Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood - Trevor Noah - ★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Trevor Noah

GENRE: Memoir

PUBLICATION DATE: November 15, 2016

RATING: 3.25 stars.

Sometimes, when you pick up a well-reviewed book, you feel so much of an impatience to read it that you tend to miss out on an important element of the book - its title. 🤦🏻♀️

I took up Trevor Noah's "Born a Crime" with a fluttering of excitement in my heart. After all, I'm a big fan of his work on The Daily Show (more so, his 'Between the Scenes' segment). I knew this book would be truthful yet humorously entertaining. But now that I'm done with it, I feel like there's something missing. 

The book has a lot less of his life than I was expecting to read. I wanted to know his initial struggles to becoming a successful mixed-race performer. I wanted to know his journey to America and life as host of an immensely popular daily programme.

While pondering this dissatisfaction, I was staring at the cover and suddenly saw the tagline of the book: "Stories from a South African Childhood". No wonder there were so many lacunae in the flow! I guess he's reserving his complete success story for his true autobiography. I felt like kicking myself for totally forgetting about the tagline. Maybe I'd have relished the book better if I knew what to expect beforehand.

Born a Crime is definitely entertaining. Trevor's humour and his love for his mother shine through in almost every chapter. Right in the first chapter, he explains what he means by "Born a Crime". He has been totally honest even about his tryst on the other side of the law. But what I didn't like was the lack of structure. When the narrator is eight in one chapter, twenty-four in the next and eleven in the third, it definitely affects the flow of your reading. The book would have been so much better with a proper editing. 

At the same time, the book reveals a South Africa that you wouldn't know otherwise. The patriarchy, the class ostracism, the police apathy - some facts seem too painful and hit close to home.

Go for the book if you are a Trevor Noah fan, or if you want to get an insider perspective of life in SA. But be very clear; the book is exactly as described. It is full of true "stories from a SA childhood" and not an autobiography.