Been reading a lot lately, these three local books deserve to have something said about them, but I don’t have time to write separate posts, so in a tiny window of opportunity, here’s why I recommend all three books.
Kgebetli Moele’s, The Book of the Dead, his second novel is quite a book. Even though it is a fairly short read, it is a devastating book. It offers a scarey, bleak, and I guess realistic picture of the world it describes; and in that sense \offers an explanation for the rampant spread of HIV. In the second part of “Dead”, The HI Virus becomes a character in the way Death does in Zusak’s The Book Thief. Although Moele’s character feels more intent on doing his work, and has evil motivations. It makes an interesting read and could helpfully be read alongside Aernout Zevenbergen’s Spots of Leopard. One way of reading “Dead” would be as a case study of what Zevenbergen is looking at, ‘what it means to be a man’ in post-colonial Africa, in the context of HIV/AIDS; the breakdown of traditional society, the rise of materialism and so on. I prefer this book to Room 207, in spite of the violence and the horror. For me it holds together more coherently.
Emmaleen Kriel writes about her own experience of taking up domestic work in the UK and Europe as a way of earning money, she has seven children who have all left home and is a widow, in her fifties she decides to do what for many priveliged white South Africans would seem an extraordinary thing to do. She also writes about it. And of course it makes for interesting reading and for those who have ever employed a domestic worker it is interesting to read about how the world and her employers are viewed by one particular person. She has a range of employment situations and each one brings different insights. Kriel has republished her book herself as it was out of print. I can see why it is still selling.
Once I started reading Sven Eick’s, Apetown, I couldn’t put it down – a fast-paced novella that is funny, tense, and wonderfully evocative of a particular aspect of Cape Town with which, thankfully, I am not intimately acquainted anymore (night clubs and grungy digs). What I loved most about Eick’s novel was its dark, funny, sassy, critical, bright twentysomething worldview. Which also made me feel old. Especially bits like this:
“No Mom, I’m dead.”
She was really phoning to tell me she was still alive. I hadn’t phoned her for a week; she didn’t understand that I didn’t have any money left and I hadn’t really tried to tell her. At fifty years of age, she wanted me to think that maybe she had slipped in the bath or was lying at the foot of a staircase with a broken hip.
“Well, I’m fine, thank you for asking.”
And just there I switched off from the conversation, which was a rerun of a hundred conversations that amounted to little more than a catalogue of the iniquities inflicted on my mother by life during the last fifty years.”
His description of Lars’s mother makes me see her as seventy plus or older, even though I know some sprightly seventy year olds, but fifty and already worried about broken hips? But this is a minor point and I don’t think I am the intended audience for the book. I laughed out loud at the weird situations his characters got themselves into, bits had me cringing with sympathy and horror (intended by the author, I hope). Let’s see more of your work Sven, I think you are a gifted writer, with a wonderful darkly comic voice. Bring it on.
Ways of Staying made me think, it troubled me, made me wonder why I don’t think about leaving, made me wonder if I have ostrich tendencies. I wanted the book to articulate my reasons for staying, but instead it troubled me more about why I hadn’t really considered leaving.
I also wondered why I personally don’t know as many people who have experienced the kinds of violent attacks that are described in the book. Of course, everyone, or almost everyone, I know has had things stolen from them. Or violent encounters or close encounters of a violent kind, from which they escaped physically unharmed. For example, last year my car was broken into twice, once in my driveway at home and once at Rondebosch Common when my handbag was stolen, which took months of annoying errands to get myself back to almost square one. I still don’t have a car radio. So I haven’t been listening to SAFM, and have been even more out of the news loop than I was before. I pick up snippets from the headline posters on lamp posts – this week I discovered that Zuma is marrying another wife and that as a taxpayer I will be involved in footing the bill. I also discovered that cricket was being played in Cape Town. (I also learnt this from Facebook and from seeing all the cars parked along the roads near Newlands.) (I do usually buy the Mail and Guardian and sometimes a Sunday newspaper.)
