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The Reactive
"[The Reactive is] a searing, gorgeously written account of life, love, illness, and death in South Africa. With exquisite prose, formal innovation, and a masterful command of storytelling, Ntshanga illustrates how some young people navigated the dusk that followed the dawn of freedom in South Africa and humanizes the casualties of the Mbeki government's fatal policies on HIV & AIDS."
—Naomi Jackson, Poets & Writers
"Woozy, touching... a novel that delivers an unexpected love letter to Cape Town, painting it as a place of frustrated glory. The Reactive often teems with a beauty that seems to carry on in front of its glue-huffing wasters despite themselves."
—Marian Ryan, Slate
"With The Reactive, [Ntshanga] has created an immersive and powerful portrait of drug use, community, and health issues by exploring what it was like to be young, black, South African, and HIV positive in the early aughts."
�VICE
"[The Reactive] is an affecting, slow-burning novel that gives a fantastic sense of a particular place and time, and of the haunted inner life of its protagonist."
—Tobias Carroll, Star-Tribune (Minneapolis)
"This novel about an HIV+ man who mourns the death of his brother in Cape Town is shaping up to be one of the best debuts of 2016."
�Flavorwire
"Sharp and affecting... [Ntshanga] directs the story with an amazing precision of language that few writers can achieve in a lifetime of work. With a style all his own, Ntshanga animates despair and agitation in a collage of moments, memories and landscapes that speak volumes of a exigent moment in South African history."
�Alibi
"Gritty and revealing, Ntshanga's debut novel offers a brazen portrait of present-day South Africa. This is an eye-opening, ambitious novel."
�Publishers Weekly
"Ntshanga offers a devastating story yet tells it with noteworthy glow and flow that keeps pages turning until the glimmer-of-hope ending."
�Library Journal
From the winner of the PEN International New Voices Award comes the story of Lindanathi, a young HIV+ man grappling with the death of his brother, for which he feels unduly responsible. He and his friends—Cecelia and Ruan—work low-paying jobs and sell anti-retroviral drugs (during the period in South Africa before ARVs became broadly distributed). In between, they huff glue, drift through parties, and traverse the streets of Cape Town where they observe the grave material disparities of their country.
A mysterious masked man appears seeking to buy their surplus of ARVs, an offer that would present the friends with the opportunity to escape their environs, while at the same time forcing Lindanathi to confront his path, and finally, his past.
With brilliant, shimmering prose, Ntshanga has delivered a redemptive, ambitious, and unforgettable first novel.
Masande Ntshanga is the winner of the inaugural PEN International New Voices Award in 2013, and a finalist for the Caine Prize in 2015. He was born in East London in 1986 and graduated with a degree in Film and Media and an Honours degree in English Studies from UCT, where he became a creative writing fellow, completing his Masters in Creative Writing under the Mellon Mays Foundation. He received a Fulbright Award, an NRF Freestanding Masters scholarship, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship and a Bundanon Trust Award. His work has appeared in The White Review, Chimurenga, VICE and n + 1. He has also written for Rolling Stone magazine.
—Naomi Jackson, Poets & Writers
"Woozy, touching... a novel that delivers an unexpected love letter to Cape Town, painting it as a place of frustrated glory. The Reactive often teems with a beauty that seems to carry on in front of its glue-huffing wasters despite themselves."
—Marian Ryan, Slate
"With The Reactive, [Ntshanga] has created an immersive and powerful portrait of drug use, community, and health issues by exploring what it was like to be young, black, South African, and HIV positive in the early aughts."
�VICE
"[The Reactive] is an affecting, slow-burning novel that gives a fantastic sense of a particular place and time, and of the haunted inner life of its protagonist."
—Tobias Carroll, Star-Tribune (Minneapolis)
"This novel about an HIV+ man who mourns the death of his brother in Cape Town is shaping up to be one of the best debuts of 2016."
�Flavorwire
"Sharp and affecting... [Ntshanga] directs the story with an amazing precision of language that few writers can achieve in a lifetime of work. With a style all his own, Ntshanga animates despair and agitation in a collage of moments, memories and landscapes that speak volumes of a exigent moment in South African history."
�Alibi
"Gritty and revealing, Ntshanga's debut novel offers a brazen portrait of present-day South Africa. This is an eye-opening, ambitious novel."
�Publishers Weekly
"Ntshanga offers a devastating story yet tells it with noteworthy glow and flow that keeps pages turning until the glimmer-of-hope ending."
�Library Journal
From the winner of the PEN International New Voices Award comes the story of Lindanathi, a young HIV+ man grappling with the death of his brother, for which he feels unduly responsible. He and his friends—Cecelia and Ruan—work low-paying jobs and sell anti-retroviral drugs (during the period in South Africa before ARVs became broadly distributed). In between, they huff glue, drift through parties, and traverse the streets of Cape Town where they observe the grave material disparities of their country.
A mysterious masked man appears seeking to buy their surplus of ARVs, an offer that would present the friends with the opportunity to escape their environs, while at the same time forcing Lindanathi to confront his path, and finally, his past.
With brilliant, shimmering prose, Ntshanga has delivered a redemptive, ambitious, and unforgettable first novel.
Masande Ntshanga is the winner of the inaugural PEN International New Voices Award in 2013, and a finalist for the Caine Prize in 2015. He was born in East London in 1986 and graduated with a degree in Film and Media and an Honours degree in English Studies from UCT, where he became a creative writing fellow, completing his Masters in Creative Writing under the Mellon Mays Foundation. He received a Fulbright Award, an NRF Freestanding Masters scholarship, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship and a Bundanon Trust Award. His work has appeared in The White Review, Chimurenga, VICE and n + 1. He has also written for Rolling Stone magazine.
212 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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861 people want to read
About the author
Masande Ntshanga
7books75followersMasande Ntshanga is the winner of the Betty Trask Award in 2018, winner of the inaugural PEN International New Voices Award in 2013, and a finalist for the Caine Prize in 2015. He was born in East London, South Africa, and graduated with a degree in Film and Media and an Honours degree in English Studies from the University of Cape Town, where he became a creative writing fellow, completing his Masters in Creative Writing under the Mellon Mays Foundation. He received a Fulbright Award, an NRF Freestanding Masters scholarship, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship and a Bundanon Trust Award. His work has appeared in The White Review, chimurenga, VICE, The Los Angeles Review of Books, n + 1 and MIT Technology Review. He has also written for Rolling Stone magazine.
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November 16, 2017
Lindanathi means "wait with us.� What I’m meant to be waiting for, or who I’m meant to be waiting with, I was never told.
It's just what my name is.
I'm Nathi.
Jacaranda Books is an important voice in the UK’s small independent publisher scene, best known as the UK publisher of Tram 83, longlisted for both the 2016 Man Booker International (my review: /review/show...) and, in its US edition from Deep Vellum, the Best Translated Book Award. Their mission statement reads:
Our narrator, Nathi, begins his first person tale with the striking opening:
Ten years ago, I helped a handful of men take my little brother's life. I was there when it happened, but I told Luthando where to find them. Earlier that year, my brother and I had made a pact to combine our initiation ceremonies.
Luthando (”LT�) is actually his step-brother, Nathi’s father having had children with two different women, and when Luthando was 10 his mother, married another man, Bhut� Voyo.
Luthando dies at 17, and Nathi tried to make something of myself by entering college in Cape Town and although he drops out of Cape Town University, he finds another place easily enough at a Technikon where he studies science: It didn't take much to go to school for free, in those days, or rather to trade on the pigment we were given to carry.
He goes to live with Bhut� Voyo, to whom he makes a promise that will come to haunt him, but which is only revealed (and then not entirely clearly) at the novel’s end.
The main part of the novel is set 10 years after his brother’s death, with Nathi living in the Newlands area of Cape Town with Cissie and Ruan, and distanced from his family.
