The Power of One: Amazon.ca: Bryce Courtenay: Books

Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

"Episodic and bursting with incident, this sprawling memoir of an English boy's lonely childhood in South Africa during WW II pays moderate attention to questions of race but concerns itself primarily with epic melodrama," noted PW.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Mass Market Paperback edition.

Review

“The Power of One has everything: suspense, the exotic, violence; mysticism, psychology and magic; schoolboy adventures, drama in the boxing ring.”
–The New York Times

From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Product Description

Suggested Tags from Similar Products

(What's this?)

Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)

bryce courtenay(1)

childrens crusade(1)

Customer Reviews

247 Reviews

5 star:		(218)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

Average Customer Review

4.8 out of 5 stars (247 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most helpful customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing story, Jun 13 2003

By

mhnstr (Christchurch, New Zealand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Power of One: A Novel (Paperback)

The Power of One was recommended to me by a friend who has made the book required reading for his high school English class. I must say that the recommendation was a good one and I found myself alternatively amazed and distressed by the story. I must admit that I was under the wrong impression when I read the cover of the book which refers to The Power of One as "the classic novel of South Africa." I expected the protagonist to be African struggling perhaps against Apartheid. I leaned my mistake on the first page when I learned that the protagonist is an English boy named Peekay who finds himself as an outcast at the early age of five. Early childhood smiles very rarely on the boy, but when it does it is in the form of the love and generosity of adults who give selflessly to the boy, leaving an indelible impression in a world otherwise filled with distress. I would say this book is not necessarily a story of triumph, but of perseverance. A story of belief in ones self and ones dreams as well as self determination at any cost. The later is perhaps Peekay's one greatest character flaw.

The story is well written and will hold your heart and mind despite the occasional unbelievable coincidence. Overall, a very good book and I have not hesitations in passing along my friend's recommendation to you.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Report abuse

5.0 out of 5 stars Magical, Feb 21 2000

By

Rachel Harland (Belfast, Northern Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Power of One: A Novel (Paperback)

This is quite simply a magical story. I bought the book after accidentally stumbling upon the film late one night on the BBC. (The film is watchable but quite obviously adapted for a very different audience.) Once I had started reading I couldn't put the book down, so compelling is the plot. It wraps love, happiness, fear, suspense and death up into one bundle and can be deeply profound in places. I found myself crying time and again, sometimes with sadness, sometimes with joy, suffering and winning along with Peekay. The descriptive writing allows the reader to be completely drawn in and to feel part of the setting whether that be a small mountain village, an English boarding school, a boxing ring or a Rhodesian mine. I do agree with previous reviewers that Peekay is positively perfect in every way but if they wish to see him exhibit a few human flaws then they should read the sequel, 'Tandia', which I strongly recommend and don't feel is weak as is the won't of many follow up books. As for the criticism that the book presents all Boers as racists, I felt that it was more a case of many Boers being shown to turn a blind eye (as in the case of Gert and Captain Smit.) This theme becomes increasingly prominent in the sequel and I feel is reasonably accurate. Surely this is how a dictatorship flourishes. I think that this would be a great book for older schoolchildren and I note that many American students came across the book this way. However, I feel that because the book deals with some adult issues it will be avoided by schools in Britain and it is a shame that many kids will miss out as a result.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Report abuse

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Good light read, but full of flaws, Jan 2 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Power of One: A Novel (Paperback)

I could not put Bruce Courtenay's "The Power of One" down either - the writing style is easy and the plot intriguing...up to a point. At some point the cliches with which Mr. Courtenay portrays South Africa and its inhabitants, as well as the unknowing self-centeredness of his main character, started to irritate me. Apartheid did not have its roots in Nazism, as Mr. Courtenay seems to suggest, and what little support there was among Afrikaners for Germany during World War II had more to do with resistance to the idea of fighting on the side of their own (former)oppressors, the British, than with any real sympathy for the Nazis. The terror and tragedy that was apartheid had its own set of complex causes: definitely the racism of Afrikaners (and other white South Africans), yes; but also the already existing structures of racial oppression set up by colonialism; as well as the capitalist interests of powerful elites (often English elites). We cannot learn from the past if we continue to think of it in terms of cliches - and Mr. Courtenay's implied analysis of the rise of apartheid is unfortunately riddled with such misleading and one-sided cliches. (I realize he did not set out to analyze apartheid in detail, but what little analysis he does do, is misleading, especially to readers who are not familiar with South African history.)

What is worse, is that Mr. Courtenay does not seem able to transcend the logic of English imperialism himself: not only does he constantly portray the Afrikaners as racist, boorish, big and dumb, but he furthermore, quite arrogantly, imagines a white boy as the great chief who will unite the black tribes. So not only does he portray white Afrikaners in constantly negative terms, but he also portrays black South Africans as gullible and ready to embrace the "salvation" of the white man.

Worse still is the self-centeredness of this too-good-to-be-true white boy, who never really questions his right to the sacrifices others make for him - not only do several other characters in the book devote almost their entire lives to him, but no less than three characters literally die for him (Lettie, Geel Piet and Rasputin). Although, in the beginning, the little boy Peekay is a very compelling little very figure, he eventually grows up to be the classic hero of Western patriarchal culture - the self-absorbed white male child worshipped and served by everyone else around him. One could argue that he never asks for all these sacrifices, but I never really saw him questioning it - that is, Courtenay never really questions the right of one single human being to so much devotion, sacrifice and adulation - especially of a white boy in Africa. And that was precisely the problem with both colonialism and apartheid - white people, especially white men, never questioned their right to the devotion, sacrifice and adulation of the Other, whether white or black women or black men. Peekay does not transcend racism - he embodies it.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Report abuse

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 247 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

Want to see more reviews on this item?

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 426 reviews 4.7 out of 5 stars

Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars special to me
I read this book at the age of 18 after a co-worker at the bookstore I worked at recommended it to me. Read more

Published on Aug 21 2009 by Zenobia

4.0 out of 5 stars The Power Of One
The Power of One by Bryce Courtney is a novel about a young white boy growing up in aparthied South Africa. At 500 slow but captivating pages, it took almost 5 hours to read. Read more

Published on Dec 18 2006 by J. Estill