Mdlwembe by Zola (Tsotsi)

This is the hit tune from Ghetto Ruff in South Africa written by legendary Soweto hip hop artist Zola. It plays in the film when Tsotsi walks through the township with his gang giving the fingers to his tormentors.

The music video is very vibrant and available on the internet and itunes.

Tsotsi's Soundtrack

News at SoundtrackCollector

Paul Hepker/Mark Kilian Tsotsi
25-Mar-2006 - Milan Records has released Tsotsi, a gritty and moving portrait of an angry young man living in a state of urban deprivation. Set amidst the Johannesburg township of Soweto, Tsotsi traces six days in the life of a young gang leader who ends up caring for a baby accidentally kidnapped during a car jacking. This dramatic event will drive Tsotsi into an unexpected relationship with this baby where he will discover the true meaning of adulthood, love and life. The soundtrack features several tracks by South African Kwaito (South Africa's hip-hop) legend, Zola, including his most acclaimed hits Mdlwembe, It’s Your Life, Bhambatha as well as other Kwaito/hip-hop musicians. Tsotsi also features an atmospheric score composed by Paul Hepker and Mark Kilian.
Buy from Amazon.com.

Narrative technique

The Lovely Bones has an unusual method of narration. It is told in the first person; this is a common method. What is uncommon is that the first person narrator in this book is "omniscient". That means she is all seeing and all knowing. She can see into the minds of all the characters. Usually a first person narrator is limited to his/her own point of view. Omniscience usually goes with the third person "eye of God" technique so common in novels in the19th century. The third person eye of God method is when the author is all seeing and all knowing.

The method used in this book is not unique though. A book I am reading at the moment "The Book Thief" is narrated by Death. Death, ot the Grim Reaper, is telling the story of a young girl who is experiencing the Holocaust in World War Two Europe and can't quite make himself kill her. (It's a good book so far and not as grim as it sounds.)

Since the early days of the 20th century, novelists have been experimenting with different ways of narrating. The last few decades have seen the post-modernist era where a more self-conscious style has often been adopted. It's no longer always fashionable to make the book totally realistic but to use distancing techniques which force the reader to accept it is a work of fiction and apply more thought or awareness to the process of reading.

How does the first person ominiscient work in The Lovely Bones? It enables Susie to trace her whole family over a period of 8 years which is obviously the whole point of the book. It also enables us to look at a tragedy like what happened to Susie in an imaginative and fresh way. We see the victim's point of view as well as the survivors'. As an imaginative exercise I think it works very well.

Another question is: does Susie maintain her omniscience or does the narration simply slip into third perosn from time to time, such as when we read about Harvey's background? does it matter?

Coming of age novels or the "Bildungsroman"

Bildungsroman

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A bildungsroman (IPA: [ˈbɪldʊŋs.roˌmaːn]/, German: "novel of personal development") is a novel which traces the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character from (usually) childhood to maturity.

Among the components of a bildungsroman are the following:

• Growth from a child to a man or woman
• To spur the hero onto his or her journey, some form of loss or discontent must jar him or her at an early stage away from the home or family setting.
• The process of maturing is long, arduous, and gradual, consisting of repeated clashes between the protagonist's needs and desires and the views and judgments enforced by an unbending social order.
• Eventually, the spirit and values of the social order become manifest in the protagonist, who is then accommodated into society. The novel ends with an assessment by the protagonist of himself/herself and his/her new place in that society.
• The character is generally making a smooth movement away from conformity
• Major conflict is self vs. society or individuality vs. conformity
• Theme of exile or escape

Within the genre, an Entwicklungsroman is a story of general growth rather than self-culture; an Erziehungsroman focuses on training and formal education; and a Künstlerroman is about the development of an artist and shows a growth of the self.

Many other genres include a bildungsroman as a prominent part of their story lines; for example, a military story frequently shows a raw recruit receiving his/her baptism of fire and becoming a battle-hardened soldier. A high fantasy quest may also show a transformation from an adolescent protagonist into an adult aware of his/her powers or lineage.

Another book like The Lovely Bones

In 2003, Gary Soto published The Afterlife, a young-adult novel that bears some striking similarities — a male protagonist hangs around the world after his murder, watches himself mourned and missed, and then gradually finds his way to heaven.

Book reviews of The Lovely Bones

Some publications can be relied on to write thoughtful reviews. Here is one from Salon magazine.

Below is a bad one from a reader on the Amazon site

Reviewer:

Jennifer M-R (Duluth, MN USA) - See all my reviews

Sebold demonstrates a stunning capacity to combine all the worst aspects of American culture into a single novel - materialism, cheap religion, shallow psychotherapy, and a vigilante obsession with rare and violent crimes. The literary conceit is that 14-year-old Susie Salmon is raped and murdered, at which point she enters the perfect consumer heaven - untroubled by God or the unfathomable soul, in Sebold's heaven, we must merely say what we want and it appears. From this vantage, Susie exhibits a mind-boggling lack of curiosity about her sudden new ability to spy on her earthbound loved ones, opting instead to relate the cloyingly transparent activities of her family as they grieve her death and hunt down the man they know killed her, even though they have no evidence to suspect him. From the moment Sebold describes a character's smile as "like stars exploding," I knew this would be a monumental work of emotional [...].

Here is a link to an article from the Guardian in the UK

Abigail Salmon in The Lovely Bones: character arc

If you trace the development of this character very closely through the book, you have to admire Sebold's skill and sensitivity in conveying the emotional rollercoaster this character endures.

Abigail is not as likeable as some of the other characters. She cannot grieve in understandable ways like Jack who does all he can to seek justice - to the point of obsession it seems - and who is totally committed to the emotional needs of his remaining children.

Abigail is plunged into a depression and anger that makes her deflect her real sadness and pain into "merciful adultery" - a quotation from the book - and then actually flee from her family and look into the "hopeful unfamilar" for relief from her unresolved grief.

Because Susie as a narrator has such an "Eye of God" advantage, she can range backwards and forwards in time to show us the factors in Abigail's life that predisposed her to this sort of reaction. Susie remembers capturing her on her new Kodak camera as a person, not a mother. A former masters student who never really accepted the limitations of motherhood and being a 70s housewife, she was always somewhat lost. We see her as totally different from her ultra-feminine mother with whom she had to fight "tooth and nail" to go to college and have an academic career. She says to her mother before she goes away: "Do you realise how alone I've always felt?"

There is a link here to other aspects of women's lives which run through the book: the rape of Susie; Harvey's attacks on other women; the principal's inappropriate thoughts about Lindsey.

More importantly I feel, is the character "arc" that Abigail experiences and the way Sebold has created this. A character arc is the status of the character as it unfolds throughout the story, the storyline or series of episodes. Since the definition of character arc centers on the character, it is generally equated as the emotional change of the character within the narrative. Characters begin the story with a certain viewpoint and, through events in the story, that viewpoint changes. Often this change is for the better, but it can also be for the worse or simply different. (from Wikipedia)