Why do we read? Well the answer lies in this book. It is a story that shows us the remarkable struggles of three families and hidden strengths that develop from unsuspecting sources into a hopeful future. This story can at times be dark and trecherous as it deals with the injust legacy of colonialism; yet it also deals with a brighter topic in the power that we as a species has to overcome ineffable odds. Please read this book as it is a learning experience and a true foundation of beatiful literature.

I read the novel, What Hope Have You! by Elaine Bunbury because I am attracted to stories about racial injustice. I had no idea what I was in for, though. Growing up in the United States I experienced race riots, interracial relationships, and have often wished I was African American because I am disgusted by the way many white people treat black people.
This book opened my eyes to even greater injustices in the world, the history of South Africa. Bunbury has written a brilliant, literary masterpiece; historically revealing and in my mind socially relevant in a world of daily struggles between the races, still.
The author's description of the landscape, the language, the emotions of the cast of literally colorful characters in her epic novel will take any reader's breath not only away but suck it out of their body.
I will be affected by this reading of Bunbury's novel for some time. The ironies involved in the hate that often fosters man made rules about separating races (Apartheid) and the insulting consequences of, in this book's case, a white man raping a black woman and the resulting lineage is beautifully portrayed in this magnificent story.
The absurdity down the family line, because the origins were carefully hidden (passing for white, in other words)a man in the story is suddenly faced with scandal and the man made laws he supports ultimately rip the family apart:
"Hetty(the man's wife) and the children will now be classified as coloured under the Population Registration Act. They'll have to leave my house!"
The reality of the unfolding of the scandal of the woman who'd been raped being a relative, smacks(!) the man where he lives and what he'd been about; the laws, the separation.
Bunbury wrote this story over twenty years and in a few days I read it; but I will be reliving it in my mind for years and will probably read it again some day. A treasure and a triumph! Outstanding!

A beautiful story of three families (all from different backgrounds) Extending over four generations. The story takes place in South Africa in the late 1800's in a society based in colonialism and apartheid, to the release of Nelson Mandela.

I found the book very interesting from several prospectives. Thr "Grey Sparrows" lived an incredibly hard life and had a marked dedication to their mission. The dedication began with an idea of the founderess, Mabel Elizabeth Anne Hodges while she was a member of another Anglican order of nuns.

As a sister of the Society of St. Margaret she became accutely aware of the division between the well to do class and the working class within the Church of England. Her vision saw the need for education for the working class rather than Prayer Book ritual. A new and perhaps a rather "evangelical" attitude for an Anglo-Catholic. Unfortunately her Religious Superior did not have her vision and her sense to see such a mission was a true calling. She was advised to leave the order.

I found this part extremely hard to understand as the religious order of her birth was a missionary sisterhood dedicated to the rural poor. I found the inability of the author to get indepth for this parting of the ways as a major weakness in the book.

What I found most ironic in the book is that the order born was true to the founding goal of the mother order... missionaries to the rural poor. The Grey Sparrows lived as St. Francis did by the work of their own hands. It was a hard life with many physical privations and limitations but according to accounts rewards as well.

I also found the pious statements of some of the male clergy living in rectories rather distasteful but there were others, the Bush Brothers,who like the Grey Sparrows lived the life of rural ministers.

It is an interesting historical piece revealing the dedication of some High Church Anglicans work among the working class poor. It also reveals the dated attitudes of the Anglican Church and its religious orders when faced with a woman who really saw the C. of E.'s need to educate the working class and increase both knowledge and social change which would have ultimately increased the membership in the C. of E.

Perhaps the prejudice about the intellectual limitations of the working class limited the clergy and religious of the C.of E. from seeing the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual gifts this group would have nourished and brought to harvest. It is obvious the foundress did not and she and her sisters with effort set an example to the Anglican Church.