Of course I know terrible stories of things that have happened to people. The most appalling stories that I know of were things that happened pre 94. Like Phindiwe who cleaned our house when I lived on a farm outside Grahamstown in the late 90s. She ‘fell’ pregnant when she was 14 and the doctor she saw at the time gave her a hysterectomy, he told her that her blood was wrong. She is still at the age of 60 married to Zwelenzima, the man who was her boyfriend, when she was 14. They both drink ‘too much’.
I liked meeting the people that Kevin Bloom introduced me, his reader to. I was especially inspired by Themba Koketi, the young man studying to become a social worker. I wondered if I would have been able to succeed at university under those circumstances. I doubt it. Timothy Maurice Webster interested me too, an African American who chose to come and live here.
I kept hoping that Bloom would give me a range of simple reasons for staying. But he doesn’t. Instead he interrogates the question of leaving or staying. Although I don’t think about living here as ‘staying’. This is where I live. For better or for worse. For richer or for poorer. Perhaps I am too fatalistic. I can’t imagine living elsewhere. Perhaps I lack imagination. I need the weird complexities, the impossible challenges, the peculiarity of here.
Ways of Staying mirrors for me the way I attempt to create something resembling a coherent understanding of my motivations and experiences by patchworking or collaging the bits and pieces together. In fact, it isn’t coherent, and underneath it all is something that is not really possible to put into words, to write in a book. And yet from reading Ways of Staying I get a strong sense of who Kevin Bloom is and what matters to him and why he stays.
Two weeks of blissful reading, swimming in a froggy resevoir pond, cycling on dusty roads, lunches at the Two Goats deli, idly chatting and catching up with friends, champagne, pancakes, dry heat, afternoon naps. New Year’s Eve lantern parade, braais – Karoo lamb chops from the Merino Butchery in Graaf Reinet, cracked heels, slight sunburn, a Christmas tree made from a dried out sisal ‘tree’.
Some highlights: A man called Hitler who loaded the gas cylinder into the car in Graaf Reinet, bumping into a Cape Town friend outside the Spar in Graaf Reinet. Being mistaken for a labourer at the builders’ supply store.
Read the Stieg Larsson trilogy in three and a half days. Loved every word, utterly gripped by the series, read for hours in the dark with my headlamp torch – developed a new sense of Sweden. Lisbeth Salander – a fascinating main character.
Went for two days without reading and then dived into Lorrie Moore’s A gate at the Stairs, loved it too – although it left me feeling a bit down-hearted.
I read Colm Toibin’s, Brooklyn, which was brilliant. He is one of my favourite writers, he makes me think and feel deeply through his stories and writings and my own. The essence of what I loved about Brooklyn was the sense of loss and the impossibilty of making choices that fully work. All choices involve loss, sometimes unbearable loss. For a taste of this book, read the first chapter here. And Eben Venter’s interview with Toibin here.
by Jacob Dlamini cheered me up. I loved the evocation of Katlehong, and was interested in his argument about nostalgia for a past that is seemingly impossible to be nostalgic about. I’m sure this book will stir up lots of heated debate. My only critique is that for me it read a little too much like a lightly edited-for-popular-consumption-PhD at times. Especially the last chapter. I would have liked more of the evocation of the author’s early life, and less reference to other writers and their theories and arguments.
Then On Mexican Time by Tony Cohan, perfect holiday reading, imagining Mexico while in Nieu Bethesda. Cohan’s book made want to go to Mexico even more than Frida Kahlo did.
I love the thing about holidays where you bring some books to read and then borrow from friends and then have heated discussions over a glass of wine about the book (Native Nostalgia). Or you have dreamy sharings of the bits you liked best (On Mexican Time). Or your friend quickly goes online to order the book you have recommended (Brooklyn). Or you see others rivetted to a book that you have just finished (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).
For more photos of Nieu Bethesda and the Lantern Parade check out my Facebook Album and for a very short, somewhat amateurish video of the Lantern Parade see here
1. As a parent of a girl, this novel makes me think I need to learn more about eating disorders and how they come about. Children can so easily become casualties of their parents’ inability to be present and aware.
