One of my top 5 favorites. Read this at the deeper/figuring your life out moments - it will give you strength and inspiration.

At least 3 people I know have told me that this is their favorite book, so I just had to give it a read. It is really, really good. The book follows a young man, Peekay, as he grows up in South Africa in the 30s and 40s. He meets a series of very influential adults and is constantly being shaped by them and also by his many differing experiences growing up. The one theme that stays true throughout is his desire to become the welterweight boxing champion of the world. This is the kind of book that you find yourself not wanting to put down and you miss it when you aren’t reading it. I definitely recommend this book to anyone at all. While I won’t list it as my favorite, it is definitely one of my favorites.

“Always listen to yourself. It is better to be wrong than to simply follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you will grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step towards a fulfilling life.”

“…God is too busy making the sun come up and go down and watching so the moon floats just right in the sky to be concerned with such rubbish. Only man wants always God should be there to condemn this one and save that one. Always it is man who wants to make heaven and hell. God is too busy training the bees to make honey and every morning opening up all the new flowers for business… In Mexico there is a cactus that even sometimes you would think God forgets. But no, my friend, this is not so. On a full moon in the desert every one hundred years he remembers and he opens up a single flower to bloom. And if you should be there and you see this beautiful cactus blossom painted silver by the moon and laughing up at the stars, this is heaven…This is the faith in God the cactus has… It is better just to get on with the business of living and minding your own business and maybe, if God likes the way you do things, he may just let you flower for a day or a night. But don’t go pestering and begging and telling him all your stupid little sins, that way you will spoil his day.”

“…in this world are very few things made from logic alone. It is illogical for a man to be too logical. Some things we must just let stand. The mystery is more important than any possible explanation. The searcher after truth must search with humanity. Ruthless logic is the sign of a limited mind. The truth can only add to the sum of what you know, while a harmless mystery left unexplored often adds to the meaning of life. When a truth is not so important, it is better left as a mystery.”

“The mind is the athlete; the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further, or box better. “First with the head and then with the heart” was more than simply mixing brains with guts. It meant thinking well beyond the powers of normal concentration and then daring your courage to follow your thoughts.”

Urgh. I read this because everybody else did. I was young... However, I read this and only finished it because I wanted to know what everybody was raving about. To me, it seems so disingenuous and patronising. The author used to work in advertising and to me, the novel feels like manipulative, slick, unconvincing 'copy' from a breakfast cereal ad. A lot of people love this book. I'm just not one of them.

Yep, still as good the second time around, and I appreciated the underlying thread of the story better than I did 6 years ago.

Really good story telling here, the book is set in South Africa during the 1940's and follows a young boy called Peekay from age five to adulthood. The prejudice in society is breathtakingly awful, not just black and white, but Boers and English and Jews too.
There is a sequel called Tandia, which I shall be reading sooner rather than later.

Excellent, superb and intellectually challenging.
I was impressed in different ways.
On Peekay his character development and self knowledge. From a boarding school 5 year old : facing daily physical brutality. That brought tears to my eyes. Even the 'matron' used a cane! His childhood friendship with the 'Doc' (really a Professor of Music) being the most influential on developing his intellect while giving him the most 'parental' love. His next boarding school experience, starting a few years later, was mostly shaped by friend Hyman. A youth who also had a complex character and sharp, curious intellect. Through this time Peekay's desire to be 'the welterweight champion of the world ' gained force.
The incredible cruelty of the social and political South African attitude to people of colour was brought out so clearly by Courtenay. A system which also brought out the worse in some white people also.
I have meet people over the years who have left South Africa to come to New Zealand. They, like Peekay, were people with no racist feelings. But who found living in South Africa to be a daily frightening experience.
This book appealed to me on many levels. Mostly the power of Courtenay's writing allowed me fully enter the minds of his character. Plus feel the horror of the 1940, 1950, South Africa political and social system: which also, I believe, handicapped the 'whites' too.
Unputdownable. Courtenay is now a top favourite author for me.

Well written, semi autobiographical novel set in South Africa from 1939 to the early 1950's. It tells the story of Peekay, a lonely 5 year old English boy sent to an Afrikaner boarding school. He was cruelly bullied by a boy Peekay calls The Judge and suffered great humiliation and physical pain. The book takes us on Peekay's coming of age journey as he learns the power of one, the power that is Peekay.

The author created memorable characters ranging from a mangy-looking brave rooster Grandpa Chook who was devoted to Peekay; to Doc a 6'7" German pianist and botanist who befriends Peekay; to Geel Piet a biracial prisoner who is both despicable and lovable.

It was the characters that I loved about the book. Also fascinating was the history and culture of the Zulu and other tribes as well as that of the Boers, and the tensions between the ruling English and the Afrikaners.

