"I wanted to get out: out of England, out of doors, out onto the land. A seed had been sown by childhood visits to my uncle’s farm in Shropshire. On leaving school I’d gone to agricultural college. Then, somehow, I’d taken a wrong turning. I’d ended up in an office in the Ministry of Agriculture, far from the soil, shuffling paperwork. Each night I’d crept through dreary wet streets to filthy yellow-stained trains, where hatchet faces looked loweringly at one another, their personalities cramped by shallow-breathed conformity.
I’d chucked it in, all of it, and here I was, a manager on a farm in Rhodesia. It was ten years before it would become Zimbabwe, but only three before the terror of Chimurenga, the guerrilla war of liberation, came springing through the bush."
Moberly is a mastermind in his craft. Painting an image so vivid of 1970s Rhodesia, later Zimbabwe, with its lush rolling hills, fertile farmland, roaring waters and rich culture that any reader would feel as though they’ve been dropped into the middle of the African bush. For they are to feel as drawn to it as the characters of the story, regretting when the time comes that they must leave. He has woven a tale of incredible stakes. A country at war with racism embedded into the very foundation of its start. We are thrust into the middle of the goings on and the history of the story delivered is precise, it’s harsh in its truth, but it’s emotional and sucks the reader in so they are as immersed as the characters are in the plot. A man who just wants to be a farmer is sucked in by the angel he’d never intended to meet and his world of simplicity turns into one of politics, warfare and a drug that can only be fuel to the fire.
"She squared him to face the storm ditch at the side of the track. He peered down into it, questioningly. His mighty hindquarters coiled under him and he sprang, firing them out over the ditch. There was total silence, and then a knocking of hooves picked up as a cloud of dust grew in the air, quickly claiming them from sight. The sound rolled away into silence, and I was left earthbound, with dust in my eyes, and a vision of a girl in primrose and bronze, who’d shown that she was already in love with me."
Tom Etheridge, the focal point and narrator of the tale being told, is the kind of character that readers will relate to. He’s flawed, but human in every sense of the word. Starting from the mind of a young man looking to find himself in a beautiful land so vastly different from his home back in England he is searching for his purpose.
Along the way he makes mistakes, he misunderstands, he reacts at the best of times and doesn’t at the worst. Moberly has made Tom’s narrative flow so smoothly that it feels as though the reader is listening to an interview of a lifetime. On the edge of their seat, crying with him, laughing at times, but angry at others with a raised fist and a sense of disapproval. Only a well practiced writer could elicit such a response, and Moberly has shown his hand with this novel. He has constructed characters from the middle of their life stories, but during times where decisions lead to either growth or destruction. He has written them as real as the reader is, and that is what makes the novel so easily read.
"Innocent days, carefree days. Days of plenty, with contentment to spare. Days when the nights were short, and nights which would last forever. Drinking surplus sunshine by day, we released it after dark with laughter and whimsy. Little did I know how soon those days would end."
The formatting is broken down into a recanting of the events as they unfolded for the characters, with Tom as the central voice weaving the entire tale of the ten years he spent in Southern Rhodesia. How he lived through the ongoing war and the role he, and many others, played in it. Not all the facts are given, because it’s a series of memories, told in sometimes broken form as one might tell a story that is twenty years old. It creates an air of mystery that’s enjoyable and leaves the reader holding their breath while they wait for the big reveals. And of those there are many.
And
what of me? I looked at myself as though from outside, as if I too had become a
single photo. I looked down as though from a distant height and didn’t want to
return. Do I wake or sleep, and do I want to wake? I had become a deception, an
unreliable ghost of myself. Which was reality, the me of the days of joy, or
the creature I stood observing now, wishing it would dissolve? For they were
surely different beings.
Buy the book
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4 out of 5 (very good)
Independent Reviewer for Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
Set against an African backdrop, with descriptions of pure beauty and wonder, The Scrotum Toad pulls you into a story that can outshine any soap opera. Full of quirky, fun characters each with their own special personality traits and levels of intelligence and luck (how on earth Stanley has made it as far in life as he has is beyond me)
Each character does have endearing qualities, I'll be honest though, it took me a little while to warm up to Tangle but that's definitely down to having to rearrange my way of thinking. She's quite the inspiration.
** same worded review will appear elsewhere **
* A copy of this book was provided with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book; the comments here are my honest opinion. *
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(such a shame that Chill With A Book has now closed)
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| Chill with a Book awards |
"This is sooo funny. It was full of stereotypes and definitely not meant to be realistic and yet there were so many well observed truths about people and their preconceptions. I was a teacher and there are people like Jake in every school - cussed awkward. As for the rest, I certainly recognised them in my travels to USA and around UK. Wonderful book, made me laugh for days."
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| Chill With a Book Awards |
"Beautifully written with an engaging cast of characters. I found this both enlightening and disturbing."
"The discussion of the anti-German sentiments in Britain during the war and the movement for repatriation etc. was very good and eye-opening to anyone not well versed on the home front during World War I."
"Very impressive writing with an intellectual and educated edge. The more I ponder this book, the more I admire what it took to write it."
"The revving-up of hatred and ignorance was a unique and interesting way to present the war – with the media and the Church paving the way"