2. Fowler takes us into the main character’s, Lily’s mind and body, her inner obsessions about food, eating and her body.
“My body screams for the icing, my mind says no, but its starting to quaver. My mouth waters as I beat the icing. It’s thick and glossy, made with real butter. The sweetness caresses my nostrils, and so does the rich bitterness of the cocoa; and then there’s the salty creaminess of the butter. Mind and body are fighting like mad. My body has transformed itself into a champion wrestler for the occasion. My mind is taking a beating.”
Fowler writes with vivid clarity about Lily’s inner torment, and she shows us the repetitive, circular patterns of Lily’s self destructive cocoon.
3. The style and language in this novel impressed me. So did the sense of place and the details that make Kalk Bay, Plumstead and the Karoo Farm come alive for me as a reader. The sound of the sea and wind, the stone walls of the Kalk Bay house and of the farm house in the Karoo. “Its windy and sand gets stuck in my teeth. I thought it would be a good idea to come out here to my lonely hill, but even the sheep are tucking their heads into their woollen armpits.”
4. We have a new, interesting voice in this young novelist. “The Elephant in the Room” is a strong debut novel and I look forward to reading more of her works.
5. The child’s perspective on family secrets, such as the death of Andre, Lily’s uncle and her grandfather and how their deaths came about.
6. The character of Gesiena, reminds me of characters in many South African farm novels, I loved her and was saddened by her life and her fate.
7. In spite of the tragedy/ies at the heart of the novel, Maya has a light touch, she writes with humour at times, deftly and seamlessly weaving in facts about anorexia, bulimia, butterflies and South African politics, so they are part of Lily’s life and engagement with her world and not the writer imposing her research or views on the reader.
8. As a parent, teacher or someone who knows young people you may be able to identify the early stages of anorexia or bulimia. Lily’s Gran and mother both ignore the signs, which seem to be quite obvious to this reader, in spite of how Lily goes to great lengths to hide her tracks and keep her awful secret.
1. Laki, Nick’s sidekick. His clothes (short sleeved shirt in a garish shade of green, embroidered with orange fish), his earnest demeanour, his loyalty, his yellow Renault…
2. The mystery surrounding Laki’s sexual orientation
3. The coincidences that tie up the plot like a well-laced boot (so to speak)
4. The opening chapter that grabbed me and kept me
5. Nick’s profession – paramedic, an unusual one for a crime fiction, but brilliantly chosen and woven through the book
6. Stronghold Security – and how it is at the heart of this very contemporary South African krimi
7. Joburg (I love the different Joburgs that writers are coming up with) – Jassy’s Joburg is a frightening, seedy, down at heel and glamourous, fast paced, and she zooms us all over Jozi from Newtown to Midrand, Yeoville to the Joburg Gen, suburban Northcliff to OR Tambo, Nandos in Germiston and the trip to Louis Trichardt in the dark at top speed.
8. Nick’s buzzy, manic energy that will drive him up to Louis Trichardt in the middle of the night on a hunch
9. Nick’s awful brother (didn’t love him, but he certainly kept up the stress levels as the story unfolded)
10. Cellphones on, off, broken, keep the plot moving in clever ways
1. I didn’t completely love the book, because it is a painful read, but I admire the book deeply and feel it is an important book. Painful to see Lizette, Terry’s Mom drinking and drinking and smoking and being irresponsible and oblivious to her children. (It does have resonances with Whiplash too.)
2. Working class Joburg, the West Rand – authentically imagined and described through the eyes of Theresa or Terry, the main character. And Margate.
3. The characterisation of Piet, Terry’s stepfather, my response to him was complex. I can understand that Terry’s was too. For example, how when she is a small child he plays roughly and physically with her and chases her and how this changes into a sexualised, abusive and highly manipulative treatment of Terry.
