Sound Bites
by Chris Walton
Published by Jacana.
reviewed by Ben Oswest
This review originally ran, in edited form, in the Sunday Independent. Here’s the link (subscribers only):
And here’s the review in full:
At first glance, this enjoyable Gothic sex farce dolled up as a murder mystery appears to be the product of pure indulgence on its publisher’s part: for what have Zurich, Switzerland and its inhabitants during the years of the First World War to do with South Africa today?
But one of the secret pleasures of Chris Walton’s Sound Bites is lifting evidence from its pages to fit a theory about its implausible release here: the theory that South African culture – the whole shebang, its producers, consumers, bureaucrats and police – has matured to the point where incidental voices singing unfamiliar notes are made room for, because of a general agreement that the local milieu – a milieu shaped mainly by voices more pleasing to those with a nationalist bent – offers everyone some agency, a small ledge on the mossy cliff on which to trill.
