Photo by Wil C. Fry, 2020
★★★★ (4.4 of 5)
- Full Title: Born A Crime: Stories From A South African Childhood
- Author: Trevor Noah
- Year: 2016 (mine was 2019 trade paperback)
- Pages: 285
- Genre: Memoir, nonfiction
- Publisher: One World (Penguin Random House)
- ISBN 978-0-399-58819-8
- Wikipedia page
- Author’s Wikipedia page
Summary
Written by comedian and television personality Trevor Noah (host of The Daily Show since Jon Stewart’s 2015 exit), this book is described elsewhere as “autobiographical comedy”, which I didn’t know was a genre. To me, it read as a memoir, though one that was often extremely funny.
The book opens with descriptions of apartheid, and then scenes from Noah’s childhood. He goes back to tell how his parents met and illegally conceived him, and brings the reader through his life until 2009 — when his mother was shot in the back of the head by an abusive ex-husband.
Praise
Throughout, I was impressed with the planning and execution of this book, from a writing standpoint. Though Noah’s style comes across as loose and relaxed, a careful examination shows that it was tightly controlled behind the scenes — each series of small jokes builds toward a cumulative joke that required the previous ones in order to be funny — but this is never obvious during the buildup. Each set of details comes in handy for understanding a later anecdote, though each part stands well enough on its own.
His descriptions of South Africa, both during apartheid and after its end, are poignant, funny yet sad, believable yet fantastic. He relates his experiences lucidly, simultaneously presenting the scenes as he saw them at the time and also as he sees them through hindsight.
The quality of the writing surprised me, not because I doubted Noah’s ability specifically (I’ve seen his shows and comedy specials so I know the guy is smart and funny), but because I’ve read other books, both memoir and comedy, by comedians and television personalities. They tend to fall flat for me, bringing a chuckle at best. This one was absorbing and powerful, leading me to think: Noah isn’t a comedian who also writes; he’s a writer who also does comedy.
Points Off For
I was close to giving this five stars. A few minor points, however, were enough to make it less than perfect.
Most importantly, I think, the ending was weak. Had it ended a couple of pages earlier, with him laughing with his mother in the hospital, the ending would have been perfect. But he added a couple of pages to conclude that it was a miracle his mother survived the gunshot wounds. After spending most of the book skeptical of his mother’s religious claims, it was like he just gave up at the end and thought: well, maybe it was Jesus all along.
At times, the non-chronological nature bugged me. I understand why he organized the book in the order he did — and it works — but occasionally when he went back to fill in details necessary for the next anecdote or joke, it changed my perception of the previous stories, because the new details were old enough to have affected the older stories. As I said, it’s minor.
Conclusion
As is always the case, I’m glad I followed my spouse’s recommendation to read this book. (She read it a couple of years ago.) Sometimes, when a person’s experience is drastically different from my own, I’m never able to see what they saw, feel what they felt. But in this case, through his talents as a storyteller and as a writer, Noah was able to give me those experiences in this book, and I’m grateful.
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