Like always, the three of us - that's me, Ruan and Cecilia - we wake up some time before noon and take two Ibuprofens each. Then we go back to sleep, wake up and hour later, and take another two from the 800-milligram pack. Then Cissie turns on the stove to cook up a batch of glue, and the three of us wander around mutely after that, digging the sleep out of our eyes and caroming off each other's limbs. We drift through whatever passes for early afternoon here at Cissie's place.
Nathi was working as a research scientist at a HIV research laboratory � but one year after I graduated from Tech and a week before the sixth anniversary of LT’s death, I infected myself with HIV in the laboratories. That’s how I became a reactive. I never had the reactions I needed for myself, and I couldn’t react when LT called to me for help, so I gave my body something it couldn’t flee from. Now here’s your elder brother and murderer, Luthando. His name is Lindinathi, and his parents got it from a girl.
The three met at a HIV and drug counselling session: Cissie a teacher and there because her day care centre had accepted its first openly positive pupil, Ruan, a computer expert, wanting to see if there was an issue his uncle's firm could support for its Corporate Social Responsibility.
The novel is set just before the time that the South African government made anti-retroviral drugs widely available, and hence they are expensive, hard to come by and highly sought after. The three form a partnership selling on the ARV pills that Nathi receives from his insurance company (as part of the compensation from the laboratory), Ruan responsible for designing the advertising posters and handling orders and Cissie’s glue being mostly used to affix the posters to wall but the left-overs sniffed.
Of the three of us, I'm the one who's supposed to be dying. In order to do as much standing around as I do, you need to be one of the forty million human beings currently infected with the immunodeficiency virus. Then you need to stand at your friend's computer and design a poster over his shoulder, one telling people you re here to help them. Then you need to provide them with your details - tell them you prefer email or SMS - and then start selling them your pills.
They still attend the sessions � although largely to find potential new customers � although via this device we do get snippets of the lives of some of the other HIV positive attendees. Snippets only as:
We enter each session prepared to deflect the counsel leader, whose job is to put whatever remains of us under glass. If you listen to counsellors, they'll tell you that they want full disclosure in meetings, but most of us know how to hand out facts in small doses only. Therapy won't walk you home after you pack up the chairs. Telling too much about yourself can leave you feeling broken into.
The conversations between the characters tend to be slow and drawn out, for example when Cissie asks him an important question:
I look ahead. I can feel my elbows digging holes in the sand. I flip the copper lid of the lighter and torch the joint as its pointed end. It burns slowly and I take a long drag before I let the smoke out through my nostrils on thick white plumes.
I'll work on it I say.
Then the three of us go quiet for a while.
The sand under my feet feels packed. Closer now, the container shop sounds its horn, its bilge cleaving the water like a scalpel through skin. I watch as a handful of ships melt into the horizon, each one swaying before tipping over the edge of the world.
And, in part from the sensory overload from the stimulants he takes, Nathi’s narration is strong on sensation and description:
I cross over the short steel bridge and buy a packet of Niknaks. Then I walk to the bay marked for Claremont, feeling like this is what I’ve become: a human without a workplace. Inside the taxi, I lean my head against the glass and watch as a pink band wraps itself around the sky over Cape Town � from Maitland to Athlone � and a haze of pollution simmers over the land beneath it. I can feel the cogs of the city’s industries churning down to stillness, and smell the exhaust fumes from the taxis, as if each plume was mixing in with our own exhaustion.
As the quotes above suggest, the three's heavy use of recreational drugs rather dominates some of the narration, but is really intended as background rather than a main theme of the novel. As the author has stated in an interview (and I must admit I was one of the readers he mentions, as well as wondering why he inserted a couple of rather incongruously explicit sex scenes):
His theme is more guilt, and mortality � both Nathi’s own, which he considers inevitable if delayed, and on which the friends often ruminate, inspired by stimulants:
Last Life is the name we’ve come up with for what happens to me during my last year on the planet. Like always we stayed up for most of the previous night with the question. We finished the wine first. Then we moved on to the bottle of benzene.
And that of his brother, the guilt for which still haunts him. He seems torn between his original desire, to make something of himself, and a contrary one to almost allow his life to slip away � it is never 100% clear if the HIV infection was accidental (as the insurers assume) or deliberate (as he hints).
The novel rather drifts along, as Nathi himself does, indeed even the progress of the destruction of his antibodies from HIV, given he takes none of the drugs prescribed, is unusually slow � he is a very unreactive, reactive - sufficiently so that his former boss from the laboratory uses him for research in to whether he has some natural resistance to the condition.
But there is a rather odd insertion of a dramatic device, when the three are contacted by a mysterious man, his disfigured face covered by a mask, who knows all about them and offers to buy their entire supply. But the story doesn’t really lead anywhere and as Nathi says (seemingly sharing the reader's frustration!):
We never hear from the ugly man again. I guess there isn't much else to say about him. He's just one of this city's many ciphers we decide, one of the strange things that happen in the alleyways of the Southern Peninsula.
At the novel’s end, Nathi returns home, summoned by his uncle, Bhut� Voyo, to encounter both the poverty he came from and his past guilt and the need to fulfil the promise he made.
Overall, a promising debut from a fresh new voice, and a book that certainly fulfils Jacaranda Press’s remit, but one that (as often with debuts) perhaps packs too much into its 180 brief pages and does not always bring them together entirely successfully.
But worthwhile - and thanks to Jacaranda for the ARC.
It's just what my name is.
I'm Nathi.
Jacaranda Books is an important voice in the UK’s small independent publisher scene, best known as the UK publisher of Tram 83, longlisted for both the 2016 Man Booker International (my review: /review/show...) and, in its US edition from Deep Vellum, the Best Translated Book Award. Their mission statement reads:
We publish adult fiction and non-fiction, including illustrated books, which cross linguistic, racial, gender and cultural boundaries � books in many ways as cosmopolitan as our city.The Reactive is the debut novel by the young South African writer Masande Nsthanga, published in South Africa in 2014, picked up in the US in 2016 and now brought to us in the UK by Jacaranda Books in 2017.
Through our authors and books, we aim to represent the cultural and ethnic diversity and heritage that can be found in London, with a particular interest in works related to Africa, the Caribbean, and the experiences of those peoples in the Diaspora. We also seek provocative, inspirational writing that shines a light on issues affecting ethnic minorities, women, and young people, and tackles contemporary social issues.
Our narrator, Nathi, begins his first person tale with the striking opening:
Ten years ago, I helped a handful of men take my little brother's life. I was there when it happened, but I told Luthando where to find them. Earlier that year, my brother and I had made a pact to combine our initiation ceremonies.
Luthando (”LT�) is actually his step-brother, Nathi’s father having had children with two different women, and when Luthando was 10 his mother, married another man, Bhut� Voyo.
Luthando dies at 17, and Nathi tried to make something of myself by entering college in Cape Town and although he drops out of Cape Town University, he finds another place easily enough at a Technikon where he studies science: It didn't take much to go to school for free, in those days, or rather to trade on the pigment we were given to carry.
He goes to live with Bhut� Voyo, to whom he makes a promise that will come to haunt him, but which is only revealed (and then not entirely clearly) at the novel’s end.
The main part of the novel is set 10 years after his brother’s death, with Nathi living in the Newlands area of Cape Town with Cissie and Ruan, and distanced from his family.
Like always, the three of us - that's me, Ruan and Cecilia - we wake up some time before noon and take two Ibuprofens each. Then we go back to sleep, wake up and hour later, and take another two from the 800-milligram pack. Then Cissie turns on the stove to cook up a batch of glue, and the three of us wander around mutely after that, digging the sleep out of our eyes and caroming off each other's limbs. We drift through whatever passes for early afternoon here at Cissie's place.
Nathi was working as a research scientist at a HIV research laboratory � but one year after I graduated from Tech and a week before the sixth anniversary of LT’s death, I infected myself with HIV in the laboratories. That’s how I became a reactive. I never had the reactions I needed for myself, and I couldn’t react when LT called to me for help, so I gave my body something it couldn’t flee from. Now here’s your elder brother and murderer, Luthando. His name is Lindinathi, and his parents got it from a girl.
