Book Review: Held Up by Christopher Radmann

Title: Held Up
Author: Christopher Radmann
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Headline Review

"Paul is a contented man; his life is cruising. But one day he's dragged out of his new BMW while waiting at traffic lights and his assailant drives off in his car.

It's an everyday car jacking in South Africa. Except his nine-month-old daughter is in the back seat. 

Paul descends into the heart of darkness of his country to find his child. He uncovers a criminal gang involved in people trafficking and discovers in himself a capacity for violence. When the trail goes cold, he is on the verge of losing everything, but finds redemption in the most unlikely circumstances.

Moving from the enclaves of Johannesburg's northern suburbs to the throbbing heart of Soweto's informal settlements, Paul is forced to confront the changing political and social landscape of the new South Africa, questioning his own values as his life is transformed.

If you happen to come across this book and expect it to be a page-turning, fast-paced thriller, then this book might disappoint you.

After reading the synopsis while browsing through the bookstore, I did not hesitate to buy it right away, even if it was a bit pricey. This book seemed to be so promising that I thought it was worth a try. However, as I began flipping through the pages, I realized this book wasn't exactly what it promises to be.

The book actually focuses more on the protagonist's (a white South African man named Paul Van Niekerk) internal struggles as he tries to cope with the loss of his very young daughter whom he and his wife had difficulty conceiving, and the impact of the carjacking and kidnapping on his five-year marriage to his wife Claire. It also dwells on some political and social issues in post-apartheid South Africa (the "new" South Africa, as the author would put it). 

While the book did have a sprinkling of thrilling parts here and there, the book would suddenly lose its momentum and suddenly become slow-paced (too painfully slow, in fact) again. The very liberal use of Afrikaans words and phrases throughout the book also slows things down for the reader, especially one who is not too familiar with the language. The author's writing style and the often too overly-poetic and unnatural dialogue by the characters and the narrative and the fact that the chapters drag on to over thirty pages each doesn't help, either.

Of course, the book does have its merits. I particularly like how the author draws readers in with the way he describes things. His descriptions of places like the slums of Soweto are very vivid and made me feel like I was actually there. The part where Paul and Claire try their best to control their emotions and have a "normal" meal immediately after their daughter's kidnapping but fail miserably was particularly compelling as well. The book also helped me understand more about South Africa, a country which I didn't know much about.

However, this book still falls short of my expectations. I felt like some parts were a bit unnecessary, which the book could have done better without (and replaced by other scenes instead). The sudden jumps in time in the latter parts of the book left me scratching my head, too. I'm not quite sure if this book is something I'd recommend. Probably not.