Fiela's Child (Phoenix Fiction Series)

Rating:
Summary: Movie
Review: I read this book in Grade 11 at school in South Africa. As part of the course we watched the movie, so I thought I'd just let the earlier reviewer looking for a movie know that one exists. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that there's only an Afrikaans copy, as the book was originally written in Afrikaans (as with all Dalene books) before being translated into English.

Rating:
Summary: The Life & Struggles of the Kimoeties
Review: I read this book last when I was in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania, for my English class. I loved it, and could not put it down.
Reading how Benjaman lives with Fiela and her family and then is suddenly thrust into his 'real' family, the Van Rooyens, and having to go through the struggles of finding out who he is, versus who others see him as. I loved how intense it got when he moved in with the Van Rooyins, and was coming to grips with being called Lukas, instead of Benjiman.
If you like this book, you also might like the book written by an African-American woman named Octavia Butler, who wrote a book entitled "Kindred". It is similar as far as how the whites treated the blacks, and how segragation was so apparent .

Rating:
Summary: a mundane read
Review: the themes of this book could be classified as "vaguely" interesting, but the writing was extremely mundane and the story plodded along tediously with heavy, dragging footsteps. i also found the story to be overly sweet and cliche. highlights of the book, if they exist, could be fiela's depth of character and her hypocrisy, but even this spark of hope is eradicated by the saccharine content. the ending was predictable from the first sentence of the book, stooping to the level of a soap opera. too bad, but an amusing read at times.