The three met at a HIV and drug counselling session: Cissie a teacher and there because her day care centre had accepted its first openly positive pupil, Ruan, a computer expert, wanting to see if there was an issue his uncle's firm could support for its Corporate Social Responsibility.
The novel is set just before the time that the South African government made anti-retroviral drugs widely available, and hence they are expensive, hard to come by and highly sought after. The three form a partnership selling on the ARV pills that Nathi receives from his insurance company (as part of the compensation from the laboratory), Ruan responsible for designing the advertising posters and handling orders and Cissie’s glue being mostly used to affix the posters to wall but the left-overs sniffed.
Of the three of us, I'm the one who's supposed to be dying. In order to do as much standing around as I do, you need to be one of the forty million human beings currently infected with the immunodeficiency virus. Then you need to stand at your friend's computer and design a poster over his shoulder, one telling people you re here to help them. Then you need to provide them with your details - tell them you prefer email or SMS - and then start selling them your pills.
They still attend the sessions � although largely to find potential new customers � although via this device we do get snippets of the lives of some of the other HIV positive attendees. Snippets only as:
We enter each session prepared to deflect the counsel leader, whose job is to put whatever remains of us under glass. If you listen to counsellors, they'll tell you that they want full disclosure in meetings, but most of us know how to hand out facts in small doses only. Therapy won't walk you home after you pack up the chairs. Telling too much about yourself can leave you feeling broken into.
The conversations between the characters tend to be slow and drawn out, for example when Cissie asks him an important question:
I look ahead. I can feel my elbows digging holes in the sand. I flip the copper lid of the lighter and torch the joint as its pointed end. It burns slowly and I take a long drag before I let the smoke out through my nostrils on thick white plumes.
I'll work on it I say.
Then the three of us go quiet for a while.
The sand under my feet feels packed. Closer now, the container shop sounds its horn, its bilge cleaving the water like a scalpel through skin. I watch as a handful of ships melt into the horizon, each one swaying before tipping over the edge of the world.
And, in part from the sensory overload from the stimulants he takes, Nathi’s narration is strong on sensation and description:
I cross over the short steel bridge and buy a packet of Niknaks. Then I walk to the bay marked for Claremont, feeling like this is what I’ve become: a human without a workplace. Inside the taxi, I lean my head against the glass and watch as a pink band wraps itself around the sky over Cape Town � from Maitland to Athlone � and a haze of pollution simmers over the land beneath it. I can feel the cogs of the city’s industries churning down to stillness, and smell the exhaust fumes from the taxis, as if each plume was mixing in with our own exhaustion.
As the quotes above suggest, the three's heavy use of recreational drugs rather dominates some of the narration, but is really intended as background rather than a main theme of the novel. As the author has stated in an interview (and I must admit I was one of the readers he mentions, as well as wondering why he inserted a couple of rather incongruously explicit sex scenes):
I think some readers haven’t come to terms with the idea that recreational drug use can be included in a novel without the intention of making a moral point about substance use, but as an extension of the novel’s simulated reality, and in service of a greater theme.
In this novel, for example, I thought the drugs could be argued to serve four functions: one, to bring the characters together, two, to facilitate Lindanathi’s evasion [of his grief at his brother’s death], and three, as a parallel to the unaffordable pharmaceuticals that the three characters sell and the government withholds, and four, to explore the fluidity of consciousness and memory.
His theme is more guilt, and mortality � both Nathi’s own, which he considers inevitable if delayed, and on which the friends often ruminate, inspired by stimulants:
Last Life is the name we’ve come up with for what happens to me during my last year on the planet. Like always we stayed up for most of the previous night with the question. We finished the wine first. Then we moved on to the bottle of benzene.
And that of his brother, the guilt for which still haunts him. He seems torn between his original desire, to make something of himself, and a contrary one to almost allow his life to slip away � it is never 100% clear if the HIV infection was accidental (as the insurers assume) or deliberate (as he hints).
The novel rather drifts along, as Nathi himself does, indeed even the progress of the destruction of his antibodies from HIV, given he takes none of the drugs prescribed, is unusually slow � he is a very unreactive, reactive - sufficiently so that his former boss from the laboratory uses him for research in to whether he has some natural resistance to the condition.
But there is a rather odd insertion of a dramatic device, when the three are contacted by a mysterious man, his disfigured face covered by a mask, who knows all about them and offers to buy their entire supply. But the story doesn’t really lead anywhere and as Nathi says (seemingly sharing the reader's frustration!):
We never hear from the ugly man again. I guess there isn't much else to say about him. He's just one of this city's many ciphers we decide, one of the strange things that happen in the alleyways of the Southern Peninsula.
At the novel’s end, Nathi returns home, summoned by his uncle, Bhut� Voyo, to encounter both the poverty he came from and his past guilt and the need to fulfil the promise he made.
Overall, a promising debut from a fresh new voice, and a book that certainly fulfils Jacaranda Press’s remit, but one that (as often with debuts) perhaps packs too much into its 180 brief pages and does not always bring them together entirely successfully.
But worthwhile - and thanks to Jacaranda for the ARC.
Read
December 26, 2017Like the Tardis, this little book is bigger on the inside. Energetic in spite of its subject matter; thought-provoking in spite of its apparent simplicity and filled with a stealthy kind of poetry, it handles the mundane and the unthinkable with the same deft and devastating touch. Not easy; not light; but definitely worthwhile.
October 11, 2017
I’m Nathi and of the three of us, I’m the one who is supposed to be dying. In order to do as much standing around as I do, you need to be one of the forty million human beings currently infected with the immunodeficiency virus. Then you need to stand at your friend’s computer and design a poster over his shoulder, one telling these people you’re here to help them. Then you need to provide them with your details � tell them you prefer email or SMS � and then you start to sell them your pills
This book is published by a small UK independent publishing house Jacaranda Books. Their aim is to “publish adult fiction and non-fiction, including illustrated books, which cross linguistic, racial, gender and cultural boundaries � books in many ways as cosmopolitan as our city� They “aim to represent the cultural and ethnic diversity and heritage that can be found in London, with a particular interest in works related to Africa, the Caribbean, and the experiences of those peoples in the Diaspora. We also seek provocative, inspirational writing that shines a light on issues affecting ethnic minorities, women, and young people, and tackles contemporary social issues.�
This book was originally published, to local acclaim, in South Africa in 2014 and has now been published in the UK by Jacaranda.
The book is set in Cape Town around 2003 (although ranging back over the previous 10 or more years) and is set against two backdrops, a national and personal one. The national one is the South African government’s refusal to provide antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to its exploding HIV positive population, a refusal grounded in President Mbeki’s entirely unscientific questioning of the link between HIV and AIDS (a quote that serves as the epigraph to the book). The personal one relates to the first person (largely present tense) narrator of the book Lindanathi (Nathi) who opens the book (with a sentence that seems lifted from a creative writing class on how to open a novel) by stating
Ten years ago, I helped a handful of men take my little brother’s life. I wasn’t there when it happened but I told Luthando where to find them
Luthando is his step brother, and we quickly discover that he died after a botched male circumcision in a tribal male coming of age/initiation ceremony � one that Nathi had promised to attend with him; he is now living with the aftermath of that failed promise. After this, Nathi moved to Cape Town and drifted out of University to his mother’s shame, and went to live for a short period with his Uncle and Luthando’s step father Bhut� Vuyo to whom he made another promise, the book opens with Nathi now living in Cape Town with two friends Cissie and Ruan, being reminded of that promise by a text from his Uncle.
Uncle says ukhuilie ngoku, you’ve come of age.
Ruan became a lab assistant testing samples for HIV antibodies and seemingly infects himself with HIV.
That’s how I became a reactive. I never had the reactions I needed for myself, and I couldn’t react when LT called me for help, so I gave my own body something it couldn’t flee from
He receives a severance package from the lab, which he uses to fund a medical plan including ARV drugs.
