Zoo City

Sometimes you can see the guilt that people carry around with them. You don't know what they did - or sometimes even just what they think they did - but it's obvious from their posture and body language that there's something dark in their past. In Zoo City, Lauren Beukes takes that idea to a supernatural extension: people's past sins become visible as animal companions that follow them around, and which cause them psychic trauma if they become separated. Zinzi, our protagonist, has a sloth.

More importantly, though, Zinzi has two special abilities: she's really good at finding things, and she's really good at writing emails in which she pretends to be deposed Nigerian royalty. She uses both of these to grift her way through life, which is how we meet her at the beginning of the book.

There's a blurb on the cover of this book that has William Gibson declare it as “Very very good”. It seemed an odd choice before I read the book - I don't doubt Gibson's interest in it, but it's “urban fantasy” and he's oh-so science fiction, so it seemed odd at first. Having read the book, it's not odd at all: Beukes is clearly influenced by Gibson's street-level style and his attitude toward technology. What she does better than Gibson, though, is create a good sense of place throughout the story. The Johannesburg suburbs that Zinzi travels through - both “Zoo City”, the slum for animalled people that she lives in, and the ritzier neighbourhoods that she travels to in her quest for redemption.

Zoo City is a slick, funny, exciting novel that stands out as one of the best pieces of fiction I've read in the past few years. It left me looking forward to what Ms. Beukes has planned next.