I did not enjoy the aspects of the book that dealt with boxing, the hierarchy of boarding schools, and the depiction of prison life.

This novel by Australian author Bryce Courtenay was published in 1989 and takes place in the 1930s and 40s in South Africa where Courteney grew up. The story is narrated by a young boy named Peekay who shares several years of his life story. It begins with a difficult early childhood but moves on to success as Peekay comes of age in the complicated world of South Africa’s political, social and cultural context.

Peekay was raised by a black nanny until the age of four. We hear nothing of his father but his mother was frail, nervous and suffered from frequent headaches. His grandfather helped raise him but when his mother was institutionalized with a mental breakdown, Peekey was sent to boarding school. The school was run by a principal more concerned with maintaining control over the students and the steady stream of tuition fees than with the well-being of her students. As the youngest boy in the school, Peekay was brutally bullied by a boy he called the Judge who taunted him because he wet his bed. The Judge and his fellow bullies gave him the nickname “Pisskoff” which eventually became “Peekay”, the name he used the rest of his life.

Peekay meets a number of people who teach him valuable lessons and influence his life. They include a chance meeting with Hoppie Groenewald, a young boxer who taught him “the power of one”, a belief that with one heart, one mind, one plan and one determination, a man could make his way through life armed with the belief that the world was not specifically arranged to bring about his undoing. The power of one was the power to believe in oneself, to think beyond the powers of normal concentration and dare your courage to follow your thoughts. Hoppie taught Peekay to overcome adversity through a mantra that he would forever keep in mind: “first with the head, then with the heart”. He learned that winning was something you worked at intellectually, that emotions clouded the mind and were its natural enemy. In boxing it meant that the mind was the athlete and the body simply the means it used to box better. With this knowledge Peekay came to believe that even though he was a small boy, he could defeat those who were bigger than himself. It gave him a defense system, confidence and hope as well as his ultimate goal: to become the welterweight champion of the world, a goal he reaffirmed to himself silently and frequently throughout his childhood.

Another critical person in his life was Professor Karl Von Volllensteen, a music professor and botanist Peekay called “Doc”. Doc taught him music and everything he knew about the natural world of desert plants and animals. Together with Miss Boxall the librarian and Miss Bornstein another teacher, Peekay learned everything from science to literature and how to play chess. They taught him to read for meaning, to use the library to follow up what he questioned or could not understand. It was not a traditional education, but it did teach him how to think and Peekay knew more than most boys his age. When Europe became embroiled in war, Doc was arrested, charged with being an unregistered alien and a possible spy and sent to prison. Peekay maintained Doc’s garden of desert cacti at his vacant home and visited him every day. He obtained and catalogued new plants, continued his piano lessons and learned everything he could from his mentor. On his visits to the prison Peekay heard about Geel Piet, a man who reportedly had a superior knowledge of boxing. Piet was a half-caste, a man who was neither white nor black, was hated by both sides and belonged to neither. He was an incorrigible prisoner, a survivor who knew the prison system and had great influence behind those walls where he ran the black market. Peekay, anxious to advance his boxing career devised a system that worked for both of them, offering Piet tobacco for his black market in exchange for boxing lessons. During his hours in the prison with Doc or working with Piet on his boxing, Peekay came to appreciate the difficult lives of the prisoners and developed a letter writing and mail system so the prisoners could communicate with their loved ones. The prisoners came to admire the young boy who tried to make their life more tolerable and they enjoyed watching him box as he gradually became more skillful under Piet’s tutelage. Although Peekay was small, he was always boxing boys bigger than himself, a fact that helped him learn to use his skills wisely. He came to be known to the prisoners as “The Tadpole Angel”, a symbol of their oppression and someone sympathetic to their lot in life.

Peekay earned a scholarship to the elite Prince of Wales School in Johannesburg and entered a very different environment, a place not normally associated with boxing which was now Peekay’s passion and the sport through which he was negotiating his way through life. He meets Morrie Levy and for the first time he has a best friend his own age. They become partners, making money on various gambling ventures and even develop their own bank. Peekay continues to improve his boxing and the black crowds watching him fight grow larger. He has become a symbol of hope for them, a symbol of hope against oppression.

Peekay wants to go to Oxford but needs money for the tuition. He also needs to increase his muscle mass to maximize his boxing abilities. He travels to Northern Rhodesia to work in the copper mines where the work is extremely dangerous but pays well. There he meets a miner named Rasputin who not only saves Peekay’s life but also provides him the legacy to continue his education. It is following his experience in the mines that Peekay is confronted once more by the Judge, his childhood tormentor from boarding school who bullied him mercilessly when he was a young boy.

