I loved The Traveling Hornplayer by the same author so decided to try this novel despite the iffy title. I struggled to care about the characters, in part because there is no real dialogue- it's all descriptions of interactions. Is that 3rd-person limited narration? Anyway, stuck with it and it has some great moments so not sorry I did. ( )

This is the story of Dinah, a South African girl of Dutch-German heritage from birth in the 1950s to young adulthood as she finds her own character and path.

There are many themes in the book, from race to gender, and puberty to sex and education to work. Dinah grew up in a period when race laws were ever tightening while protests were breaking out, not only in the segregated communities, but also at universities. Indeed it is at uni that Dinah really comes face to face with racial politics as '60s South Africa is set to explode. Dinah's family is liberal, though not actively against the racial policies, and through her candid comments, me can see how colour lines are clearly drawn.

Trapido also shares an insider's view of the complicated relationships which make up girlhood. With her sister, Lisa, being close in age, Dinah has her first friendship. As Dinah goes to school and becomes more independent, she starts to form bonds of her own, though at first she is usually the passive partner. Her classmates, while all female, come from different backgrounds: social, economic, religious and linguistic. As primary school children, these differences are not important, but the move to different secondaries puts the girls on paths that will lead them further from each other. What is also clear, were the lack of options for women at the time, with few careers open to them.

I also enjoyed the portrayal of the school system, from classroom dictators to "chalk and talk", cut with rather tame pranks. I am sure that the characters will be recognisable to anyone who went to school!

The narrator grows up with the text, so observations made when she was a child are from the point of view of her 10-year-old self. It is then left up to the reader, with help from the author, to interpret these comments, to put them in context and read between the lines. At times this makes the text rather dense, but never tedious. Readers unfamiliar with South African history shouldn't worry as Trapido fills in the social background to the book.

I have been reading quite a few South African authors lately, so I was inevitable led me to compare Frankie and Stankie with Youth by J.M. Coetzee, another recent read. Apart from gender, what sets the books apart is that this book gives us both the personal and wider contexts. Frankie and Stankie is not only a good Bildungsroman, but is also interesting for its well-depicted back drop. ( )

Seductive, funny, heartbreaking. ( )

This is a wonderfully written book which allows us to take a peek at what it was like to live in South Africa during the 50's. ( )

Loved this book - well written detail from a childs point of view growing up as a white in apartheid S Africa ( )