It astonishes me that Ilze Hugo wrote this novel before the COVID-19 pandemic; it’s so prescient about so many things: how we came to miss mouths because everyone’s wearing masks all the time, washing our hands in bleach, drinking bleach, conspiracy theories galore. Especially the conspiracy theories. In Cape Town, where a new sort of laughing sickness has essentially shut down most normal business and the rich have fled or gone into secluded quarantine at resorts and enclaves, the down days, as they’re known, have the poor and working classes struggling to make do with new improvised infrastructure. Faith September, one of several main characters, was a former minibus taxi driver who now carts off the dead bodies, or “grinners” as they’re known in macabre pandemic parlance, of those who have “succumbed,” the new politically correct word for “died.” People begin seeing ghosts, but one of the many conspiracy theories in circulation is that this is a side effect of the mandatory meds the government makes everyone take. Sans, the “pony jacker,” who steals hair to sell for weaves, meets the woman of his dreams, his “unicorn,” with glorious virgin hair, but it appears that she may not be quite real, just as the missing brother of a girl called Tomorrow may not be quite real. There’s a security guard with a hyena, a sin eater, a convent of nuns who shave heads as a form of blessing or penance, a master hacker who lives in a sewer. Various bits of Cape Town legend and myth also make their way into the story, from Anna de Coningh to Van Hunks’ smoking contest with the Devil. In the midst of this chaotic pandemic society, each of the main characters has a troubling back story but is lovingly drawn and lovable in their own way. This Cape Town pandemic society has turned so weird and so unexpected but still seems so firmly grounded in what we now know is reality during a pandemic, a testament to the storytelling skills of Ilze Hugo, an even greater feat because this is her first novel. I listened to the audiobook, and narrators Bianca Amato and Gideon Emery were excellent and well chosen for their parts. ( )

I love to compare the style of The Down Days to a soap opera. If you enjoy getting into the meat of one main character, sitting on edge to find out what happens next, to be flipped to another character, you will love this book! I know that some readers will not appreciate the rambling and just enough details to make you what is really going on with the many characters, but it is like the thrill of putting together a huge complicated puzzle. The only part of the story I did not enjoy was the ending. There was so much action up until the end, that the end was so brief, and so many loose ends not fully explained, that I was left very disappointed. That is why I am giving four stars instead of five. I needed that great ending to go with the rest of the book. If you are lucky enough to read my review before you read the book for the first time, I will tell you two things that I did not do that will make it way more enjoyable and understandable. First of all, this book was not based at all on the COVID pandemic. I did not know that until AFTER I read the book, and the references to different things that US was experiencing was very troubling. I knew I had received the book before the US even knew it would be suffering. I wish the acknowledgements at the very back of the book were in the beginning. I think I could have let go of my disturbing feeling that South Africa knew about the pandemic well in advance. Also, there are a LOT of South African terms. I did not realize there was a glossary for the many terms, or I would have been religiously using it. It would have made for easier reading, although the different words they used, even if understood, did not take away the meaning in context. If you like extreme oddities, you will love this book! The author's imagination is off the scale. It is so off the scale that it makes you wonder about the writer! But I enjoy to write myself, and know that just because you put it in words, does not mean you have entertained those thoughts or initiated them. The cover is as equally wild. I wish all the characters repeatedly mentioned had all had equal billing from beginning to end. That being said, I think it is fun getting to know all of them from Sans the Ponytail Seller, security guard with a hyena (wait til you read the details for that one!), dead collector, drug pusher, junkie, girl whose brother is missing. If you can read fiction with an open mind, you will love all the rabbit holes you will be chasing in this story. If you have any grave mental illness, be warned this is probably not the book for you to read right now. I think my mind was going insane living through the characters as they were revealed. Enjoy! ( )

A plague story -- which I've read a number of this plague year -- where society/civilization doesn't go tits-up but adapts in a haphazard, make-do, jury-rigged, duct-taped fashion.

In Sick City -- a new name for Cape Town, South Africa -- the Laughing Plague continues to kill dozens, or hundreds of people a day. Everyone wears masks, dips their hands in bleach, and checks in regularly as re-purposed post-boxes which check for elevated temperatures and distribute doses of some ineffectual medicine, which the rumor mill insists is part of a government conspiracy to do... something. Surplus mini-buses which used to be crammed with as many paying fares as possible are now used for carrying as many corpses as possible. Cults have sprung up bringing warnings of doom and/or salvation and community gardens have been cultivated, bringing food. The internet works sometimes and cellphone signals are available in well-known hotspots which are always crowded. About the only signs of government ar the horse-mounted Virus Patrol, rounding up the suspected sick and taking them off to hospital-crematorium complexes.

Amidst this backdrop, an orphan girl loses her infant brother; a black-marketeer dealing in human hair loses a great deal of money and, he suspects, his sanity; a former doctor-cum-junkie searches for drugs and redemption; and a sin-eater and a dead collector seek answers to real puzzles and spiritual mysteries. The main characters, their friends, and memories all pass by or bump into one another on streets, in crowds, in bars, underground tunnels, and a convent garden, their paths all spiraling in towards an apocalyptic event... But in this well-imagined and well-worn world, what comes after the apocalypse doesn't look much different from what came before.

A totally enjoyable read, with a good deal of authentic-seeming South African flavor, a plausible world, and rich and broken characters. ( )

This book, from the 2021 Tournament of Books shortlist, is a good book for the current times, as it deals with an African city that has been devastated by a very contagious and dangerous laughing sickness. At the onset of the story, the citizens have adjusted to the new normal, in which everyone wears a mask and new professions like "dead collectors" and "sin eaters" have emerged. There is a lot going on in this novel, maybe a little too much, but I loved the crazy characters and the mix of science-fiction, supernatural and mystery elements. ( )

TOB-2021 This is a book I would have never read. It's a first novel and I really enjoyed it. This book was published in May of 2020 and it's about a pandemic. Clearly this book was written before the start of our own pandemic so that's quite the coincidence.

But the plot of this book was so good. Faith, a dead collector, Sans, a pony tail seller, Tomorrow, an orphaned girl and others are woven into the story seamlessly. The book addresses how people can go a little crazy in a pandemic situation. It's spiritual in that some of the dead people's souls haven't yet left earth.

All in all a very good book. ( )