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You will be safe here / Damian Barr.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: London, England : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019Description: 327 pages ; 22 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 140888609X
  • 9781408886090
  • 9781408886083
  • 1408886081
Subject(s): Genre/Form: LOC classification:
  • PR6102.A76996 Y68 2019
Summary: "South Africa, 1901. It is the height of the second Boer War. Sarah van der Watt and her six-year-old son Fred are forced from their home on Mulberry Farm. As the polite invaders welcome them to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp they promise Sarah and Fred that they will be safe there... 2014. Sixteen-year-old Willem is an outsider. Hoping he will become the man she wants him to be, his Ma and her boyfriend force Willem to attend the New Dawn Safari Training Camp where they are proud to make men out of boys. They promise that he will be safe there."-- Publisher's description.
Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Fiction Davis (Central) Library Fiction Collection Fiction Collection BARR Checked out 03/04/2024 T00819562
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

An Observer , Guardian, Financial Times , Irish Times, Irish Independent , Big Issue and Strong Words Pick of the Year 'This is a book that tilts the world' STYLIST 'A gripping, heartbreaking tale of uncomfortable histories and the resilience of love' GRAHAM NORTON 'I want you to read this ... I enjoy a lot of books but few stay with me like this has' PHILIPPA PERRY 'Completely gripping and profoundly moving' MAGGIE O'FARRELL 'Very beautiful. Only a truly wise and kind person could write such a book' MAX PORTER 'Heart-wrenching ... redemptive and full of love' JOJO MOYES A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME The book that will change the way you see the world. 2010. Sixteen-year-old outsider Willem just wants to be left alone with his books and his dog. Worried he's not turning out right, his ma and her boyfriend send him to New Dawn Safari Training Camp. Here they 'make men out of boys'. Guaranteed.1901. The height of the second Boer War in South Africa. Sarah van der Watt and her son are taken from their farm by force to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp where, the English promise: they will be safe.

"South Africa, 1901. It is the height of the second Boer War. Sarah van der Watt and her six-year-old son Fred are forced from their home on Mulberry Farm. As the polite invaders welcome them to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp they promise Sarah and Fred that they will be safe there... 2014. Sixteen-year-old Willem is an outsider. Hoping he will become the man she wants him to be, his Ma and her boyfriend force Willem to attend the New Dawn Safari Training Camp where they are proud to make men out of boys. They promise that he will be safe there."-- Publisher's description.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Now the moment is here, Irma doesn't know quite what to do. She pushes the intercom again, careful of her new nails. 'They for sure know we're coming, ja?' 'Just leave it,' says Jan, fussing with his camera. 'Get in the picture, eh. Willem, shades off, arm round your ma.' Willem's eyeroll is almost audible. No, he won't hold her. He feels her neediness and it grosses him out -- if she really loved him as much as she's always saying, she wouldn't be leaving him here. For the whole three-hour drive he bored a deep hole in the back of Jan's thick bald head. Finally, Jan -- who he'll never call Pa -- leaned back and snapped Answer your mother but Willem just pushed his earbuds deeper, gloried as Harry was chosen for Gryffindor yet again. He didn't realise he was moving his lips to the words till he caught Jan smirking in the mirror and shuttered his face with his hoodie. Willem needs magic today, even if he is too old for it. 'Closer,' says Jan, edging them towards the white ex-demonstrator four-wheel-drive Ford with good fuel economy that his boss cut him a deal on. 'Let me get the truck in.' Irma nudges Willem: 'Smile nice.' Willem slides his Oakleys off and half opens his eyes -- pilot-light blue, like his pa's. People are always telling him to smile. He's not been up this early for what, months, years? His ma swipes his hood off and curls the exact colour of Easter chicks spring away from his face. He's got a perfect library tan. He's hiding in his baggiest black hoodie and track pants and his feet flop in bright white Adidas Hi Tops, a puppy growing into his paws. The crappy Casio he got for his sixteenth is back home because who wears a watch now and he'd still be late anyway, Jan says. Willem braces for the flash. 'Smile,' sing-songs Jan, cutting the word in two: SMY-ILL. He holds the camera out, pushing Willem away. Irma turns her engagement ring, hopes it shows. Her eyes, smudges of no-run mascara, brim with her boy. When did he get so big? Will this place fix him? She tugs at the sleeveless white top that doesn't hug her where she doesn't want it to and loops her right arm through Willem's left. She pulls him closer. They've not quite finished arranging their faces when Jan clicks the button. The flash is lost in spring sunshine. Willem bolts over to the gate. It's barbed wire, but barely man-high. Out here walls are lower -- you can see gardens. Only the ground-floor windows have bars. There's no movement from the low redbrick homestead up ahead. A shady stoep wraps around it waiting for rocking chairs. A pocked satellite dish clings to the stone chimney. There must be security. Willem identifies some kind of Prunus guarding the gate, but the crows have had its fruit. There are no other houses. No other people. A heavy-shouldered red barn squats on the horizon opposite. Behind it a vast dark steelworks blots out the sky. Clouds belch from giant cooling towers with the ghetto curves all the girls want. Lightsaber-green flames --bright even on a day like today -- flicker from skinny sky-high pipes. The air tastes of old torch batteries licked on a dare. While they stand around waiting for the buzz-click of electric locks Jan checks for cameras. Weekend by weekend he's filled their bungalow with them. He bribed Willem to put the feed on his phone and is gripped: watching empty rooms, waiting for people he knows to walk in and do what they always do. Jan dreams of a panic room. He gives Irma a look as she lights another menthol. She feels her boy moving further and further away. In her head, she goes over all the bits she's packed. The list from New Dawn was detailed, extensive and expensive: two pairs of trousers, two T-shirts, a cap and two dress shirts (all khaki), then boots, running tekkies, trunks, towels, sheets, sleeping bag, tin plate, mug and bowl and a Bible (travel size). No mobiles but she won't be the one to tell him. A hunting knife will be provided but used only under strict supervision. Safety First At New Dawn! Excerpted from You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Booklist Review

At the cusp of the twentieth century, six-year-old Frederick van der Watt is torn from the home he loves, near Ventersburg in South Africa, and delivered to the horrors of the Bloemfontein concentration camp set up by the British. The scorched-earth policy of the Boer Wars leaves him and his mother homeless, estranged as they are from Fred's dad, Samuel. Mom Sarah finds small solace in keeping a diary, modeled after that of a real-life Bloemfontein survivor. The horrors Fred and Sarah encounter parallel those faced by another boy, Willem, decades later. The gay teen must face his own brand of torture at the hands of a Colonel who promises to make men out of boys at a camp called New Dawn Safari Rangers. At times, the connections between the two stories seem tenuous, but Barr's promising debut is an unblinking look at the terrors humankind can perpetrate to squash the other. As hard-hitting as the acts of violence are, more insidious is the evil that seeps into the system that aids and abets atrocities.--Poornima Apte Copyright 2019 Booklist

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