CL Bell is a journalist who travelled the country to write her story, very consciously, from the prism of being a white South African.
She states in the introduction that when she pitched the book to publishing houses they told her there wasn't a sufficient market for a book that confronts racism from a white perspective. It's over to readers to decide for themselves - while the writer sets out at the outset to say that her's is not a political treatise I felt there's just a little too much about white guilt and a lack of belonging and loneliness.
The book takes the form of a journey of self discovery over five years in rural South Africa and confronts the legacy cast by a childhood lived under apartheid.
There are some beautifully written passages of our diverse landscape and it's clear Bell is a seasoned journalist.
Mixing memoir with first-hand reportage she puts forth her well-researched story honestly and frankly with no holds barred but I kept wondering to myself whether it isn't a little too self-indulgent?