel spends the last few years of her life with her youngest sister, who now is married to a wealthy farmer. The reality of life in this novel is entwined with humour, and the characters come to life under the able pen of Yvonne Burgess.There is much to admire in the book. There is humane feeling, love and hatred. In short, a powerful and exciting novel. Jacket illustration by Guenther T. Schulz. Yvonne Burgess has written short stories which were published in Contrast and New South African Writing. She wrote her first novel when she was eleven, but it was never published and still is in manuscript form. She studied at Rhodes University and has a B.A. in English. She is the mother of two boys, and also keeps two dogs, three cats and about fifty pigeons. She works as a part-time book reviewer and art critic for the Eastern Province Herald and is at present busy writing more novels.