Cursed with embarrassingly dysfunctional parents, a nutty granny and a dormitory full of strange characters, Spud has his hands full trying to adapt to his new home.

Apartheid is crumbling, Nelson Mandela has just been released from prison and thirteen-year-old Spud Milton is about to start his first year at an elite boys-only boarding school. That said, anyone with an interest in South African life will be affected by Spud.Spud is the hilarious debut novel by John van de Ruit I found myself wishing it would end, before things got out of hand.

Just beyond halfway, things get repetitive and slightly cloying. The character seems contrived, to say the least. For me it was the black prefect character Luthuli, the supposed grandson of Albert Luthuli. What’s fresh about this novel is the use of quintessential South African language and parlance, telling this tale of initiation rituals, competitive sport, scouting for mischief and the like.īut it is, perhaps, impossible for a black person in this country to read a book by a white South African without finding something that sticks in one’s craw. It’s the usual stuff of young adolescent minds starting to master their behaviour amid hormonal changes - or lack thereof, in the case of Spud. They are an amalgamation of all the eccentric characters that seem to be present in boarding schools: the glutton, the bully, the valetudinarian, the thief, the pervert, the researcher who’s obsessed with nefarious aspects of the school’s past, and the semi-detached observer ( Spud). We also come to know Spud‘s dormmates, the Crazy Eight. Spud is an average 14-year-old who loves cricket, fumbles through rugby and manages to have more than average relationships with most of his teachers, particularly the cussing, quaffing English master who introduces Spud to his favourite authors. A young boy from a dysfunctional middle-class home, he is at the school on an academic scholarship. Set in 1990 at posh private school Michaelhouse, in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, John Milton - alias Spud - is the narrator-diarist with the singing voice of an angel.

It is written in diary form, in this tone: “I hate to admit it, dear diary, but I’m a hero! Destined for greatness, with ‘the luck of the devil’.” Spud is what it says on the cover, “a wickedly funny novel”, and its running spring of humour makes the first half of the book irresistible.

Spud by john van de ruit