4. Erica Emdon’s unflinching writing of the narcissism of Lizette and how this plays out in Terry’s life, rupturing her life, leaving her unsafe in the world and undermining her chances of surviving and making it in any kind of way even though she is a bright girl.
My mother never enjoys baking and preparing for kids’ parties. On this occasion I think she had a massive hangover, which is why she went to buy the stuff just before the kids arrived. And even when they arrived, the cakes were still wrapped in their packets. No, my mother isn’t the type to scoop oranges out of their skins. She would lose interest after digging out the inside of one.
(page 195)
5. The references to Charles Bronson, Oros, apricot jam, the Carlton Centre, Coronationville, vetkoek.
6. Terry. She is a survivor. Tough, resourceful, responsible, feeling girl. An oldest child.
7. I was quickly drawn into the world of the book, and it has stayed with me. I can picture a girl of 13 walking around Joburg at night in the mid 70s as she runs away from home, which has become intolerable. I feel I know Lizette and Piet and Ouma and Oupa and Ulrike. And most of all Terry.
8. The melodrama that swirls around Lizette and Piet, seems totally believable to me. Drinking, shouting, arguing, swearing, scenes, and more. The writer describes each outburst and grounds it in what is going on. Terry changes as she grows up, in a particular way, largely to do with how she has been treated and what she has experienced.
9. I like the way Emdon weaves in the story of Sophie, the domestic worker and her son Rex, and the Soweto school boycotts and uprisings, is deftly written and also leaves Terry bereft of the one adult who has been stable and sane in her life.
10. The guardian angels that are there, even in the bleakest circumstances and whose interventions are at times quite limited, nevertheless they do make Terry’s life more bearable: the Sunday School teacher, Sophie, tannie Lettie – the neighbour in Claremont, her friend – Tormud, the farm workers who save her life, the teacher who makes it possible for Terry to go to Standerton High School.
Finuala Dowling runs a monthly poetry class. Well it’s not a class exactly. You sign up. She sends you exercises. You do them or you don’t. You send in poems. Then on the Saturday afternoon in question from 4 to 6, you sit with about 11 or so other poets and Finuala. She has put all the poems together in a stapled sheaf. According the way she has printed the poems out, Finuala asks someone to read a poem. She then asks a few pertinent questions. Others sometimes join in discussing the poem. Then she moves onto the next poem. Each poet gets a turn to have at least 2, sometimes 3 poems examined in this way. The afternoon is friendly and funny and you come away having learnt a lot about the way poems work, about things like clangers and cliches; shifts in mood and changes in direction and how to accomplish this. In short Finuala is a gifted teacher.
Promptly at 6 Finuala stops the class and offers all of those present a glass of wine. If you get there early you can sit in a chair from which you have a wonderful view of Kalk Bay, the sea, whales, the sky.
***
Here is a poem I submitted and have edited a little since the class. I wrote it about 18 months ago, edited it before the class, cut out the whole of what was the first stanza.
Marriage
The birds have all gone, the river is fuller
the days are shorter, and the rain is coming.
My life will end. I’ve seen it now, I’ve seen the face of death.
They came and wheeled your mother away
on a metal trolley. Instead of mohair or cashmere, they
covered your mother with a rough, grey blanket.
I can’t know what you know, how you really feel
I can only surmise from how I see you spend your days
and what you come up with, what you have to show for it all after all
I’m here, not exactly waiting. I’m distracted,
busy, reading, preoccupied, thinking, dreaming.
But if you wanted to say something more to me
than paint colour, OSB, plywood, pergola, mast, tiller
screen, decking, boat, weather, wind, supper, diesel prices
I would listen.
Except, this is the way you talk to me of what is in your heart.
My own heart is thickened, hardened against your anguish.
There are gashes in our understandings.
I can’t know what you know.
(last two lines come from a poem by Adrienne Rich)
2. The tenderness with which Louis Greenberg writes about adolescents, their inner life and hesitant yet overwhelming sexuality (Lyon and Tania). (See no 9).
3. The exploration of what it means to be an artist and how you get to be one and then what happens (Renee, Shane & Aden).
