In case you didn’t know, Chris Von Ulmenstein, the woman behind the ‘Whale Tales‘ blog, has written a book.

Just don’t use the word ‘book’ around Emile Joubert, who won the kykNET-Rapport Prize for Book Reviewer of the Year for 2017, because that doesn’t sit well with him.

Penned back in March for Wine Goggle, Joubert took aim at SwitchBitch: My journey of transformation from Sour to Sweet, and it’s one of the more scathing reviews you’ll ever read.

It’s quite a lengthy takedown, so we’ve just plucked the best zingers below for your perusal.

Emile, over to you:

The problem with the internet and the permissive blogging this encourages is not so much it giving anybody with a pulse and a keyboard a platform on which to write. More disconcerting is that participation in the on-line space actually gives some people the belief that they can write, when there should be a universal law prohibiting their ambitions of stepping outside the temporary blogosphere wherein the viewer can be rescued by the delete button.

Evidence of this can be found in this book, the result of Cape Town-based blogger Chris von Ulmenstein’s misguided belief that she can string enough repetitive words, clumsy sentences and grammatical monstrosities together and call the end product a book. Or as she refers to it in the gluttonous stretches of self-praise with which Switchbitch’s development and publication are blogged about, “The Book”.

Who dislikes her more – Emile, or Chef Bertus Basson?

The book is split into two parts – one details her journey towards a “physical and spiritual makeover”, and the other is described by Emile as a “Memoir, which reads like a teenaged schoolgirl’s journal that had been jotted beneath the sheets in the bed of boarding school dormitory while chomping on Quality Streets”.

If you hadn’t guessed by now, he really isn’t a fan.

I’ll skip through the bits about her “dysfunctional family”, including Von Ulmenstein involving a lawyer to prevent her niece from posting disparaging comments about her auntie on social media, and the bit where she says her own sister has a “psychological disability”.

Let’s just say nothing was off limits in the book:

Back to Cape Town, and there is the creation of a child. I had heard of this conception but assumed it had occurred by means of a Nespresso machine, a balsamic vinegar container or an empty bratwurst wrapper. It was, in fact, through the instrumental intervention of one Rob, who according to Von Ulmenstein, was not only a fertiliser but great in the sack where she was “like putty in his hands”.

Moving swiftly along without comment, here’s how the book review wraps up:

The blog plays an important part in this book of hers. Not having enough material or being a competent enough writer to sustain a truly engaging and informative narrative, a large segment of the publication is pure regurgitation of already published Whale Tales pieces. These include those famous ponderous nit-picky restaurant reviews that led to the ego being expanded into a bloated enough form to create the false illusion that there would, somehow, be enough interest in her writing to warrant a book. Even if it meant Von Ulmenstein having to resort to self-publishing, as the general standard of the story and its disjointed, mediocre telling would not even be acceptable to a publisher of dog-food manuals.

But she is not entirely to blame. Schmoozing Cape Town PR types desperate for exposure, fawning restaurateurs scared of eliciting negative comment and phoney associates calling themselves friends have fed the monster into a state of inflated self-importance and illusionary belief that those words and opinions deserve to be heard on a higher plane.

Anyone planning to buy this book should be warned that this is not the case. And mine is now rested.

Hey, at least Emile bought a copy in the first place.

Let me just say this – here at 2oceansvibe, we have had our fair share of run-ins with Von Ulmenstein, and we made the decision a while back to avoid writing about her as to not invite such negative energy into our lives.

The thing is, controversy usually follows the Whale, and readers are constantly sending in their tales of run-ins and encounters.

Even though she claims to have undergone an amazing transformation, both physically and spiritually, that hasn’t stopped the hate and vitriol following her around.

Take for example the Twitter account Mr. FockTrot Oscar, dedicated almost entirely to attacking Von Ulmenstein.

A look at some of the lesser hateful tweets:

That’s quite a hateful comment to make about someone’s father.

You can do your own digging around to see whether or not that’s true.

And yes, Irna van Zyl did write a novel that is worth mentioning. Penguin Books describe Death Cup as follows:

Detective Storm van der Merwe and Andreas Moerdyk are back in this brand-new thriller by Irna van Zyl, author of Dead in the Water.

Storm now works in Hermanus and during a lunch with her friend at Zebardines, a much-hated food blogger keels over and dies. It turns out that there were deadly mushrooms, death cups, in her food.

Finding out who killed the blogger is Storm’s first priority, but not the only matter requiring her attention: her old colleague, Andreas Moerdyk, quit his job unexpectedly and expects Storm to put him up while he makes a new start in Hermanus.

Amid frantic preparations for Fooddotcom’s prize-giving ceremony that will honour the country’s best chefs, the murderer strikes again, and again

Hmm, who might that much-hated food blogger be?

If you’re interested, here’s a more than two-hour long video of Von Ulmenstein’s book launch from December of last year.

Chris, if you’re out there, good luck with your book and your journey and life in general.

Invite positive energy into your life, dance like nobody’s watching, and write like nobody’s reading.

Have a #blessed Monday, friends.

[sources:winegoggle&twitter&penguin]