Frankie and Stankie by Barbara Trapido

Frankie and Stankie Reviews

• 
  Margitte

  I really enjoyed this memoir in novel form. I loved the author's wit and sense of place. I was amazed at the small details of their everyday life, growing up in South Africa as first generation immigrants during the Apartheid years. It was a tumultuous time for everyone, especially for the two young girls and their adjustment to a new country. It was a sad and funny tale. The author constantly left me smiling, although her memories brought so much sadness in reliving those times. Most of their later experiences as students, and being involved in the struggle movement, was informative.
  
  In the afterword, the author stated: "The human species, Dinah sometimes thinks, is stark staring mad. People have no sooner got themselves born than they start to imagine the gods want them to flatten their heads, or perforate their genitals, or arrange themselves into hierarchies based on the colour of their skins. The gods require them to avoid eating hoofs, or to walk backwards in certain sacred presences, or to hang up cats in clay pots and light fires underneath them. The gods like them to slaughter birds and make incisions in their own skulls. The gods have put the banana on this earth so that the human species can apprehend that fruit as a miraculous revelation of the Holy Trinity. It has to do with their singular ability to think and dream in symbols. This is what makes the species so vicious. It’s also what makes them great poets."
  
  I think it sums up her experiences very well. The reason why I don't rate it 5 stars, is because it was a slow burner. Too slow for a novel, at least.There were some congesture, comparing apples with papayas, to support an ideological stand, that demonstrated an feeling/ idea, rather than reality, but that's happening all the time, so it's totally okay.
  
  Nevertheless, her story is beautiful and worth a read. I love the cover design. All her books have this unique, eye-catching covers and I plan to read a few more, for sure.
  
• 
  Leah

  This book flew by; Trapido's immediacy is so engaging and enticing that it takes hardly any time at all to be sucked in even to this clearly autobiographical novel. All of a sudden one is 120 pages in, and like a good TV show it's all you can think about when you're not reading it.
  
  Is comparing a book to a TV show insulting? I don't mean cliffhangery Game of Thrones soap operatic nonsense. I mean interesting people's lives told well, where you can put it down any time but you know you're not finished yet.
  
  I didn't know much about South African history, and her account of how the National Party came to power felt incredibly current: the smug certainty of the majority that this wouldn't happen, the utter horrified shock when it did, the denial by large swathes of the population that it could possibly last more than one political term. That's how South Africa's white population - admittedly already inured to racism - fell headlong into half a century of total antithesis to liberalism. It sounds familiar to us here in 2018.
  
  The contrast between authorial voice - unequivocal in its criticism of white South African attitude, both before and during Apartheid - and the naïve ignorance of the life lived by her own junior iteration was so lightly balanced and so easily parsed that it's almost easy to dismiss this type of writing. It flows so smoothly that it gives the impression of being effortless, but the work here is beautiful: a memoir, a narrative, a critique, a statement, all while being as easy to read as a picture book. Vacuumed up, totally recommendable.
• 
  Julia

  
  this story is set in the 1950s, when apartheid was rife in south africa. i am south african, and went to school in the eighties.
  
  i am ashamed when i read books like this. people were treated atrociously. it is something we can never forget and we have no right to tell anybody to get over it.
  
  this is a very good book, well worth reading.
• 
  Sophie

  How have I not read this author before? Quirky captivating characters with enough historical context (50s South Africa) to inform but not bog you down. I preferred the earlier years describing schooldays and the various Best Friends. So clearly written it must surely be part autobiographical? I wish there was another volume about the next chapter of Dinah's life in England.
  
  I'm off to rummage through boxes to find some of Trapido's other novels I'm sure I remember having somewhere! If not, it's off to Amazon I go!
• 
  Kathleen Dixon

  A friend loaned me this book. She's from South Africa and I guess about 10 years younger than the girls in this novel - so, considering the many years of entrenched prejudice there, she lived through everything they did.
  
  I found this book really interesting, but I didn't like it much as a novel. The writing style didn't connect with me, and I'm trying to analsye why. It's in the present tense all the way through, which shouldn't in itself be a problem as I've read and enjoyed other novels written in the present tense. This one moves over a period of some 20 or so years, and that shouldn't be a problem either, despite present tense all the way - after all, that's how we live our own lives. But perhaps that's the problem - our own lives are mostly pretty dull and wouldn't bear 70,000 words (or however many there are in this paperback), and though the times they live in are fascinating and the historical content and the appalling prejudice seen through the eyes or ordinary people are disturbing, there is (for me) simply too much of the daily detail.
  
  I would have stopped reading this book part way through if it had not been about my friend's upbringing, as it were. Still, I can say I'm pleased I persevered (albeit very slowly).
• 
  Faith

  This was exctly the right book for me! It's about Dinah, a girl growing up in South Africa in the 50s. A perfect mixture of Dinah's personal history and the history of South Africa of the time (with apartheid and everything).
  
  As for the titel Frankie & Stankie: It really is pretty random. It refers to an Italien song that Dinah missunderstood in her childhood. Can it get more random? Or maybe there is a point. Dinah thought that the song was about two clowns named Frankie and Stankie. Life is funny, life is random. That might be something. At least it suits the atmosphere of the book.
  
  I really liked this book! And I dare say I learned something too. If u wanna read about South Africa, choose this book, and not People Like Ourselves by Pamela Jooste.
• 
  Angel

  What a boring novel. Although meticulously researched the book lacked any depth and just seemed to be a 'story' of random people doing not very much. A real disappointment. And a plot would have been appreciated.
• 
  Hazel

  I really enjoyed this book. I grew up in Apartheid South Africa although I was a lot younger than the time of this book - so could relate to so much. Reading the history of those years makes one remember how awful it all was and Barbara Trapido explains it so well.
  