The three friends meet at an HIV and drug counselling session. Nathi need proof of attendance for his medical plan and therefore to keep receiving the ARC drugs, Cissie (a teacher in a daycare centre) attends “on account of the school’s accepting its first openly positive pupil� and Ruan (who has struggled to hold down a job and ends up working in his uncle’s business) “was there to shop for a social issue they could use for their corporate responsibility strategy�. When the topic moves from HIV to drug use, their shared grins bond them together (presumably as unrepentant recreational drug users) and the three form an immediate bond.
All three are part of the same generation � able to take advantage of post-apartheid opportunities for a college education.
It didn’t take much to go to school for free, in those days, or rather to trade on the pigment we were given to carry
In practice though all end up as drop outs, and they form a business together selling ARVs to the HIV positive. Cissie makes glue for the posters and provides accomodation, Ruan prints posters and deals with customers emails, Nathi provides the pills.
In between sales, they indulge in (what they believe to be) meaningful conversations, attend occasional performance art parties, drink and indulge in forms of drug abuse, particularly of industrial solvents
What we’re doing is having one of our talks about what to do for Last Life. Last Life is the name we’ve come up with for what happens to me during my last year on the planet. Like always, we stayed up for most of the previous night with the question. We finished the wine first. Then we moved on to the bottle of benzene
The book takes an extremely odd turn, with a metal-masked man who transfers large amounts of money into their account (causing their lifestyles to turn, if possible, even more dissolute), tells folk tales which were meaningless to this reader but apparently send the three friends into a hypnotic trance where we learn a little of their backstories, asks for an odd favour, then rescinds the money and vanishes. Nathi seems to share this reader’s attitude to this bizarre intermission
We never hear from the ugly man again. I guess there isn’t much else to say about him. He’s just one of the city’s many ciphers.
Although no such explanation is given for the insertion of what appears to be a page of a pornographic novel in the story.
The book ends on something of a positive resolution of both backdrops: the South African government finally relents and agrees to provide free ARVs to its citizens and Nathi (who stil has not developed AIDS, “I was still reactive, just slow to develop the syndrome�, returns to his Uncle, undergoes his own initation ceremony and seems to resolve to approach life more positively.
My promise, what I told them, is the same thing I’ll tell you now. My name, what my parents got from a girl, is Lindanathi. It means “wait with us� and that’s what I plan on doing. So in the end I guess this is for you, Luthando. This is your older brother Lindanathi, and I’m ready to react for us
Overall I struggled to find any resonance with any of the themes in this book � which simply seemed to be trying to do too many things at once, with none of them seeming to succeed.
My thanks to Jacaranda for an ARC.
September 11, 2017
There’s a lot of drugs in this book. The three main characters take every opportunity to consume any kind of drugs they can get their hands on. The make money by selling the anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs that our protagonist (Lindanathi) receives to help manage his HIV. Lindanathi has two friends called Cecilia and Ruan. When introducing Ruan, he says Meet him and he’s probably coming down or high. The three of us don’t manage to stay in between for too long.
This is worth noting because much of the book feels like you are taking a trip (I’ve not actually ever “done drugs�, but this reads like I imagine it would feel). Parts of the book read like a hallucination. All of the book reads a bit like I’ve felt after one whisky too many (maybe I have “done drugs�): I’m there but things are a bit floaty!
We are told right at the start that Lindanathi is battling with guilt because of the part he played (or perhaps didn’t play) in the events that led to his half-brother’s death. A large part of the book is concerned with him trying to come to terms with that. Drugs help to form a barrier that insulate him from the world, numb him to some of his grief, stop him from having to make decisions. As that struggle develops, we learn how Lindanathi became HIV-positive.
Intertwined with this personal struggle are reflections on the political climate in South Africa at the time the novel is set. It is the early 2000s and just before the time when the government made ARVs freely available to people with HIV. There is an epigraph at the front of the book which contains a quote by Thabo Mbeki (former president of South Africa) where he says “We need to look at the question that is posed, understandably I suppose: does HIV cause AIDS?�. I guess most people reading this would wonder how anyone could ask such a question. If you Google Mbeki and AIDS you can see the controversy and accusation/denial that followed.
Consistent with the detachment that comes from the drug taking, the novel never engages with this question specifically, but it does keep it in the background. The novel itself focuses on Lindanathi and his efforts to come to terms with his brother’s death. There are other reviews here that can give a plot summary if that’s what you want.
I really liked the writing style here. I liked the way it avoided the obvious drama that could have been part of the story in another author’s hands. As it starts, you perhaps think you are going to read a thriller: the protagonist blames himself for his brother’s death and then, later in the book, there’s a mysterious figure who appears, says and does some very confusing things and then disappears. As the book says
We never hear from the ugly man again. I guess there isn’t much else to say about him. He’s just one of the city’s many ciphers.
And this is probably infuriating for many readers but was actually one of the highlights of the book for me.
So, for vivid writing, for a story that engaged me all the way through even if there isn’t a lot of plot and for a story that mixes personal and political in a very fresh way, I give it 4 stars. I really liked it.
My thanks to Jacaranda Books for a review copy of this novel.
This is worth noting because much of the book feels like you are taking a trip (I’ve not actually ever “done drugs�, but this reads like I imagine it would feel). Parts of the book read like a hallucination. All of the book reads a bit like I’ve felt after one whisky too many (maybe I have “done drugs�): I’m there but things are a bit floaty!
We are told right at the start that Lindanathi is battling with guilt because of the part he played (or perhaps didn’t play) in the events that led to his half-brother’s death. A large part of the book is concerned with him trying to come to terms with that. Drugs help to form a barrier that insulate him from the world, numb him to some of his grief, stop him from having to make decisions. As that struggle develops, we learn how Lindanathi became HIV-positive.
Intertwined with this personal struggle are reflections on the political climate in South Africa at the time the novel is set. It is the early 2000s and just before the time when the government made ARVs freely available to people with HIV. There is an epigraph at the front of the book which contains a quote by Thabo Mbeki (former president of South Africa) where he says “We need to look at the question that is posed, understandably I suppose: does HIV cause AIDS?�. I guess most people reading this would wonder how anyone could ask such a question. If you Google Mbeki and AIDS you can see the controversy and accusation/denial that followed.
Consistent with the detachment that comes from the drug taking, the novel never engages with this question specifically, but it does keep it in the background. The novel itself focuses on Lindanathi and his efforts to come to terms with his brother’s death. There are other reviews here that can give a plot summary if that’s what you want.
I really liked the writing style here. I liked the way it avoided the obvious drama that could have been part of the story in another author’s hands. As it starts, you perhaps think you are going to read a thriller: the protagonist blames himself for his brother’s death and then, later in the book, there’s a mysterious figure who appears, says and does some very confusing things and then disappears. As the book says
We never hear from the ugly man again. I guess there isn’t much else to say about him. He’s just one of the city’s many ciphers.
And this is probably infuriating for many readers but was actually one of the highlights of the book for me.
So, for vivid writing, for a story that engaged me all the way through even if there isn’t a lot of plot and for a story that mixes personal and political in a very fresh way, I give it 4 stars. I really liked it.
My thanks to Jacaranda Books for a review copy of this novel.
May 10, 2019
Once again I have the Nervous Breakdown Book Club (a subscription) to thank for sending a book I would otherwise not have read, let alone heard about. Brad Listi, who chooses the books and then interviews the authors on his Otherppl podcast, makes sure to spotlight new authors as well as indie presses.
The Reactive, written in English by a native, black South African male, is set in Cape Town. It is the year 2000, Apartheid has just ended and the HIV virus is rampant. ARVs (anti-retroviral drugs) are being produced but they are not yet widely available and are prohibitively expensive.
Lindanathi is a young man whose half brother has recently been brutally killed. That loss along with him testing as HIV+ has alienated him from his family and the small village where he grew up. His uncle is calling him home. Lindanathi has lost his way in life, dropping out of school and living an aimless existence with two friends.
