Shula and the Goats from Tala eBook McCawley Grange
Download As PDF : Shula and the Goats from Tala eBook McCawley Grange 
There are no ghosts in Kenya.
Ever since his arrival in the house on the mountain, Charlie Carter, a volunteer worker from England, has been convinced that the house is haunted; after questioning locals, he learns that seventy years earlier, Shula, a young native girl was entombed alive by the sexually jealous wife of a colonial settler. Has she ever left the house? Charlie is in Katamara, a village in 1970s’ rural Kenya working on a hospital building project and hoping to find a woman to become his wife. He finds three. The beautiful Esmeralda but he has to contend with his dubious deputy Freddie (Bristow) and the local policeman (Corporal Adonis Musyoka), the one-man crime-prevention guru of Katamara, both of whom are also besotted with this outrageous tantalizing teen. And there is Jennifer, the Irish hospital nurse, herself escaping a troubled past and Aisha, Freddie’s secret lover. Can Charlie win Jennifer or rescue Aisha from Freddie and the squalid shanti-town in which she lives? But in a giant country beneath a giant sky can a ghost girl emerge from the hate and vengeance of a colonial horror story to restore humour, love and decency to the human spirit?
Shula and the Goats from Tala eBook McCawley Grange
Grange, McCawley. Shula and the Goats from TalaThis most engaging novel set in post-Kenyatta Kenya is divided into four Parts, each one named after a woman: Jennifer, Esmeralda, Aisha and finally Shula. Of these only Jennifer, the Irish nurse is white; the others are native Kenyans. All are portrayed convincingly, even Shula, the ghost whose presence is felt throughout, even sixty years after her murder. Death is quite common in Kenya, survival being something of a miracle. Life is cheap, but for the white workers, Charlie Carter and Freddie Bristoe, earning low wages in enormous heat, it offers an escape and a challenge. The relationship between the two men is skillfully depicted by the author, their contrasting characters being marked from the start. Freddie is a cynical, extrovert, organising the work force (although officially that is Charlie’s role) and taking his pleasures where he finds them - and there’s plenty of willing girls eager to please him. Charlie is shy, terrified of approaching women, although desperate to lose his virginity. The men share a room, guarded nightly by Titus, a loyal, if somewhat eccentric Kikuyu. Charlie is the sensitive, generous-hearted helper - early on he attends the burial service in a disgusting room of decomposing corpses, whose attendant sleeps in the grass nearby. And of course Charlie is haunted by the ghost, whose physical presence remains ambiguous to the end.
At the dynamic centre is Esmeralda, a would-be fashion model pretending to be a bricklayer, but unable to lift a barrow and in the end triumphant over both white men. The struggle between the three occupies the centre of the book. All the characters in the book are to some degree flawed, even naïve Charlie and faithful Titus, not to mention, Adonis, the seemingly invulnerable corporal and ‘the only one-armed police inspector in the world,’ Sam Wamiru. The book offers the reader, in equal parts, horror and comedy. This is epitomised in two episodes, one at the house of decaying corpses, the other at Esmeralda’s clever deception in the Nairobi Hilton of her potential seducer, Freddie Bristoe.
Weaknesses in the book, there are few, but I found the moralising tone at times obtrusive, the hedging over Shula’s presence slightly annoying and Aisha is a disposable entity - even though she may ‘feel the reptile cower lower beneath the light of both their souls,’ in preparing the reader for a union of worthy hero and innocent heroine. Come in Dickens!
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Shula and the Goats from Tala eBook McCawley Grange Reviews
After reading this authors first novel I was pleased to see a second novel, but surprised at the setting. He has travelled from Ireland to Kenya with success. A relaxing and enjoyable read. It is obvious the writer has a good knowledge and warmth for the country and from his bio, spent time as a volunteer there. this is a book about relationships, that slowly unfurl, and bring together wonderful characters. Especially the irrepressible Esmerelda.
Although this is only his second novel, McCawley Grange has already shown a remarkable range. While his debut novel, Some Lessons in Gaelic was a poignant account of an unusual childhood, the only English boy in an Irish school, his new novel is completely different.
Here we follow the mid-life crisis of a volunteer who travels to Kenya in the 70's to help build a hospital. Advice regularly given to novelists is to write about what you know and again Grange is drawing on his own personal experience as a volunteer in Kenya, though a decade later than the book's setting. On this exotic African stage we meet a panoply of different characters, each one distinctly drawn and well-rounded. We see life through their very different eyes. If one can forgive a banal comparison, life is like a pair of trousers – it has its ups and downs, as each life here follows its roller-coaster ride against the backdrop of a society in the throes of a traumatic evolution.
The sights, sounds and language of this turbulent East Africa are well captured in the flamboyant language. Grange's delight in wide-ranging lexis may not be to everyone's taste but displays the enthusiasm of an author near the start of, one hopes, a long career, though not started till after his retirement.
The tale has many twists and turns and the reader is left wondering if tragedy can be avoided. And the final question the reader faces is, what will McCawley Grange come up with next?
Grange, McCawley. Shula and the Goats from Tala
This most engaging novel set in post-Kenyatta Kenya is divided into four Parts, each one named after a woman Jennifer, Esmeralda, Aisha and finally Shula. Of these only Jennifer, the Irish nurse is white; the others are native Kenyans. All are portrayed convincingly, even Shula, the ghost whose presence is felt throughout, even sixty years after her murder. Death is quite common in Kenya, survival being something of a miracle. Life is cheap, but for the white workers, Charlie Carter and Freddie Bristoe, earning low wages in enormous heat, it offers an escape and a challenge. The relationship between the two men is skillfully depicted by the author, their contrasting characters being marked from the start. Freddie is a cynical, extrovert, organising the work force (although officially that is Charlie’s role) and taking his pleasures where he finds them - and there’s plenty of willing girls eager to please him. Charlie is shy, terrified of approaching women, although desperate to lose his virginity. The men share a room, guarded nightly by Titus, a loyal, if somewhat eccentric Kikuyu. Charlie is the sensitive, generous-hearted helper - early on he attends the burial service in a disgusting room of decomposing corpses, whose attendant sleeps in the grass nearby. And of course Charlie is haunted by the ghost, whose physical presence remains ambiguous to the end.
At the dynamic centre is Esmeralda, a would-be fashion model pretending to be a bricklayer, but unable to lift a barrow and in the end triumphant over both white men. The struggle between the three occupies the centre of the book. All the characters in the book are to some degree flawed, even naïve Charlie and faithful Titus, not to mention, Adonis, the seemingly invulnerable corporal and ‘the only one-armed police inspector in the world,’ Sam Wamiru. The book offers the reader, in equal parts, horror and comedy. This is epitomised in two episodes, one at the house of decaying corpses, the other at Esmeralda’s clever deception in the Nairobi Hilton of her potential seducer, Freddie Bristoe.
Weaknesses in the book, there are few, but I found the moralising tone at times obtrusive, the hedging over Shula’s presence slightly annoying and Aisha is a disposable entity - even though she may ‘feel the reptile cower lower beneath the light of both their souls,’ in preparing the reader for a union of worthy hero and innocent heroine. Come in Dickens!
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