This book is well written and Courtenay’s narrative is filled with detailed descriptions of boxing matches and the beautiful African landscape. The passages detailing the racism and political tension sent me back to the history books to better understand the political and social context of that time and appreciate how forward thinking Peekay’s actions were given the culture and the time in which he was raised. It was a time when the white man was automatically considered intellectually, culturally and socially superior to the Black African, who was simply looked on with scorn.

This is a great book with several messages, its strongest the power of hope and perseverance. As a character, Peekay is resilient and seems almost invincible, able to learn important lessons from everyone he meets and facing hardships that would daunt anyone. He is an extremely likeable boy and the reader pulls for him as he confronts the challenges life presents him. But he appears to be without flaws, good at so many things and such a stranger to failure that he seems altogether unrealistic. After his experience at boarding school, he appeared to succeed at everything he faced. As the reader continues through his story, he no longer wonders if Peekay will succeed, he expects him to, the only reason to read further, to find out how. That drained some of the tension from the narrative, making it less interesting. But the characters are well drawn. Peekay, Doc, Geel Piet and Miss Boxall, in my mind are the best. Like Peekay, they all had issues they had to confront in life which made them realistic as well as sympathetic.

Some have been critical of the length of the book and I agree it is long, but not overly so. I was engaged in the story from it first pages until the end.

A great, enjoyable read which I recommend.

4.0

This was a tall tale, akin to a Paul Bunyan story set in mid-1900 South Africa. It follows the story of a boy named 'Peekay' from age five into early adulthood, whose story is the embodiment of the phrase 'it takes a village to raise a child.' While Peekay's family members take a back seat in shaping him through childhood and adolescence, he builds strong relationships with a variety of highly educated, highly skilled, and highly motivated characters that guide him along his journey to manhood. 'The Power of One,' isn't really about 'one,' but how a supportive collective can empower a single person to overcome.

I really enjoyed reading this, though Books 1 and 2 are remarkably better than Book 3. The charm of viewing the world through the eyes of a little boy disappeared in Book 3, along with the hint of magical realism that I found originally so endearing. The larger-than-life depiction of Peekay also became tiresome by Book 3. While I made allowances for some unrealistic events happening earlier on, by Book 3, it was trite. Still, as a whole, this book was well crafted and holds promise for being a lit-class favorite. And if you're looking for good quotes, this is a gold mine. ("First with the head, then with the heart!")
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Before I continue with the review, I'd like to mention the following stories, all of which share some themes with this book:
1. Jojo Rabbit (wartime brutality from a child's perspective, WW2 setting/Nazis)
2. A Separate Peace (coming of age story set in private school, WW2 setting, YA brotherhood)
3. Maniac Magee (themes of race from child's perspective, boy without conventional family, boy that becomes a legend)
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Stylistic comments
I really enjoyed Courtenay's descriptions of South African nature and the different traditions that he highlighted in the story. As can happen with authors that speak with authority, he sometimes included extensive detail that detracted from the experience of reading. Combined with the fact that he included very large paragraphs (giant chunks of text, sometimes containing dry technical information and terms, like in Book 3), this didn't always make for a pleasant reading experience.

Racial Backdrop
It seems impossible that a story could take place in apartheid South Africa and not comment on the political and social atmosphere of the time. Courtenay was clear in his writing that racism is an evil, or as he put it, 'a sickness.' However, I found that some parts of this book were odd to read given his viewpoint on racism, especially if his intention was not to diminish the black voice in an African setting. I've divided my impressions of how race and racial tension was presented between the themes of white privilege and the white savior complex (SPOILERS INCLUDED!):

a) White Privilege - Peekay's successes would not have been possible had he not been white. At every turn, the white establishment took him under its wing, from Hoppie to the Kommandant to the professor to headmaster of the Prince of Wales school. And in the stereotypical fashion of such stories written from a white perspective, black characters functioned as props to support the white hero. We saw that with Peekay's nanny, Dee and Dum, and Geel Piet. It was particularly unsettling that Peekay's sole black guardian/mentor, Geel Piet, was murdered in such a brutal manner. Why was he sodomized to death at the hands of a white man in prison, while Doc (a white foreigner) died peacefully in a magical crystal cave? One could make the argument that Courtenay included this for shock value to educate people about the unfairness of the time, but I'd argue that the world doesn't need more evidence of how black peoples have suffered. I would have much preferred Courtenay show that they could also overcome, and not necessarily with the help of a white man.

b) The White Savior that is the Tadpole Angel - The way the book presented 'The Tadpole Angel,' Peekay seemed to become a legend to black SA communities by accident. Why? Why was it necessary for his development and coming-of-age story to include his accidental deification to black people? The white savior theme was also in action when the church that Peekay's mother worked for participated in prison reform, under the condition that they could preach to the inmates. It was there when Peekay had to literally defeat a black man in a boxing match to prove that he was still the legendary Tadpole Angel who could save black people from despair. It was again present when Peekay and Morrie fought to educate black men at their prestigious English school and then failed. By the way, once they failed, there was no continuation of that fight.