These friends work low paying jobs and supplement their income selling ARVs on the black market. Mostly they stay high and contemplate the inequalities in their country. The dreariness of life, the lack of purpose, the wounds they carry are not spelled out. The author shows us rather than telling us. He takes us through the minutiae of their days, through the conversations between them, through the pictures he creates of their surroundings.
The prose is hypnotic, filled with atmosphere and wandering. I was not aware of a plot until I got to the end. I had been taken on Lindanathi's psychic journey from grief and guilt over his brother along with anxiety about his own mortality to a state of redemption through penance and reconnection with the traditions and values of his home village.
Not since Chinua Achebe's African Trilogy (Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, No Longer At Ease) have I been so moved by writing from the countries of Africa. I will be on the lookout for more novels from Masande Ntshanga.
January 24, 2016
Word Salad Review:
Shimmering Prose, Unforgettable, Powerful Portrait, Confronts the History of South Africa, Ntshanga Elevates the Story with Startling Compassion, Defamiliarizes the Familiar, Strange Savoring Style Yet Absent of Pretentious Posing, Ennui, Weirdness, Guilty Characters Grasping for Humanity, First Novel, ARVs, Seminal, Like a Funeral, Intrigue, Quietly Murders the Heart.
Awesome cover art and a flowing narrative which sheds lights on many issues. A novel like The Reactive risks a lot, but ultimately proves the political is the personal is the historical is the aesthetical. I know that's not a word, but I like it. I get tired of sounding like a reviewer so I'll just say that it was a pleasure to read the book and will likely read it again in May! #Goodread
(UNCORRECTED ADVANCE PROOF. MAY 3rd, 2016 RELEASE DATE.)
Shimmering Prose, Unforgettable, Powerful Portrait, Confronts the History of South Africa, Ntshanga Elevates the Story with Startling Compassion, Defamiliarizes the Familiar, Strange Savoring Style Yet Absent of Pretentious Posing, Ennui, Weirdness, Guilty Characters Grasping for Humanity, First Novel, ARVs, Seminal, Like a Funeral, Intrigue, Quietly Murders the Heart.
Awesome cover art and a flowing narrative which sheds lights on many issues. A novel like The Reactive risks a lot, but ultimately proves the political is the personal is the historical is the aesthetical. I know that's not a word, but I like it. I get tired of sounding like a reviewer so I'll just say that it was a pleasure to read the book and will likely read it again in May! #Goodread
(UNCORRECTED ADVANCE PROOF. MAY 3rd, 2016 RELEASE DATE.)
October 11, 2017
The Reactive, by Masande Ntshanga, offers a snapshot of life in South Africa under the shadow of AIDs. Its protagonist is a young man named Lindanathi who is HIV positive. He spends his days getting high on drugs with two friends. All three are familiar with death having lost close family members. Lindanathi carries a burden of guilt following his younger brother’s death.
The trio are intelligent and articulate yet appear lacking in ambition. Perhaps it is the circumstances of their time and place that leaves them devoid of hope in a better way of living. They trade the drugs Lindanathi is given for his condition, using the proceeds to keep them supplied with alcohol, tobacco and glue. They hold down jobs they do not care for yet accept as their due.
The story, such as it is, unfolds slowly. An uncle gets in touch with Lindanathi calling in a promise made when his brother died. A mysterious client offers an unusually large sum of money for a supply of drugs. There is a disturbing scene played out with prostitutes. There are accusations of cultural appropriation.
Although working through these various plotlines the narrative provides cognisance more than action. In one scene the trio of friends are smoking on a beach pondering the history of a place where two foreign armies once fought over which of them owned the natives. Slavery is a shadow that has not fully dissipated, skin tone still affecting life’s possibilities.
Lindanathi had achieved a place at university but chose to drop out, causing a rift with his family. He drifts through each day seeking only chemical sensation. Whilst feeling compassion for the impact of his compromised health on his mental wellbeing, his inability to believe in a future for himself, it is hard to like his character given his actions.
The temperate prose and teasing out of the backstory engage the reader in a subtle yet substantial tale. I did get lost in places, failing to understand the significance of certain scenes, particularly involving the masked man. When reading any book it is necessary to interpret an author’s intended meaning. I suspect important elements of this tale were lost in my translation.
My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Jacaranda.
The trio are intelligent and articulate yet appear lacking in ambition. Perhaps it is the circumstances of their time and place that leaves them devoid of hope in a better way of living. They trade the drugs Lindanathi is given for his condition, using the proceeds to keep them supplied with alcohol, tobacco and glue. They hold down jobs they do not care for yet accept as their due.
The story, such as it is, unfolds slowly. An uncle gets in touch with Lindanathi calling in a promise made when his brother died. A mysterious client offers an unusually large sum of money for a supply of drugs. There is a disturbing scene played out with prostitutes. There are accusations of cultural appropriation.
Although working through these various plotlines the narrative provides cognisance more than action. In one scene the trio of friends are smoking on a beach pondering the history of a place where two foreign armies once fought over which of them owned the natives. Slavery is a shadow that has not fully dissipated, skin tone still affecting life’s possibilities.
Lindanathi had achieved a place at university but chose to drop out, causing a rift with his family. He drifts through each day seeking only chemical sensation. Whilst feeling compassion for the impact of his compromised health on his mental wellbeing, his inability to believe in a future for himself, it is hard to like his character given his actions.
The temperate prose and teasing out of the backstory engage the reader in a subtle yet substantial tale. I did get lost in places, failing to understand the significance of certain scenes, particularly involving the masked man. When reading any book it is necessary to interpret an author’s intended meaning. I suspect important elements of this tale were lost in my translation.
My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Jacaranda.
June 5, 2019
Questa lettura non mi ha coinvolto moltissimo, però è un'interessante descrizione della difficile realtà del Sudafrica dal punto di vista di una persona sieropositiva. Seguire le vicende del protagonista e dei suoi amici è anche un viaggio fra le allucinanti droghe africane. I personaggi non sono positivi ma estremamente complicati, forse anche troppo... Nel senso che diventano un po' confusionarie le loro motivazioni e quindi anche il finale lascia il tempo che trova. Nel complesso ho trovato comunque un autore da tenere d'occhio.
August 21, 2017
I really wanted to like this one because when I picked it up I heard a lot of “I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s really interesting so far!� I think I should have taken more note of the fact that no one had finished it as a warning.
I honestly found this book depressing, disconnected and disjointed. Three-quarters of the story consists of drug-induced hazes and poor decision-making followed up with a hasty bow tied off to wrap up the story. I can’t say I have a solid understanding of much of what happened in the story or of what the message was supposed to be. It is also never a good sign when a character is re-introduced and you try to flip back to figure out “Who was that again?� It was only be sheer stubbornness that I insisted on finishing the read.
We never got to know the characters, the motivations or their complexities. We never got a chance to understand why Lindi was set on making the decisions he did or if he ever came to terms with the actions he took. The end doesn’t sync up with the rest of the story although it does line up with a big historical event I would have thought might have had a bigger impact. In the end, I had very high hopes, but it just fell short for me.
Warning: Contains repeatead drug use, sexual content and violence.
Who should read it? I can’t honestly recommend this one, but I am sure there are those who would.
Please note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review courtesy of the publisher.
See all my reviews and more at or @Read2Distract
I honestly found this book depressing, disconnected and disjointed. Three-quarters of the story consists of drug-induced hazes and poor decision-making followed up with a hasty bow tied off to wrap up the story. I can’t say I have a solid understanding of much of what happened in the story or of what the message was supposed to be. It is also never a good sign when a character is re-introduced and you try to flip back to figure out “Who was that again?� It was only be sheer stubbornness that I insisted on finishing the read.
We never got to know the characters, the motivations or their complexities. We never got a chance to understand why Lindi was set on making the decisions he did or if he ever came to terms with the actions he took. The end doesn’t sync up with the rest of the story although it does line up with a big historical event I would have thought might have had a bigger impact. In the end, I had very high hopes, but it just fell short for me.
Warning: Contains repeatead drug use, sexual content and violence.
