"An engaging and poignant account of forbidden love between a privileged seventeen-year-old white boy and the daughter of a Zulu servant woman under apartheid in 1970s Durban, South Africa marks the literary debut of a Durban-born, but Dartmouth- and Cornell-educated Boston attorney. Fleeing retribution for his taboo relationship and possible reprisal for his mother's liberal political celebrity in 1978, Danny Divin arrives in Boston and marries an impetuous, caring young artist to avoid deportation. Although the marriage bond deepens over the years, Danny cannot shake the bittersweet memory of his first love. Narrated in sequential chapters (with flashbacks) in the voices of Danny, his mother, his sister, the servant, the girl and Danny again, the novel opens twenty years after Danny's arrival in Boston. Danny's mother and her second husband, a once-wealthy entrepreneur whose fortune has diminished in the corrupt South African economy, fly to Boston to persuade Danny to return to Durban to orchestrate the highly illegal transfer of the family's holdings to avoid seizure by the treacherous government. Seduced by the possibility of seeing his former lover again, Danny finally agrees, against his better judgment. The final chapter returns to Danny's voice and time present, recounting his perilous journey home to attempt to save the family fortune and recapture his dream of youthful romance. Between his attempt to accomplish his precarious mission and avoid imprisonment by the government, his quest to find his lost love and his strained fidelity to his wife, a fine edge of suspense is generated. An altogether promising debut."

Le Score:

Vous aurez remarqué que la fiche de chaque livre contient un nombre baptisé SCORE.

De quoi s'agit-il?

Il s'agit d'une évaluation communautaire de chaque livre calculée sur une échelle de 0 à 100.

Cette évaluation repose sur une agrégation de diverses quantités qui reflètent la vie de chaque livre au sein de la communauté ScholarVox. Cette vie s'exprime en fréquence de lecture, nombre d'étagères publiques, privées, professorales dans lesquelles le livre est présent.

Un calcul "propriétaire" mélangeant ces quantités vous restitue sous la forme synthétique d'un Score l'intelligence collective incorporée dans chaque livre. Ce Score n'est pas une note scolaire, c'est bien plus un indicateur de l'aura collective du livre.

Car, pour paraphraser Robert Parker, expert ès-notation des vins, " ...there can never be any substitute for your own reading palate nor any better education than reading the book yourself."