Child of the River. A Book Review.

Sometimes I choose to read a book because of the subject matter. Sometimes I read books that have been recommended to me. And sometimes I choose a book just because it was written by a favorite author. There are all sorts of reasons why I read. In this case, I selected Child of the River by Irma Joubert because of its setting in South Africa.




This is a coming-of-age story of Persomi, who is young, white, and poor, born the middle child of illiterate sharecroppers on the prosperous Fourie farm in the South African Bushveld. Persomi’s world is extraordinarily small. This passage struck me right away: To the right of a rocky outcrop she could see the winding road in the distance, where the sun came up and the earth stopped, the road drowned itself in a big dam. Far beyond the shimmering expanse of water lay the town. Persomi had never been there.

Persomi spends her days absorbed in the rhythms of the natural world around her, escaping the brutality and squalor of her family home through the newspapers and books passed down to her from the main house and through her walks in the nearby mountains.


Persomi’s closest relationship is with her older brother Gerbrand, who leaves the farm to fight on the side of the Anglos in WWII. But as her very small world falls apart, and as Persomi navigates the changing world around her—war and the devastating racial strife of her homeland—she discovers who she truly is, where she belongs, and why her life matters.




This history and culture drew me to this book, and I loved how beautifully it was written. Even so, I confess I struggled a bit with this one. Perhaps that's because there were so many idioms that were unfamiliar to me, or perhaps it's just the fact that reading in my "post-stroke" world is just hard! In spite of my personal struggles, this is a book worth reading. You should give it a try!




I received a free copy of Child of the River from Thomas Nelson Publishing in exchange for my honest opinion.