If You Want to Make God Laugh
“I’ve just come to realize more and more that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. And I’ve never had more plans than I have now.”
If You Want to Make God Laugh just completely captured me throughout its sorrowful and heartfelt pages. I truly went through an amazing and wonderful emotional journey with the main characters in Marais’s latest page turner.
The story is set in South Africa during the 1990’s where the HIV and AIDS epidemic is prevalent. During this time period, Nelson Mandela is about to become the first African President of South Africa. In this tumultuous time, three women, Delilah, Ruth and Zodwa end up living together. Zodwa is a young pregnant woman who fears she will never achieve her dreams of being educated and free. The two sisters, Ruth and Delilah, are seeking a life of peace, but past memories in both white women haunt the present. Ruth was a stripper and prostitute who has been married and divorced three times. Delilah was a convert to the Catholic faith and fell in love with a priest, and a son was born. Meanwhile, Zodwa gives birth but her mother gives away the child. By coincidence, she finds him and agrees to work for his foster parents, Ruth and Delilah.
As the story flows seamlessly from woman to woman, you will see how relationships carry these three women through hardships and the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood and motherhood. Their stories come together all because of a child and the mystery surrounding it. From there the story evolves through each broken and yet determined woman. This is no fairy tale read, but there is still lightness to be found in the sarcasm and bickering of the central characters as they live and grow through each other.
Marais also does not shy away from the reality of the world the story is set in. The narrative navigates the topics of race, politics, religious corruption and sexual abuse. Her writing will pull you in from the very beginning of the story, and you will find yourself falling in love with the three sisters as you follow their tale. Even as they endure loss after loss, they stand up strong and the reader will find themselves looking at how they too can stand strong in the current world we live in.
Synopsis:
In a squatter camp on the outskirts of Johannesburg, seventeen-year-old Zodwa lives in desperate poverty, under the shadowy threat of a civil war and a growing AIDS epidemic. Eight months pregnant, Zodwa carefully guards secrets that jeopardize her life.
Across the country, wealthy socialite Ruth appears to have everything her heart desires, but it's what she can't have that leads to her breakdown. Meanwhile, in Zaire, a disgraced former nun, Delilah, grapples with a past that refuses to stay buried. When these personal crises send both middle-aged women back to their rural hometown to heal, the discovery of an abandoned newborn baby upends everything, challenging their lifelong beliefs about race, motherhood, and the power of the past.
As the mystery surrounding the infant grows, the complicated lives of Zodwa, Ruth, and Delilah become inextricably linked. What follows is a mesmerizing look at family and identity that asks: How far will the human heart go to protect itself and the ones it loves?
