The Dubious Salvation of Jack V.

Ostensibly a bildungsroman set in South Africa, this book manages to deal with weighty subjects (apartheid, 'white man's burden', guilt) with a lightness of touch and excellent comic timing.

Although it reads as a series of anecdotes around the 11-year-old world of Jack V. From his friend Petrus' sexy, rough army brother, to grandmothers, to discovering your own body as a young child, what binds the book together is the presence of his maid Sally. This is the most interesting relationship in the book as she is his day-to-day mother. She looks after him, feeds him and gives him a moral steer at crucial points. His parents barely take part in his life. They remain a mystery. However, she is black and this division creates a gentle power struggle as Jack V tries to understand his world.

When her son, the angry deliquent Percy, comes to stay and witnesses Jack doing something he shouldn't be, Jack kickstarts a chain of events to leads to his betraying of his day-to-day mother.

Sounds serious? Well it's not. Well it is. Well it's not. It balances brilliantly the politics of South Africa and its citizens with the day-to-day hilarity of dysfunctional families and is funny and tender all at once.