Sally is killed in a farmstead massacre in the South African bush, and watches from the afterlife as her daughter Gigi and her extended family cope with the shocking events and the aftermath.

As shocking as the opening event is, this is mostly a gentle and moving story, as Gigi, Sally's sister Adele, Adele's husband Liam--whom Sally had also loved--and their children Tyler and Bryony, work through the aftermath. And Sally isn't gone; she finds herself bound to the world and her family, unable to move on until she deals with something that must be done first.

At first, she can't feel or reach Gigi at all. Her daughter is too traumatized, and getting through the days and nights with heavy sedation. For reasons that aren't clear at first, Adele and Liam, while reachable, are at first too painful for her. Adele's youngest, daughter Bryony, is her initial path in to her struggling family. Bryony is puzzled, resentful, and alarmed at first, by her zombie-like cousin. The cousins haven't met since Bryony was a toddler, because of the estrangement between the sisters. Gigi has grown up on a conservation farmstead, eating vegan, doing morning yoga, and learning an amazing amount of biology. Her cousin has grown up in suburban Johannesburg, with a far more conventional education. She escapes the stranger in her room by spying on the intriguing, attractive next door neighbor, Lesedi Matsunyane.

Lesedi, it turns out, is a modern, highly educated, but very traditional South African sangoma. She's running a consulting service from her home--against the Body Corporate rules--and she can see Sally.

She can also see the black dog that represents the forces of darkness threatening Bryony and her family.

As the story plays out, the conflicts and complicated emotional history entangling Sally, Adele, and Liam unfold, and as Gigi emerges from her fog, we begin to suspect she saw more than initially thought on that horrible summer morning.

Black Dog Summer grabs the emotions and doesn't let go.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic galley from the publisher via NetGalley. ( )

Sally is thirty-eight-years old when she is killed; then, she begins to narrate Black Dog Summer.

A novel can be narrated by death (like Markus Zuzak's The Book Thief), a dog (as in Edward Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle), or a drug (consider James Hannaham's Delicious Foods).

So, the decision to have a ghost narrate a story isn't fresh.

"Ghosts make great narrators. They tend to see everything," explains Javier Marías, whose mystically-populated collection of stories While the Women Are Sleeping was published in Spain in 1990. (The interview is here, marking the English publication of the work in 2010.)

This is true of Black Dog Summer; Sally sees everything about her sister Adele's life with husband Liam, daughter Bryony and son Tyler, and Sally's surviving daughter, Gigi, who comes to live with them.

What could be better than an all-knowing ghost narrator who can observe and intuit what the average narrator might miss, who can seamlessly inhabit the experience of other characters?

More detail about this novel is here, on BuriedInPrint.

Stand clear, I'm on a roll! Another awesome book about ghosts. I'm not sure what I expected from Miranda Sherry's South African novel, but I was surprised and enchanted with what I found - the ordinariness of family life contrasted with a shocking tragedy, lyrical language and haunting descriptions, plus supernatural storytelling.

Sally, nicknamed Monkey, is brutally murdered at the commune where she lives with her teenage daughter, Gigi. Sally's estranged sister Adele and her husband Liam take the orphaned girl into their home, where she instantly causes friction between husband and wife and with her two cousins, Bryony and Tyler. Next door neighbour Lesedi, a sangoma (healer), senses trouble brewing - she sees a vision of a black dog in the storm clouds above the family's home.

Miranda Sherry makes all of the characters so believable - especially the children - that the 'voice' of Sally, observing the effect of her murder upon her daughter and sister's family, is far more powerful than a literary device holding the story together. She reflects upon her childhood with Adele, their falling out over Liam, the shelter of the commune for her and Gigi, and the last moments before her death, but her 'haunting' is not restricted to maudlin memories. Sally has to try and keep her daughter safe and her family together. I loved reading about South Africa, from Limpopo to Johannesburg, which is all new to me, but I especially enjoyed the author's way with words, making the everyday sound beautiful. An engrossing and evocative debut novel, most heartily recommended. ( )

3.5 I was not a big lover of Lovely Bones, and this book too is narrated by the recent dead, but for some reason I liked this one. I, know the atmosphere had much to do with this, it was melancholy and psychological but not without hope. The location too played into it, South Africa post apartheid when there was so much killing of the framers in the remoter regions of the country, in this case it was killing on a farm that tried to conserve and save the animals of this region. The culture too I found fascinating, the mix between the beliefs of the past and those of the present.

Family relationships, the competition between sisters and some good characters that we learn much from in backstories. Lesedi, a sangoma, who throws bones and reads them in able to help her client. Gigi, a young girl who watched the murder of her mother and is now trying to adjust. But sometimes what one experiences comes back to haunt with terrifying consequences. Bryon, a young girl who will prove to be much wiser than her age.

Although this is narrated by Sally, now dead, she follows and grabs on to stories and memory lines. Very interesting concept, and one that worked for me, very well. ( )

A story about murder but not crime, featuring black magic but no horror, and narrated by a dead woman who is not a ghost, Miranda Sherry’s debut novel is a delightful mix of paradox and melancholy.

Sally, an environmental conservationist, is the victim of a farm murder but is unable to rest: her wandering spirit follows her distraught daughter Gigi to Johannesburg, where the teen is taken in by her aunt Adele and from being home-schooled on a farm has to adapt to middle class life in a suburban complex.

Gigi shares a room with her cousin Bryony, who is fascinated by the next-door sangoma: African spirit magic practised by an educated young woman in the heart of suburbia is a delightful twist.

Something bad is coming: as the summer progresses, secrets are aired, a mysterious black dog appears, and Gigi’s post traumatic stress has frightening consequences. It could be a frightening, tragic story, but Sherry has delicate touch, all the characters are sympathetically portrayed, and the book ends on a hopeful note