A book review: Bare
The breeding of an underdog
Bare: The Blesser Game is a coming of age fairy tale, no it’s not a fairytale, it’s about how the real world eats and spits out naive souls…
The Blesser Game follows the as yet unspoken of fundamentals of The Blesser, Blessee relationship. You know, when a rich usually an older male, spoils rotten a younger usually female (also known as Slay Queens), in return for a life of pampered luxury in exchange for sexual favours, maybe even dignity and before you know it your soul……
The novel Bare follows the story of Treasure Mohapi’s journey from the her childhood, in the turbulent post apartheid era, hailing from mining town of Westonaria where her father has sweated to move them from Soweto.
Treasure’s father barely makes ends meet and carries around a dark temper with his wife being on the receiving end. Treasure dreams of one day living “The Dream” like in The Devil Wears Prada. Well be careful what you wish for, sometimes the devil wears a million dollar suit and might be a government minister even.
There is no fairy Godmother in this story but there’s a character who could easily be a Godfather, or a minister of finance as Blessers are known.
Being blunt about it The Blesser phenom is just a way to put lipstick on the pig that is predatory behavior by the privileged.
Jackie Phamotse’s Bare is a novel reminiscent of Jackie Collins novels but instead of being in the larger than life Hollywood drama, Bare is set in the glitzy Sandton streets of Johannesburg, with its the shadowy world of The Hockey club, a League of the filthy rich.
Jackie Phamhotse has a story a tell and she tells it in this book which is a fictionalised biography, she mentions during book launch pressers that aspects of this book are from her real life experiences and others loosely based on the lives of all the victims of sexual predators to whom this book is dedicated:
“You are nobody until someone kills you, then you become a story that others
call history.”
Each chapter in the book begins with a different quote, sometimes they are a clue on how the story unfolds, other times, seem just like a wise quip the author picked up from her family and friends.
you see a girl dressed to say…
No one tells me what to do!
You know someone once told her what to do.
– Jennifer Michael Hecht
The Blesser Game is not the best written book I’ve read neither is it the worst, Jackie gets my points for graphically telling a story, an elephant in the room, the things that happen behind the closed bedroom doors of the rich and powerful. At a book launch interview Jackie even hinted that a government minister, whom she would not name, tried to block the publishing of the book.
I feel the book has some awkward sentence construction and expressions which jar one away from the story, but overally its a book one must read and get one’s fellow females to read especially those who want to be slay queens, live jet setter lives with flashy social media pages where they flaunt their swag.
The book feels incomplete, like there so much more left unsaid and guess what Jackie is working on sequel, maybe then will get to learn more of the infamous Hockey Club which is only given a glancing mention. The Hockey Club is a gentleman’s club of millionaires and not really about hockey or sports; although golf seems the interaction medium for initiation…… Is it a cult? Who knows; I don’t know?
WOMEN, FIND YOUR VOICE AND LIVE WITHIN YOUR POWER!
You are enough.
Jackie Phamotse
~B
This might not be the best Mother’s Day gift but its a story every mother must read and get for her daughter, her sister, her niece her aunt and her friend
Photo Credit: Trending SA #TSAON3
