I read ‘Chase Your Shadow: The Trials of Oscar Pistorius’ by John Carlin back in 2015. This one was written by Reeva Steenkamp’s mother June. My word it packs a punch. ‘The pain only gets worse. I don’t know how I will get through these next few days, surfacing every morning knowing I will never hear my daughter’s voice again, never see her elfin face, never watch her throw back her head and laugh throatily, never send my little love fairies via SMS to make her feel better when she’s ill, never again hold her when she cries. How can I accept she has just gone? Gone forever.’
I won’t go into the detailed story as I am sure everyone knows it. South Africa’s national hero shoots his model girlfriend dead on 14-Feb-2013. Valentine’s Day. Whereas the Carlin book looks at Pistorius this, of course, is about Reeva. It is heart wrenching.
Reeva really is brought to life by her mother. She is a real person not just a vacant model looking for money and fame. Reeva had a choice, to stay in Port Elizabeth and practice law (she had a law degree) or move to Johannesburg to pursue a modelling career. She chose modelling to her father’s chagrin, but her family supported her. Pursue it she did. With everything she had. The editor of FHM South Africa said ‘… she was just so obsessed with making something out of herself and prepared to do what she needed to get there. Even though she was such a friendly, lovely person, she was ruthlessly dedicated to that part of being a model’.
Being from the UK I knew of Pistorius due to the London Olympics, but I had not heard of Reeva before. She had been on a reality show on South African television that was not shown here as far as I know. Not that I would have watched it anyway but that is beside the point. What I found particularly interesting were the comments from Reeva’s friends and Reeva’s WhatsApp messages. This did not seem like a comfortable relationship. Not violent but Pistorius was controlling.
The writing by June is from the heart and as such it can be a little repetitive. This is understandable of course. June is not an author, although she does acknowledge Sara Edworthy for putting her words onto the page, and this must have been difficult to write but maybe this helped her in a way. I am sure it did. There are plenty of books out there written by mother’s that have been in the same position as June, so I presume the sitting down and writing does indeed provide some form of therapeutic / mental assistance. Be it closure or just remembering all the good times.
As a footnote to this review, there has been a lot of updates to the Pistorius prison sentence since this was published so I do advise you to check that out after reading this book.