Suzelle DIY – The book
Created by Julia Anastasopoulos and Ari Kruger, Photographs by Adriaan Oosthuizen
Human & Rousseau
REVIEW: Staff writer
Selling books, any books, to a cash-strapped society with literacy low on its priorities radar is always tricky, so it helps when the author has some cachet that can be exploited to help with marketing.
But does a sizzling personality actually make their book good? There is often an uneven relationship between the size of an author’s public persona and the quality of the books they produce.
In the case of Suzelle, the “author” of Suzelle DIY – The Book, the chances of the book failing are proportionate to her larger-than-life presence in current South African pop culture. Suzelle is huge.
She makes helpful YouTube videos about anything from removing animal hair from clothes to making a braai pie. The videos are watched and shared and rewatched, and reshared over and over again.
Not so much for the helpful tips, but because Suzelle has snuck her way into South Africans’ hearts with her confident awkwardness, her pastel colours and her Afrikaans tannie accent, with its overly rounded vowels.
Let’s be clear: Suzelle is not real. Suzelle is a creation by an actress-artist and her partner. Suzelle – a smoothly groomed woman in her thirties – was born just last year, fully formed, with a flower in her hair, and ready to peel apples with a drill. Suzelle has spent the past two weeks travelling to promote her book and her audiences spill out of the bookshops.
Against the backdrop of her overwhelming image, Suzelle DIY – The Book has all the potential for failure. What could possibly be as distracting and funny as watching Suzelle set her garden umbrella alight by accident? What advice could she possibly put into a book that you can’t find on YouTube?
Why would anyone – not under the influence of the pink fluff ball delight of the Suzelle personality – buy this book? Because it stands up to scrutiny in the DIY book department and because it forges a pink fluff ball path of its own.
The Book ticks all the boxes. Whether it’s due to the world financial crisis, the influence of hipsters or just the natural cycle of things, DIY has been flourishing for a few years now and shows no sign of dating. Once it was considered normal to clean your windows with vinegar, then it was considered old-fashioned.
Now, keeping shelves full of cleaning products when vinegar and bicarbonate of soda are cheaper and less damaging to the environment, is seen by some as a sign of ignorance, thoughtlessness or laziness.
Home industry, prudence, savings, growing-your-own, upcycling and cooking-from-scratch concepts that were considered quaint a few years ago have become fashionable.
But what about the generation that didn’t learn to change its own plugs, or have any idea that a 2-litre plastic soft drink bottle could be anything but rubbish when it’s empty?
How do people who grew up with smooth white bread that comes in a colourful plastic broach – the abyss between convenience and a desire to be a little more hands-on and self-sufficient – learn the basics?
DIY books and television programmes abound, so Suzelle’s book could be seen as just a pinker version of the same-old, same-old.
However, the book has been produced to a very high standard and proves itself worthy on many levels. With its fresh colours and easy-on-the-eye layout, and large, uncluttered images, it clears the first hurdle easily. It is both eye-candy and easy in the hand; aesthetically pleasing and inviting.
There are 10 sections, from household and wellness DIY through to car DIY and what Suzelle calls “DI-Braai”.
Each section contains really helpful tips, like how to change a tyre and how to reduce electricity use, but also larger useful projects (how to make a solar oven from a cardboard box) and small tips, like how to ease a sore throat.
The process of inclusion and exclusion was rigorous. It would have been easy to clutter the book, or to not include enough simple activities. Yet, there’s an excellent balance between everyday practical ideas, bigger and more serious projects, and entirely whimsical schemes to keep energetic DIY-ers inspired.
Instructions are minimal, which contributes to a sense the reader gets that anything in this book is doable.
You are not met with long lists of “what you will need” and complex instructions.
Where the “how to” proves too complex for words, the book’s creators have opted for a series of photographs of, for instance, Suzelle putting a duvet cover on a duvet with a slick “sausage” move (this tip alone makes this book worthwhile).
And throughout, most successfully, Suzelle’s voice rings clear as a bell, imbuing the book with a delightful voice-over if you’re already a Suzelle fan. You’re likely to read every page in her accent. And the book itself affirms what Suzelle loves to say in her videos: that you too can save money and be creative “because anybody can”.