PanThe New York Times Book ReviewMarais’s prose is as overwrought as the plot ... Most problematic is Marais’s stylistic choice to narrate her white characters’ chapters in the first person, while narrating their black employee’s in the third. The author’s inability to imagine Zodwa as equally self-realizing as her white \'sisters\' is even more glaring given the teenager’s portrayal as precocious and politically conscious ... At a time when South Africa—young, black South Africa in particular—is actively questioning the very premise of Nelson Mandela’s \'Rainbow Nation,\' it is quite astonishing to read a novel that does not raise any new (or even old) questions of either the transition to post-apartheid democracy or the realities of \'non-racial\' sisterhood. Perhaps Marais is afraid of the answers to such questions. Ultimately, sentimentality hinders Marais’s ability to really know post-apartheid South Africa, and its women, at all.