Who should read it? I can’t honestly recommend this one, but I am sure there are those who would.
Please note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review courtesy of the publisher.
See all my reviews and more at or @Read2Distract
March 13, 2017
This book has a gritty and yet somehow lush storytelling element that tells the story of Nathi and his friends Cecilia and Ruan. We see these young people as they fade in and out of consciousness while they fade in and out of life. I was reminded of all the things that we don't share when we're sharing our story. We see this time and time again throughout The Reactive as we see people telling their stories at support meetings and knowing they won't say everything or as we learn about how these three friends came to be how there are pieces of their past that they never share with each other. This was a book that buzzed with the electricity and feeling of a city, but at the same time had that slow hum also characteristic of a city. I felt as though I got a peek into (parts of) South Africa and felt as though I was sitting on the beach looking at Table Mountain with Nathi and friends. However, since this was clearly made for a specific audience I would have appreciated having translations for words that came up throughout the book so that I wouldn't be taken away from the story trying to determine what something is through context clues or simply foregoing a line altogether when I got no help in that determination.
December 22, 2017
3.5 stars.
Three young drug-addicted youth meet in a recovery group in South Africa, and embark on a ~life-changing~ (you be the judge) together. To make money to further fuel their addictions, they collaborate in a really manipulative, gag-inducing scam targeting other vulnerable people in South Africa. Hazy, absorbing descriptions of getting high, hanging out, and bonding abound in this novel. I found the characters likeable, but the book purposely keeps your perception of them unstable and teetering. It also builds a concrete, sensuous South Africa that I always felt, heard, and saw clearly. The sensory nature is important for your understanding of their activities together and their place in South Africa's class structure.
There is an important story element of magical realism built in among the strikingly concrete sensory elements, tales of drug use, building up of friendships, and reminiscing upon where the narrator believes he went wrong (or where he feels like class, fate, and upbringing took him inevitably here).
Pretty fantastic; especially great for me because I don't read enough about South Africa.
Three young drug-addicted youth meet in a recovery group in South Africa, and embark on a ~life-changing~ (you be the judge) together. To make money to further fuel their addictions, they collaborate in a really manipulative, gag-inducing scam targeting other vulnerable people in South Africa. Hazy, absorbing descriptions of getting high, hanging out, and bonding abound in this novel. I found the characters likeable, but the book purposely keeps your perception of them unstable and teetering. It also builds a concrete, sensuous South Africa that I always felt, heard, and saw clearly. The sensory nature is important for your understanding of their activities together and their place in South Africa's class structure.
There is an important story element of magical realism built in among the strikingly concrete sensory elements, tales of drug use, building up of friendships, and reminiscing upon where the narrator believes he went wrong (or where he feels like class, fate, and upbringing took him inevitably here).
Pretty fantastic; especially great for me because I don't read enough about South Africa.
June 22, 2015
Ntshanga’s novel is a very disconcerting story. Right from the beginning it leaves you unsettled and seriously uneasy. Maybe that was his aim when he wrote the novel. Because not only does it leave you unsettled as the reader, the characters themselves are almost restless and move with the wind, albeit not aimlessly. Right at the beginning the narrator, Lindanathi Mda, grabs you by the hair and forces you to seek more in the story: “Ten years ago, I helped a handful of men take my little brother’s life. I wasn’t there when it happened, but I told Luthando where to find them.�
August 31, 2016
A look at how one life choice can drastically change us. A well written exploration of one flawed person and those he attaches to as friends. This book is tragic on many levels. Not only is the main character broken but so is his society. It has some fascinating characters that I'd love to know more about and manages to create a fair amount of empathy for the flawed people it introduces.
September 18, 2017
Ntshanga's chilling novel is enchanting and befuddling. I could not put it down but I'd be hard pressed to tell you what actually happened. It is a gorgeous portrait of young poeple surviving in Capetown while chronicling the difficult choices that HIV+ people made in the early 2000s. Still figuring it all out on this one.
February 6, 2017
This book is a 198 pages long but it took me two weeks to read up to the end. It was one of those reads which called for reflection every few pages because of the excellent writing, or the way Masande had put a point across or just...
The story is about Lindanathi. It is told from a first person's narrative with the epilogue in the past tense, the body of the story in the present and the fourth part meandered between the past and present tense.
I'd like to comment on the cover first and the use of the colour blue which is reflective of the overall mood in the story. I found the cover beckoning me to the story. Throughout the story, I had contrasting feelings towards Nathi. The jist of the story was that Nathi felt responsible for his brother's death. Luthando. Throughout his ten years away from home, he has been atoning for this by taking drastic measures. That is as far I will tell without giving the story away.
On the cover there is a depiction of a broody, melancholic and aloof young man. He appears unfriendly and cold. Dejected and devoid of emotion. That is the Nathi I came to know in the first 3 quarters of the book. His life in Cape Town was reflective of the colour blue. His ephemeral life with Cissie and Ruan. Their aimless wonderings without a destination in mind. Their obsession with death. Their drug-fuelled groggy existence. As a reader, it felt to me like they were transitioning. Waiting for the end. An end to what. The end of what. Masande carried this narrative in the present tense. Now and again, the 3 characters pondered about the past. A past filled with so much but saying so little in their present. I was a bit unsettled. These 3 people seemed like they were not part of anything. Nathi's use of the present tense in his narration created a psychological distance between the events and himself. It felt like he was not present in the story. Like a spectator.
These 3 people, Ruan, Cissie and Nathi, are in their twenties when life should be pregnant with visions. Overflowing with dreams. Exciting and invigorating plus, they live in Cape Town of all places. Instead they hound establishments of ill repute. They exist like vagrants. Don't want to hold down jobs but have no clear career plans. Living a hand-to-mouth existence without having any cause. It felt like they are waiting to die. This trio has the HI virus and are part of a clinical trial programme. They do everything but take care of their health. Drugs. Alcohol. Unprotected sex. Everything is abused to the hilt. Nathi participates in a not so wholesome threesome and Masande spared nothing graphically. Sensuality is not what Masande was aiming for, it came across like a depicting of Nathi's "Last Supper". His final act of debauchery before his life in a monastery or before commiting suicide.
While Ruan and Cissie had deep philosophical conversations, Nathi offered very little into his intellect. It made me wonder whether perhaps he did that to mask the profound effect his brother's death had on him. It appeared that LT and him were best friends and he was ravaged by guilt at his passing. Maybe he felt that he did not deserve to live and was self-sabotaging to minimize the guilt, mask the hurt and be less of a person. I could've have used "become" but Nathi was hell-bent on being a shadow of his former self.
The delivery of Nathi's journey is a poignant reminder of survivor's remorse which Nathi took to a new level by self-harming. His existence in Cape Town, along with Ruan and Cissie, is a secondary reaction to the effect Luthando's death had on him and the measures he resorted to in order to even the score. At first glance, Nathi appeared mentally and intellectually compromised and I found myself questioning all of his choices. And he kept avoiding calls and messages from his uncle, Bhut' Vuyo which unnerved me to death. Masande kept me in suspense long enough to keep on turning the pages. It is nowhere clear in the first 3 parts of the book as to the reason Nathi was hiding from his family. I became annoyEd at Nathi and I found myself loosing patience at his procrastinations. Sis Thobeka was waiting on him. Le Roi was waiting on him. Bhut' Vuyo was waiting on him. Only in part 4 did it then become apparent to me as to the reason Nathi became the person that he was. All is not lost though, part 5 reflected a more upbeat Nathi. He seemed to be recovering from the grief and guilt he'd carried for 10 years and the tone is reflective of someone with a more positive outlook.
Masande wrote this story so beautifully. The proses are almost lyrical in their delivery and the themes - HIV, botched male circumcisions' related deaths, accessing antiretroviral before the national roll-out, despondency, dejection - are told and carried with sensitivity, love and care for both the reader and the characters.
This book deserves all the accolades it has received. Masande, I salute you. Your creativity knows no boundaries.
