Description
Jacqui Burnett wants to kill her father. At the age of 16. With a gun. The setting: apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 80s. The mood: the apparent bliss and harmony of white conservative Christian life. Driven to extremes by her father’s criminal schemes and corrosive emotional abuse, Jacqui barely survives the first part of this turbulent memoir, as near-death experiences lacerate the pages with suicide attempts, a death-defying car accident, an illegal abortion, and that near-patricide episode… to name just a few. At this point, Jacqui is only 18. This is truth stranger than fiction and it’s only the beginning of her journey… Part one is dedicated to her father and tells the visceral, switchback story of the twisted father-daughter relationship that formed her character, fuelled by her first 26 years in his thrall. Part two switches settings as we find Jacqui in her mid-40s travelling across America, searching for answers. Perhaps surprisingly, this section is dedicated to her mother, the woman who turned a blind eye while supporting the tyrant she remained married to – all his life. The opening chapter drops Jacqui at 11 300 feet in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Having achieved material success, Jacqui remains dogged by unresolved anger and co-dependency - damaged by her history, despite a bucket load of therapy. Trying to make sense of her life after a decade-long legal battle against the giant multinational accounting firm, Deloitte, which against all odds she wins, she now faces a failing marriage and a ninth near-death experience: Jacqui is lost in a snowstorm. Cue her rebound romance, with a man who at first appears to be her soulmate on a white horse come to rescue her. By the end of part two, however, the reader and Jacqui’s close friend Amanda are on the same page: this man is ultimately an unavailable emotional fool. Finally, in part three, after an avalanche of events strips Jacqui of everything she values, Jacqui learns to put herself first, to tell her story of survival through the prism of self-love and its potential for self-regeneration. In essence, Life’s Not Yoga is about self-discovery and self-recovery. Of course, every twelve-step program shares a similar tale of a shattering life journey (parts one and two) where the wounded soul is guided to recovery (part three). So how is this memoir different? While the themes are universal, the dialogue is cracking, coupled with Jacqui’s unapologetic authentic voice and her hard-won belief in discovering her own path to a Higher Power. This combination makes for compelling storytelling. On one level it’s a tale of looking for love in all the wrong places, but on a deeper level, it’s a story of how adversity viewed through the lens of insight and wisdom lead to hope and redemption. To get to this point – to quote Laurie Hertzel – requires ‘a certain plumbing of the soul’, at which Jacqui Burnett excels. It’s a tumultuous, terrifying, frustrating but finally redemptive journey as she struggles to uncover the heroine within. The miracle is that she comes out the other side alive and – more than that – willing to use her life story to inspire others to survive and flourish. This is a book that will attract readers well beyond her already 40 000-strong online following. Compulsory reading for all of us living through challenging relationships with parents, partners, families, colleagues, our histories and ourselves. That would be all of us, then. (Written by Giles Griffin)