4. Joburg – Cresta, Melville Koppies, Melville, the Emmarentia Rose Garden, “JCE” sportsfields, the Mormon temple, the Sunnyside, Senate House at Wits, the Gertrude Posel gallery. I love Joburg and Louis’s Joburg in this book vibrates with carefully noticed details.
5. Addiction to playing Solitaire on a computer and where that can lead
The days just seem to blur one into another. He’s run out of words. He used to be a student, a writer, a love. He used to engage with life, belong to it. they took the only cords he had when they left, everything that connected him to the world. Now the virtual cards, red on black on red on black, spilling across his brain, red on black spilling over the virtual baize on the screen, the cards are his only interface with the world. …And his whole world is red and black, and smirking, aloof royalty.
6. How all the characters are linked – creates a pattern of relationship, like knitting or something
7. The book also has witchcraft in it (sort of), concerns about Satan and good and evil
8. Nieu Bethesda
9. Lyon is my favourite character. He is loyal and sweet and well meaning and kind and inept and becoming less so. He worries a lot and thinks too much. He loves wholeheartedly and worries about that too. He is a teenage boy.
Lyon thought about hugging Tania after Othern’s party so often in the following days, it became debilitating. He couldn’t concentrate, he could barely eat. He’d stare out of the window of his room, or watch lines of text pass soundlessly, while all he held in his mind was her scent and her breath and the feel of her body pressed against his. …
So he decided to wean himself off the memory. He’d start by thinking about the hug for half of every hour, and think of something else for the other half.
10. The old Greek lady. Forgiveness. How hard it is to get over some things.
Where: Methodist Church Hall, Corner Milton Road & Wesley Street, Obs
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Delve into a world where writers share their prose, recite their poetry (and a soulful song or two) in an intimate space. Do not miss this opportunity for expression, conversation and entertainment!
BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL!
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I will be reading my story ‘Spying’, which was published in Green Dragon, Gary Cummiskey’s literary magazine. I worked on this and several other “Yeoville” stories during the British Council Crossing Borders program circa 2006.
Beauty Came Grovelling Forward: A Selection of South African Poetry and Prose on Big Bridge – Gary Cummiskey guest edited this new edition of the online magazine Big Bridge.
Here’s Gary’s intro:
The work contained in this Big Bridge feature is by no means a wide representation of contemporary South African writing. It is rather a bringing together of some writers whose work I respond to, and there are of course many fine writers whose work is not here. It is therefore not a general “anthology of South African writing”. It is nevertheless hoped this selection will give readers an insight into the diversity of creative voices in South Africa; a diversity that is in part reflective of the multicultural nature of South African society.
The voices range from established names such as Kobus Moolman and Kelwyn Sole, to newer ones such as Neo Molefe Shameeyaa. There is the performance-orientated work of Richard Fox and Mphutlane wa Bofelo, and the socio-political voice of Vonani Bila. There are mavericks such as Aryan Kaganof and Goodenough Mashego, and the subjective lyricism of Alan Finlay and Mxolisi Nyezwa. There are also several women represented: Arja Salafranca, Haidee Kruger, Janet van Eeden, Megan Hall, Colleen Higgs, Makhosazana Xaba and Neo Molefe Shameeyaa.
The short fiction selection is only a handful of pieces, but again it is hoped they will indicate the diversity of short fiction writing in South Africa: from the poetic prose of Haidee Kruger and fantasy of Silke Heiss, to the playfulness of Liesl Jobson. There are the parables of Allan Kolski Horwitz and the exploration of relationships in the realistic work of Colleen Higgs and Arja Salafranca. Pravasan Pillay’s story is a sensitive study of early adolescence while Gary Cummiskey’s surreal horror story touches on issues central to a historically divided society: isolation, the Other, uncertainty and violence.
I’m pleased to have a poem and short story published here and to see Modjaji authors Megan Hall, Arja Salafranca & Makhosazana Xaba (forthcoming); as well as Book SA’s Liesl Jobson featured here.
