Grocott's Mail
  • NEWS
    • Courts & Crime
    • Features
    • Politics
    • People
    • Health & Well-being
  • SPORT
    • News
    • Results
    • Sports Diary
    • Club Contacts
    • Columns
    • Sport Galleries
    • Sport Videos
  • OPINION
    • Election Connection
    • Makana Voices
    • Deur ‘n Gekleurde Bril
    • Newtown… Old Eyes
    • Incisive View
    • Your Say
  • ARTSLIFE
    • Cue
    • Makana Sharp!
    • Visual Art
    • Literature
    • Food & Fun
    • Festivals
    • Community Arts
    • Going Places
  • OUR TOWN
    • What’s on
    • Spiritual
    • Emergency & Well-being
    • Safety
    • Civic
    • Municipality
    • Weather
    • Properties
      • Grahamstown Properties
    • Your Town, Our Town
  • OUTSIDE
    • Enviro News
    • Gardening
    • Farming
    • Science
    • Conservation
    • Motoring
    • Pets/Animals
  • ECONOMIX
    • Business News
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Personal Finance
  • EDUCATION
    • Education NEWS
    • Education OUR TOWN
    • Education INFO
  • Covid-19
  • EDITORIAL
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Trending
  • Thembie is working towards STARDOM!
  • From Robben Island to the world
  • A woman with zeal in a male-dominated business
  • WBHO contract and supply application closing date: 31 March 2023
  • Are we protecting the vulnerable?
  • This week’s rainfall report
  • “Town gets fixed, but it is difficult to fix things in the township,” says Ward 10 resident
  • Social movements ask: “Can we still trust prosecutors?”
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Grocott's Mail
  • NEWS
    • Courts & Crime
    • Features
    • Politics
    • People
    • Health & Well-being
  • SPORT
    • News
    • Results
    • Sports Diary
    • Club Contacts
    • Columns
    • Sport Galleries
    • Sport Videos
  • OPINION
    • Election Connection
    • Makana Voices
    • Deur ‘n Gekleurde Bril
    • Newtown… Old Eyes
    • Incisive View
    • Your Say
  • ARTSLIFE
    • Cue
    • Makana Sharp!
    • Visual Art
    • Literature
    • Food & Fun
    • Festivals
    • Community Arts
    • Going Places
  • OUR TOWN
    • What’s on
    • Spiritual
    • Emergency & Well-being
    • Safety
    • Civic
    • Municipality
    • Weather
    • Properties
      • Grahamstown Properties
    • Your Town, Our Town
  • OUTSIDE
    • Enviro News
    • Gardening
    • Farming
    • Science
    • Conservation
    • Motoring
    • Pets/Animals
  • ECONOMIX
    • Business News
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Personal Finance
  • EDUCATION
    • Education NEWS
    • Education OUR TOWN
    • Education INFO
  • Covid-19
  • EDITORIAL
Grocott's Mail
You are at:Home»ARTS & LIFE»Book review: Leaving Word, by Steven Boykey Sidley
ARTS & LIFE

Book review: Leaving Word, by Steven Boykey Sidley

Grocott's Mail ContributorsBy Grocott's Mail ContributorsDecember 11, 2019No Comments3 Mins Read
Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email

Joelie Jesson hates finely crafted plots. The Los Angeles-based book editor thinks they are antithetical to good writing; “a cheap conceit, pieces laid out higgledy-piggledy across the pages and then slotted and fitted and fastened over three hundred pages, like a piece of Ikea furniture”. Jesson thinks the world is “messy and incomplete and ambiguous and only loosely directed” and that the best stories are similarly so.

Joelie Jesson might not like Leaving Word by South African author Steven Boykey Sidley, even though she is the main character in the novel. It’s a bit short of three hundred pages, but it does have a finely crafted plot.

Jesson is a legend at CrossMedia, a prestigious publishing house, and is fired shortly into the story. She says she may have been fired because she refused to sleep with her CEO, Buddy Rappaport. Then she reveals that she had been drawn to Buddy since his appointment two years earlier and would gladly have slept with him if he had asked, which he didn’t, despite the two of them sharing some special moments.

After Buddy is found dead at his desk, no foul play suspected or investigated, things take a turn. There’s Detective Corelli, who is not investigating Buddy’s death but has been looking into Jesson and hopes she will edit the novel he has written — a novel that seems to make some claims about Buddy’s death, even thought it was written some months earlier. There’s Buddy’s older brother, Duke, an art historian and teacher who looks much like Buddy and has a potentially disturbing thing about Caravaggio and his use of light and shadows. And there’s the self-named Thron, formerly Tom, a sociopath whose presence in the story is unclear until much later.

I hadn’t heard of Sidley before Grocott’s Mail was sent a copy of his book to review, but I’m glad to have heard of him now. Leaving Word is his fifth novel, and I look forward to reading the other four. Two quibbles: One, Sidley doesn’t seem to set much store by place. Deon Meyer weaves South African locations into his novels. John Sandford does the same with Minnesota. Robert Crais and Michael Connelly treat Los Angeles like it’s a character in their stories. Sidley is a very different crime writer to any of those and, while I understand why he chose to set this novel in LA rather than, say, Cape Town, I think he could have said more about the location.

Second, there are a few irritating mistakes in the copy. They could easily be overlooked, but not when the central protagonist is a book editor.

TWO FREE COPIES OF LEAVING WORD
Grocott’s Mail is giving away two copies of Leaving Word. To enter the draw, tell us the name of one other of Steven Sidley’s novels. Email your answer by midday on Wednesday 11 December to community@grocotts.co.za with ‘Leaving Word giveaway’ in the subject line. Please include your postal address with your answer. The first two correct answers get the copies.

Previous ArticleJoy as funds flow for pre-primary water solution
Next Article New Year’s Cup is here again!
Grocott's Mail Contributors

Grocott's Mail Contributors includes content submitted by members of the public, and public and private institutions and organisations - regular and occasional, expert and citizen, opinion and analysis.

Comments are closed.

Tweets by Grocotts
Newsletter



Listen

The Rhodes University Community Engagement Division has launched Engagement in Action, a new podcast which aims to bring to life some of the many ways in which the University interacts with communities around it. Check it out below.

Humans of Makhanda

Humans of Makhanda

Weather    |     About     |     Advertise     |     Subscribe     |     Contact     |     Support Grocott’s Mail

© 2023 Maintained by School of Journalism & Media Studies.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.