  
• 
  Anne

  I bought this book (the details of where and when escape me) because I had read and enjoyed Barbara Trapido's Brother of the More Famous Jack a few years ago. And I liked this book, but it feels unfinished somehow, as though it was meant to be a full-on story of two sisters (Lisa and Dinah = Frankie and Stankie, a reference that occurs towards the beginning and never again), but Trapido decided a few chapters in that Dinah was more interesting. Not to mention that nothing really HAPPENS. It feels like 250 pages of set-up for a major plot point that never comes.
  
  On the other hand, if Trapido's goal was to draw back the curtain on growing up in Apartheid-era South Africa, the book is extremely successful. Her writing is beautiful and evocative, and the descriptions are so specific I can just picture Dinah and Lisa's house, their school experiences, Dinah and Maud making their own clothes, the lives of their grandparents, aunts and uncles. I felt like the political information--that is, what was going on politically at each stage of the girls' lives--was almost too separated from the rest of the story, but again, that might be the point. I think my most important takeaway from this book is how white people's lives remained almost unchanged while black South Africans and Indians had their rights systematically taken away. Trapido frequently points out that "normal life went on," even as there were riots and uprisings and people being denounced as spies.
• 
  Jayne Bauling

  What a lovely writer Barbara Trapido is, always pitch-perfect. She has that gift of engaging the reader without anything huge or dramatic happening in the lives of her eminently credible characters.
  
  Dinah de Bondt grows up in Durban during the decades when apartheid was at its crudest and most fighteningly repressive. The racism and vague liberal guilt and ineffectuality of the era are accurately rendered, as we follow Dinah through school and university and a series of best girlfriends before men enter her life.
  
  Beautifully written.
  
  
• 
  Judy

  Interesting characters set in South Africa during the 1960s. Not being very familiar with the history, besides what is read fro newsprint and TV, I am glad I did read it. Barbara's experiences are well told through her main character Didi. I can't imagine growing up in such a racist atmosphere. Where colour differences never existed, were forced onto those people who made the land and belonged there yet had to live like animals. Religion and politics are always at the source of negative impact and this book describes it well.
• 
  Rebecca

  I've tried to read this book twice now. I just can't get into it. I hate the writing style.
• 
  Meg

  A high 3 star rating. Story of sisters living in South Africa and learning about Apartheid. I wish there was more information regarding Apartheid.
• 
  Lyn

  If, by chance, you happened to go to school in South Africa during the fifties, sixties or seventies, then you should definitely read this book. Not only is Barbara Trapido a fantastic author (and check out all her other books too, most of which are set in England) but you will laugh aloud with recognition at the South African schooling system and the general white lifestyle of those days. (Hopefully it is all different now).
  Set in Durban, this is a wonderfully insightful book into the highs and lows of life for pre and post WW2 emigrants to South Africa as they come to terms with the often crazy-making life in their new country. Told skillfully from both a child and teen perspective, and interwoven with back stories of immigrant parents, grandparents, neighbours and friends, this is a book well worth reading.
• 
  Kate Callen

  It's a well-written story of the childhood and youth of a white South African girl/young woman in the 1950s and 60s. It very often feels uncomfortable, as I believe it's meant to, being written in the third person but giving the perspective of Dinah, the main character, as she grows in understanding of the world around her, including much, although not all, of the injustice around her. Mostly she's a kid, negotiating her place as the child of casually liberal immigrants but going through a school system that's out to teach her to rank people as it does, while she's mostly concerned with her friends and her clothes and her education (in that order).
  
  I need to read more of the black South African experience of apartheid. Clearly it was repressive for everyone, but while this story is part of the tale, it shouldn't be the primary perspective.
• 
  Nadia Myburgh

  As a post-apartheid south african, I suggest this to EVERYONE as a must-read. It was extremely difficult to put down at times, and then there were pages that I struggled to get through as the harsh reality of what was going down during the apartheid regime hit me really hard in the face. I think Barbara wrote a very thought-provoking, honest piece of work that spoke about the realities of what was through her characters and considering the current situation of addressing systemic racism in the world, this book can definitely act as a catalyst to try and challenge non-POC's thinking as they go through the story and will hopefully lead to a more long-term change in behaviour and logic.
• 
  Jodie (JT)

  I found I made slow progress with this I really didn't enjoy it but yet something keep me reading till the end. I Guess in the end you start to feel for Dinah and want to know what happens to her next as she grows.
  
  What I found hard was the randomness off the book with it starting something then going on to something else then back to the orinagle thing they was talking about I was left thinking why was that even put in that spot alot or even why at all.
  
  So why give it 3* because although I may not have enjoyed reading it I feel like i 've learned alot reading it.
• 
  Sue

  DNF. The first three chapters read like an extremely detailed childhood memoir but the characters are fictional. I found that distracting and might have preferred a straightforward autobiography. I didn’t gather enough momentum to want to keep reading despite the potentially very interesting context of South Africa in the 50s.
  A disappointment after being enthralled by the compelling writing and quirky plot / characters of Brother Of the More Famous Jack. I will still try The Travelling Hornplayer at some point.
• 
  Laura Alderson

  I started off really enjoying this largely autobiographical book about 2 white girls growing up in apartheid South Africa. Their take on the crazy world they live in, seen through children's and then teenagers eyes. However it got very meandering, with lots of extra characters brought in, past and present and I found my mind wandering. However there were some interesting observations, both personal and political on the increasingly brutal world that I found it a mainly engrossing read.
• 
  Di

  Quite an interesting story set in South Africa during apartheid following the life of a two sisters as they grow from small girls through their school and university years. A commentary on the regime
• 
  Jane Paterson

  Loved it but I suspect you may need a deeper understanding of apartheid society to truly enjoy this book.