Shirley, Goodness & Mercy is a heart-warming, yet compellingly honest story about a young boy growing up in Newclare, Coronationville and Riverlea during the apartheid era. Despite Van Wyk’s later becoming involved in the ‘struggle’, this is not a book about racial politics. Instead, it is a delightful account of one boy’s special relationship with the relatives, friends and neighbours who made up his community, and of the important coping role laughter and humour played during the years he spent in bleak and dusty townships. In Shirley, Goodness & Mercy Chris van Wyk – poet, novelist and short story writer – had created a truly remarkable work, at once both thought-provoking and vastly entertaining.