The story is about Lindanathi. It is told from a first person's narrative with the epilogue in the past tense, the body of the story in the present and the fourth part meandered between the past and present tense.
I'd like to comment on the cover first and the use of the colour blue which is reflective of the overall mood in the story. I found the cover beckoning me to the story. Throughout the story, I had contrasting feelings towards Nathi. The jist of the story was that Nathi felt responsible for his brother's death. Luthando. Throughout his ten years away from home, he has been atoning for this by taking drastic measures. That is as far I will tell without giving the story away.
On the cover there is a depiction of a broody, melancholic and aloof young man. He appears unfriendly and cold. Dejected and devoid of emotion. That is the Nathi I came to know in the first 3 quarters of the book. His life in Cape Town was reflective of the colour blue. His ephemeral life with Cissie and Ruan. Their aimless wonderings without a destination in mind. Their obsession with death. Their drug-fuelled groggy existence. As a reader, it felt to me like they were transitioning. Waiting for the end. An end to what. The end of what. Masande carried this narrative in the present tense. Now and again, the 3 characters pondered about the past. A past filled with so much but saying so little in their present. I was a bit unsettled. These 3 people seemed like they were not part of anything. Nathi's use of the present tense in his narration created a psychological distance between the events and himself. It felt like he was not present in the story. Like a spectator.
These 3 people, Ruan, Cissie and Nathi, are in their twenties when life should be pregnant with visions. Overflowing with dreams. Exciting and invigorating plus, they live in Cape Town of all places. Instead they hound establishments of ill repute. They exist like vagrants. Don't want to hold down jobs but have no clear career plans. Living a hand-to-mouth existence without having any cause. It felt like they are waiting to die. This trio has the HI virus and are part of a clinical trial programme. They do everything but take care of their health. Drugs. Alcohol. Unprotected sex. Everything is abused to the hilt. Nathi participates in a not so wholesome threesome and Masande spared nothing graphically. Sensuality is not what Masande was aiming for, it came across like a depicting of Nathi's "Last Supper". His final act of debauchery before his life in a monastery or before commiting suicide.
While Ruan and Cissie had deep philosophical conversations, Nathi offered very little into his intellect. It made me wonder whether perhaps he did that to mask the profound effect his brother's death had on him. It appeared that LT and him were best friends and he was ravaged by guilt at his passing. Maybe he felt that he did not deserve to live and was self-sabotaging to minimize the guilt, mask the hurt and be less of a person. I could've have used "become" but Nathi was hell-bent on being a shadow of his former self.
The delivery of Nathi's journey is a poignant reminder of survivor's remorse which Nathi took to a new level by self-harming. His existence in Cape Town, along with Ruan and Cissie, is a secondary reaction to the effect Luthando's death had on him and the measures he resorted to in order to even the score. At first glance, Nathi appeared mentally and intellectually compromised and I found myself questioning all of his choices. And he kept avoiding calls and messages from his uncle, Bhut' Vuyo which unnerved me to death. Masande kept me in suspense long enough to keep on turning the pages. It is nowhere clear in the first 3 parts of the book as to the reason Nathi was hiding from his family. I became annoyEd at Nathi and I found myself loosing patience at his procrastinations. Sis Thobeka was waiting on him. Le Roi was waiting on him. Bhut' Vuyo was waiting on him. Only in part 4 did it then become apparent to me as to the reason Nathi became the person that he was. All is not lost though, part 5 reflected a more upbeat Nathi. He seemed to be recovering from the grief and guilt he'd carried for 10 years and the tone is reflective of someone with a more positive outlook.
Masande wrote this story so beautifully. The proses are almost lyrical in their delivery and the themes - HIV, botched male circumcisions' related deaths, accessing antiretroviral before the national roll-out, despondency, dejection - are told and carried with sensitivity, love and care for both the reader and the characters.
This book deserves all the accolades it has received. Masande, I salute you. Your creativity knows no boundaries.
July 18, 2015
This is a pretty relentless tale of trying to make meaning, however the people here in the book can. There are few redemptive moments, but the characters are complex and while I found myself questioning some of their motives, I didn't find myself judging them. The story is well written and it flows well, while staying true to a first person narrative. A talent to keep an eye on.
November 28, 2015
'Requiem for a Dream' in 21st century Cape Town.
November 21, 2020
2.5/5 stars
I really wish I could remember where I saw this book recommended. Wherever it was, it persuaded me that it was absolutely essential that I read this book. I hunted it down to the top of a tall shelf where a Powell’s employee had to use a ladder to retrieve a copy.
It’s a tiny book, a mere 160 pages, but there’s a lot in there. And by a lot, I mostly mean a lot of drug use. Good lord. I really struggled with that. Three poor-ish friends in Cape Town spend most of their time finding ways to get high. In the space of 24 hours, they smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol, smoked weed, ate khat, took Tramadol, and possibly worst of all, huffed large quantities of Industrial glue. One reviewer described it as Requiem for a Dream in 21st-century Cape Town and that made me laugh.
The three friends are pretty aimless. Cecilia works at a daycare and has her shit together slightly more than the other two. Ruan is indebted to an uncle who got him a job at his company. But Lindanathi, the narrator, is definitely the worst off of the three, having purposefully infected himself with HIV at the lab where he works in a bizarre form of contrition for his younger brother’s death, which he somehow blames himself for. There’s a strange interlude with a disfigured, masked man that doesn’t really serve any purpose other than to add some pages to the book.
The writing is admittedly quite beautiful, and I suppose the book does a good job of capturing the aimlessness of many young South Africans with few prospects. But damn if it isn’t bleak. Although the book ends on an ambiguously hopeful note, I struggle to understand what the whole point of it all was. Mostly it’s odd, just very odd.
I really wish I could remember where I saw this book recommended. Wherever it was, it persuaded me that it was absolutely essential that I read this book. I hunted it down to the top of a tall shelf where a Powell’s employee had to use a ladder to retrieve a copy.
It’s a tiny book, a mere 160 pages, but there’s a lot in there. And by a lot, I mostly mean a lot of drug use. Good lord. I really struggled with that. Three poor-ish friends in Cape Town spend most of their time finding ways to get high. In the space of 24 hours, they smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol, smoked weed, ate khat, took Tramadol, and possibly worst of all, huffed large quantities of Industrial glue. One reviewer described it as Requiem for a Dream in 21st-century Cape Town and that made me laugh.
The three friends are pretty aimless. Cecilia works at a daycare and has her shit together slightly more than the other two. Ruan is indebted to an uncle who got him a job at his company. But Lindanathi, the narrator, is definitely the worst off of the three, having purposefully infected himself with HIV at the lab where he works in a bizarre form of contrition for his younger brother’s death, which he somehow blames himself for. There’s a strange interlude with a disfigured, masked man that doesn’t really serve any purpose other than to add some pages to the book.
The writing is admittedly quite beautiful, and I suppose the book does a good job of capturing the aimlessness of many young South Africans with few prospects. But damn if it isn’t bleak. Although the book ends on an ambiguously hopeful note, I struggle to understand what the whole point of it all was. Mostly it’s odd, just very odd.
January 30, 2019
In a way, this book was special, at least for me. I have never taken (most of) the drugs that the narrator Lindanathi is constantly high on, so for me it was a totally new discovery to see the world through his eyes, the eyes of a drug addict.
At the same time, I am not sure I quite could or wanted to get used to this presentation of the story.
As Lindanathi’s head and thoughts and life are all chaotic, so felt his story to me. And I regret not having been given the chance to understand more about the accident, the little (half-)brother, the families, the man with the mask. I am sure all the elements were meaningful, but as Lindanathi could not quite catch the meaning due to his vision limited by drug abuse, the reader who is only sharing his perspective cannot quite either.
In a way, I do like the set-up of the story, e.g. that apparently the narrator was a drug addict even before the accident. It avoids the story about this HIV positive guy to become sentimental. But at the same time, it also avoided for me to develop much positive feelings for him.
