Multiple types of distressing subject matter presented in a riveting way. Difficult to keep reading, but impossible (for me, anyway) not to finish. The ending felt like a bit of a cop out. Three and a half stars. ( )

Takes the form of a journal - begging, pleading, questioning, raging at, despairing of and yearning for some sign or comfort from God. The story that’s told through the journal is pretty heavy.
A really decent read. ( )

Evening Primrose, Kopano Matlwa’s third novel (originally published in South Africa under the title Period Pain), is written in the form of a journal kept by Masechaba, a young doctor working in a busy South African city hospital. A recent medical school graduate, Masechaba’s menstrual cycle causes her intense suffering; it is one of the factors that motivated her to seek a career in medicine: to someday find a cure for chronic pain that, in her opinion, the medical profession has not adequately addressed. Ultimately though, Matlwa’s book is an examination of the social, gender and racial tensions that persist in South African society almost thirty years after the end of apartheid. Masechaba’s closest friend at the hospital is Nyasha, a physician from Zimbabwe with strong political convictions and activist tendencies who opens Masechaba’s eyes to the hostility with which many South Africans regard foreigners arriving to their country seeking work and a refuge from poverty and political instability. When anti-immigrant sentiment reaches a crisis point and begins to boil over into violence, Nyasha inspires Masechaba to launch a petition, to rally public opinion in the other direction and battle the spread of xenophobia. The petition is successful and receives media attention, but also makes Masechaba a target, and one day at the hospital in the middle of a shift, she is assaulted. The remainder of Masechaba’s journal entries describe her slow and agonizing recovery and her struggle to come to terms with the consequences of the assault. There is no question that, on an emotional level, Matlwa’s novel is devastating and troubling. However, the journal format that so effectively lends the narrative voice its raw power is also the reason why the drama remains muted and somewhat hazy: since we are only told by Masechaba what has happened after the fact, everything seems to occur offstage, with the result that the reader's experience of important events and response to them is blunted. The story ends on a hopeful note, with Masechaba ready to exert her independence and looking toward a future that will be very different from her past. This is a mature and uncompromising novel and Kopano Matlwa is a talented and passionate writer whose voice is well worth heeding. Nevertheless, the reader is left with the sense that, given its complex and morally explosive subject matter, Evening Primrose should resonate in the memory longer than it does. ( )

Desde que era niña, Masechaba sueña con hacerse médico y salvar vidas. En una joven Sudáfrica que no ha cerrado en absoluto las heridas de su pasado, la medicina le parece una vía ideal para contribuir a apaciguar el sufrimiento de una sociedad todavía xenófoba, machista y supersticiosa. Pero a la vez que trata de aliviar el dolor ajeno —trabajando en un hospital con pocos recursos y enfrentándose a diario con las penurias del sistema público de salud, que muchas veces pondrá a prueba su vocación— Masechaba tiene que lidiar con sus propios demonios: los fuertes dolores de menstruación y la vergüenza asociada a la misma, el duelo por el suicidio de su hermano y las presiones de una madre profundamente religiosa y reaccionaria que trata de alejarla de su única amiga, Nyasha, una combativa chica de Zimbabue que hará abrir los ojos a Masechaba sobre la creciente tensión xenófoba que acarrean los ecos del apartheid. A través de la experiencia personal de la protagonista —álter ego de la joven novelista sudafricana Kopano Matlwa—, Florescencia capta la atmósfera violenta y confusa de la Sudáfrica actual y reflexiona perspicazmente —desde una perspectiva que prolonga y renueva la de Nadine Gordimer o J.M. Coetzee— sobre las cuestiones de raza, pobreza y género. Masechaba será víctima de la cultura de la violación imperante, de la corrupción y el crimen institucionalizado en el sistema público de salud, de la xenofobia y la falta de oportunidades para los jóvenes con talento. El diagnóstico de un presente enfermo a través de una mirada pura y una prosa tan exacta que provoca lágrimas y escalofríos.