Critics' Opinion:
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Published Jul 2017
432 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
Perfect for readers of The Secret Life of Bees and The Help, a perceptive and searing look at Apartheid-era South Africa, told through one unique family brought together by tragedy.
Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a ten-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred ... until the Soweto Uprising, in which a protest by black students ignites racial conflict, alters the fault lines on which their society is built, and shatters their worlds when Robin's parents are left dead and Beauty's daughter goes missing.
After Robin is sent to live with her loving but irresponsible aunt, Beauty is hired to care for Robin while continuing the search for her daughter. In Beauty, Robin finds the security and family that she craves, and the two forge an inextricable bond through their deep personal losses. But Robin knows that if Beauty finds her daughter, Robin could lose her new caretaker forever, so she makes a desperate decision with devastating consequences. Her quest to make amends and find redemption is a journey of self-discovery in which she learns the harsh truths of the society that once promised her protection.
Told through Beauty and Robin's alternating perspectives, the interwoven narratives create a rich and complex tapestry of the emotions and tensions at the heart of Apartheid-era South Africa. Hum If You Don't Know the Words is a beautifully rendered look at loss, racism, and the creation of family.
"Starred Review. In this standout debut Marais handles topics such as grief and racism with a delicate intensity that will make readers fall in love with her characters. From the first few heartfelt chapters to a fast-paced and heart-wrenching ending, Marais has created a stunning historical drama that shouldn't be missed." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Lyrical...A captivating story about finding family in unexpected places and maintaining culture in the face of adversity." - Library Journal
"An entertaining page-turner that, while somewhat pat in its treatment of racial politics, provides a satisfying emotional journey." - Kirkus
"An important contribution to literature about racism in South Africa...it's a powerful story and one with a perspective many of us haven't read." - Terry McMillan, New York Times bestselling author of Waiting to Exhale and I Almost Forgot About You
"Bianca Marais's compassionate debut paints a picture of the alternately beautiful and tragic strategies we humans employ to meet our needs for love. Hum If You Don't Know the Words takes us into the human heart's wiliness as it attempts to survive the frontal attack of racism. While the attack is a sin, the response is wondrous and wounding and an illustration of the resiliency that can transcend the color of a person's skin." - Rebecca Wells, author of The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
"Bianca Marais's stunning debut ... illuminates the experiences of both black and white South Africans during one of the bloodiest periods in the country's history and gives us an emotionally powerful and historically important story about forgiveness, love and redemption." - Tara Conklin, author of The House Girl
"Bianca Marais's compelling debut novel is a heartrending coming-of-age tale that not only illuminates the horrors of apartheid South Africa but also speaks with unmistakable relevance to the racism of our own times." - Jennifer Chiaverini, author of Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker and Fates and Traitors
"Beautiful and tragic, intimate and sweeping, Hum If You Don't Know the Words is a gorgeous debut novel. You don't read this story, you live it. Bianca Marais creates characters with such love and compassion they nearly walk off the page." - Tish Cohen, bestselling author of Town House and The Truth About Delilah Blue
"I read this book in a gallop, compelled to discover the intertwined fates of its tragic heroine, Beauty Mbali, and her young orphaned charge. Hum If You Don't Know the Words is an exciting and compassionate novel about a period of devastating cruelty in South African history. With passion and grace Marais makes the political personal and the personal intimate." - Meira Cook, author of Nightwatching and The House on Sugarbush Road
"Bianca Marais parts the curtain on an unexpected view of Apartheid-era South Africa in this gutsy, surprising, and richly imagined tale. It will be a long time before the reader forgets the novel's compelling characters, and the tremendous determination, yearning, and humanity with which they navigate complex emotional landscapes in their intersecting quests for connection, family, and justice." - Ania Szado, bestselling author of Studio Saint-Ex
"Expertly crafted, both lyrical and gripping, with some truly poignant moments especially pertaining to parenthood." - Emma Hooper, author of Etta and Otto and Russell and James
"Bianca Marais has written a haunting and moving novel of Apartheid South Africa that held me in its thrall from beginning to end. Against a backdrop of legislated racism, Marais brilliantly entwines two disparate voices in a searing story of love, loss and recovery. Masterful and memorable." - Terry Fallis, two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour
This information about Hum If You Don't Know the Words was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Bianca Marais holds a Certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto's SCS, and her work has been published in World Enough and Crime. Before turning to writing, she started a corporate training company and volunteered with Cotlands, where she assisted care workers in Soweto with providing aid for HIV/AIDS orphans. Originally from South Africa, she now resides in Toronto with her husband.
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