And I must admit that reading about a young man who has no perspective in life and no self-motivation was not quite what I had hoped for when picking up the book.
Though the end might turn it around, it was not enough for me to appreciate the book as much as I would have liked to.
At the same time, I am not sure I quite could or wanted to get used to this presentation of the story.
As Lindanathi’s head and thoughts and life are all chaotic, so felt his story to me. And I regret not having been given the chance to understand more about the accident, the little (half-)brother, the families, the man with the mask. I am sure all the elements were meaningful, but as Lindanathi could not quite catch the meaning due to his vision limited by drug abuse, the reader who is only sharing his perspective cannot quite either.
In a way, I do like the set-up of the story, e.g. that apparently the narrator was a drug addict even before the accident. It avoids the story about this HIV positive guy to become sentimental. But at the same time, it also avoided for me to develop much positive feelings for him.
And I must admit that reading about a young man who has no perspective in life and no self-motivation was not quite what I had hoped for when picking up the book.
Though the end might turn it around, it was not enough for me to appreciate the book as much as I would have liked to.
June 30, 2019
The Reactive x Masande Ntshanga (3.5⭐️)
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� I was struck by the idea of being in what you know is a dream, but without capabilities, with a fragmented memory and an unstable reality...�
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So you know that feeling when you’re tripping balls from smoking too much 🌿🌿🌿?! That is what reading this book is like 😳! There is something about the way that @masande writes, its just so weird and trippy. I felt like I was in Lindanathi’s dream ☁️☁️☁️. He reminds me of K Sello Duiker who wrote ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams�. The style is similar.
Reading this books is like floating while standing on the ground. Its vital and yet also deeply saddening; especially the way he captures the surrealities of the early days of the HIV/Aids crisis in South Africa. There’s a thoughtfulness in the way that he writes about death and home. Which are the two major themes that resonated with me.
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Honestly, this is one of those books where you don’t know if you love, hate or don’t understand it at all 😂🤔😐! I’m not even sure where I stand at this point...but what I do know is that I am fascinated by the way that @masande’s mind works.
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Has anyone else read this?! I need to dialogue about this book...
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#Bookstagram #HomeBru #TheReactive #Bookstagramer #Queer #TakePrideInReading #Bookshelf #ReadLocal #ProudlySouthAfrican #Books #BookReview #BookstagramFeature
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� I was struck by the idea of being in what you know is a dream, but without capabilities, with a fragmented memory and an unstable reality...�
�
�
So you know that feeling when you’re tripping balls from smoking too much 🌿🌿🌿?! That is what reading this book is like 😳! There is something about the way that @masande writes, its just so weird and trippy. I felt like I was in Lindanathi’s dream ☁️☁️☁️. He reminds me of K Sello Duiker who wrote ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams�. The style is similar.
Reading this books is like floating while standing on the ground. Its vital and yet also deeply saddening; especially the way he captures the surrealities of the early days of the HIV/Aids crisis in South Africa. There’s a thoughtfulness in the way that he writes about death and home. Which are the two major themes that resonated with me.
�
�
Honestly, this is one of those books where you don’t know if you love, hate or don’t understand it at all 😂🤔😐! I’m not even sure where I stand at this point...but what I do know is that I am fascinated by the way that @masande’s mind works.
�
�
Has anyone else read this?! I need to dialogue about this book...
�
�
#Bookstagram #HomeBru #TheReactive #Bookstagramer #Queer #TakePrideInReading #Bookshelf #ReadLocal #ProudlySouthAfrican #Books #BookReview #BookstagramFeature
December 30, 2017
It’s 1993 and Lindanathi is plagued by guilt about the death of a younger brother. As a result, he leaves home to live in Cape Town where he and his friends, Cecelia and Ruan, supplement low income jobs by selling antiretro viral drugs, which are in high demand.
Lindanthi is HIV positive and divides his time between attending mandatory drug rehabilitation programs and partying and sniffing glue with his friends. Is he struggling to survive or trying to accelerate his own demise? What is he trying to block out? How did Lindanthi's brother die and who is responsible? Will he ever be able to go home again or are his family ties broken?
The existential malaise Masande Ntshanga creates through story-telling is effective in situating the individual lives and struggles of his characters in post-apartheid South Africa. This is a powerful novel that has the ability to broaden our understanding of the world by transporting us to another place and time. Recommended to fans of gritty, topical, atmospheric, literary fiction from around the globe.
Lindanthi is HIV positive and divides his time between attending mandatory drug rehabilitation programs and partying and sniffing glue with his friends. Is he struggling to survive or trying to accelerate his own demise? What is he trying to block out? How did Lindanthi's brother die and who is responsible? Will he ever be able to go home again or are his family ties broken?
The existential malaise Masande Ntshanga creates through story-telling is effective in situating the individual lives and struggles of his characters in post-apartheid South Africa. This is a powerful novel that has the ability to broaden our understanding of the world by transporting us to another place and time. Recommended to fans of gritty, topical, atmospheric, literary fiction from around the globe.
January 8, 2023
A really powerful novel about an HIV positive man in South Africa selling meds that the government has not yet provided to the large population suffering from this disease. The narrator is a complex character - he carries his own demons and guilt and seems indifferent about his current health condition but careful not to spread it to anyone else. He and his two friends do their share of drinking and drugs (lots of glue) but have a closeness and bond that is enviable.
Another great Nervous Breakdown Book Club book exposing me to voices and settings I would not necessarily seek out on my own and for this I am grateful.
Another great Nervous Breakdown Book Club book exposing me to voices and settings I would not necessarily seek out on my own and for this I am grateful.
October 16, 2019
Loved the structure and I also appreciated the mundanities that filled the characters with soul. I sympathize with how good of person Lindanathi is. The guilt haunts him and eats him alive. The world is weird and has people that do weird things. Glad in this book we get to see those choices. Makes you think of your own guilt. Masande’s writing made me think of Raymond Chandler’s farewell my lovely. Looking forward to Triangulum.
October 3, 2017
Non mi è piaciuto per niente: a tratti confuso, farneticante, a tratti ridondante. Tre quarti di libro a ribadire come e quanto e con cosa i protagonisti si drogano. Poteva essere un ottimo libro sul come reagire alla notizia di essere stati infettati, lavorando, al virus dell' HIV e invece...
Il reattivo
Masande Ntshanga
Traduzione: Stefano Pirone
Editore: PidGin
Pag: 189
Voto: 2/5
Il reattivo
Masande Ntshanga
Traduzione: Stefano Pirone
Editore: PidGin
Pag: 189
Voto: 2/5
April 2, 2025
didn't really get how all the elements of the plot were meant to hang together... Surreal is one thing, a completely unexplained hallucination pad is another.
also,
P.S. I hope the spoiler formatting worked, never tried it before
also,
P.S. I hope the spoiler formatting worked, never tried it before
May 5, 2018
Incredibly poignant and very well written. Reading The Reactive was a surreal, dream-like experience - I’ve just never read a book like this before. The prose is dirty, visceral, and hard in its delivery, which seems to fit with the novel’s backdrop of the AIDS crisis in South Africa.
May 10, 2018
Painful play by play details of this gentleman's time with his crew and with his family. Strange that he withheld so many details about his illness but gave unnecessary information about his one dimensional friends and history.
October 5, 2019
A rare occasion where I abandon a book. It’s maybe too intense and I’m finding it boring. Simply struggling too engage and maybe because written more like a short story so many of the characters are danced over which never appeals to me.
September 5, 2020
This was so gorgeous. Prose like cormac mcarthy and a topic by William s burroughs set in SA. (When have you ever read anything set in SA? I hadn’t).
A study in the psychology of a terminal illness when that isn’t the biggest underlying danger to a persons psyche. This book will affect you.
A study in the psychology of a terminal illness when that isn’t the biggest underlying danger to a persons psyche. This book will affect you.
November 23, 2020
Awful. There is no story. No point to this book. No chapters even. It just kept going on and on, back and forth then on and on. Reads like it was written by someone high on something. Very disappointing.
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