I believe Courtenay wrote this book with the best of intentions and that even in his tall-tale fiction novel, he intended to relay an authentic SA experience. So, I can perhaps understand why the above problems were present, since they accurately reflect problems that are still very prevalent in a post-apartheid world. But I still think he could have and should have done a better job representing black characters in this book. Black characters falling into the same undignified, overused tropes and white characters swooping in to save black peoples from the cruelty of a white-established social infrastructure weakens any story's overt condemnation of racism. It's really a matter of showing rather than telling.

I just finished reading this book for a summer assignment, and I have to say that I would rather have read the telephone book. At least the telephone book doesn't have characters so annoying that I throw it against a wall.

My main issue with this book was the main character. He goes through the whole book with a 'poor me, I'm such a suffering soul' mentality which really makes no sense. He speaks almost as many languages as I have fingers on one hand (including a bit of Latin, which I've heard is very hard to learn), he instantly befriends almost everyone, and he's practically a genius. Oh, and he's been an amazing boxer since he was a child.

The author tries to interject some interest in the plot, but fails completely because it's so obvious that whatever challenges the main character (who doesn't seem to have a real name, only a nickname. I assume the author had a purpose in doing this, but what it is I can't guess) faces, he will overcome them quickly and easily; and then complain about it for the rest of the chapter.

Shit.

Review of Audio book, The Power of One written by Bryce Courtenay, Narrated by Humphrey Bower.

This has been both a Hard and Easy review to write. The Power of one is a wonderful autobiographical novel which has been made into a fantastic audio book. Astonishingly this was Bryce Courtenay debut novel. Humphrey Bower is both experienced and gifted narrator and the perfect pick as he is able to pull off a convincing South African accent.
Hard to write up as it has so many powerful, tender and tantalising elements and so it would take too long to list them because they all hold real and cultural relevance. As with all good books which have a strong human element, each reader draws from their own life experiences to relate with the story. The richness of the main character PK whose we meet at a tender age and go on to experience though his thoughts, all his life with its joy, muddles and harshness. The story is set against the dramatic back drop of Africa at a historically rich time.
The wealth of this very personal and at time humorous while being startling graphic book, will have something in it that will not fail to touch even the hardest of hearts. As for myself the telling of the bond of friendship between the five year old PK and his chicken, Grandpa Chuck, hit the most me with stiff resonance. This was because I was midway through the audio book at the time I had heard about my dear old springer spaniel Mandy, fatal illness. Bryce writes superbly throughout the book but this connection with his unusual animal friend, the love and respected trust with his chicken hit me the hardest because of my best friend Mandy. PK’s other friendships of the human kind were each different and thought provoking and described in skilful detail, that I felt as if I had had known, loved, grieved or feared them. As each of them where introduced into the thick of the story and at times had left, sometimes abruptly! I was span though a range of emotions, catching my breath with sadness, peace or fear. It would be hard to pick out the best of them as they are all best! Even the baddies as they made the goodies appear more courageous and strong hearted, and so the story would not have been the same without them.
Easy to praise this audio book as not only the writing of this story is superb but the narration by Humphy Bower, who’s expressive warm voice transcends the normal narrator with his rich repertoire he narrates the characters with a ‘pull all the stops out’ experience. The sheer spender at which he brings to life the delicacy and rawness of each of the marvellously complete characters and soulfully describes breathtakingly beautiful scenery with jaw dropping emphasis.
So much of the landscape of Africa is written about and from so many viewpoints. I knew it was a hot climate but I learned of the coolness and darkness of the night. I was surprised by differing landscapes, the cactus garden, rose garden and magical crystal cave, which were described and narrated so colourfully and bountifully that I could see them in full spender when I closed my eyes.
In this book the landscape of the peoples of Africa where explored and described, with a strong emphasis showing how important music and the connection to their land was.

PK the hero of the book is a true hero a fighter who yearned for knowledge but was not mean spirited and keenly shared with all.
This book was a humbling experience. As a writer myself I became completely in ore of Bryce’s skill whose writing talent is pure genus. What a travel! What an adventure! And all without leaving my small flat and from the safety of my sofa with my best friend Mandy sat by me! What a gift this book is!
I whole heartily recommend it. 5 stars

The Power of One Audible – Unabridged can be bought here
Bryce Courtenay (Author), Humphrey Bower (Narrator), Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd https://www.amazon.com/The-Power-of-O...
Or if you sign up though your local library (UK only) can be borrowed free here
http://www.borrowbox.com/support/