An Island by Karen Jennings

Although John Donne famously wrote “No man is an island”, Karen Jennings makes a convincing case for why the particular man at the centre of her novel can no longer be connected with the nation of his birth. For decades Samuel has lived a solitary existence on an island where he tends a lighthouse, keeps a meagre garden and occasionally buries the refugees who wash ashore. But, when Samuel is in his seventies, one day an unconscious young man that is barely alive appears on the beach. They don't speak the same language and become uneasy companions. His presence stirs thoughts of the past for Samuel who finds: “Memories were there too, coming fast that morning – things best forgotten now approaching as steadily as waves approach the shore.” In fragmented scenes we come to understand Samuel's impoverished beginnings in an African nation that underwent a violent revolution but whose utopian dream quickly faltered after the rise of a dictator that imprisoned many dissidents and protestors - including Samuel. Now that his fragile, circumscribed existence has been disturbed he struggles to accept the presence of another individual.

At first I found the way the narrative introduces slivers from Samuel's past to be too jarring as it's sometimes a struggle to understand what's happening. But I quickly came to understand that this was a result of Samuel's brittle state of mind as he's experienced a lot of trauma and devastating disappointment in his life. Gradually I came to see he's not so much a man that is driven by any definite convictions but, like many of us, he's jostled through life according to the dominant politics and ideologies of his society. In one period he might be progressive, in another he might reinforce prejudiced attitudes and when he's trapped in a prison he's willing to do whatever it takes to avoid torture. It's sympathetically shown how he simply wants a better life for himself: “Who didn't want to be more than they were, who didn't want to rise up out of the dirt and be something?” But, because of his circumstances, he finds it impossible to establish any secure existence. He's unable to commit physical violence and it's interesting to consider whether this is because of his own meekness or a determination not to harm other living beings.

Though it's easy to romantically daydream about a solitary life on an island, Jennings' vivid descriptions of Samuel's hard existence and deteriorating health bring to life the challenging reality of this situation. There's also a disturbing encounter described early in the novel when Samuel first found the bodies of refugees on his shore and the official he speaks to asks to know the colour of their skin. This brief reference evokes an enormous dilemma concerning nationhood and racism. Though the author is South African, I think it's clever how she avoids using any specific names of countries, leaders or political movements to show that this is really a universal situation and, given certain circumstances, these things can happen anywhere. Though new leadership is often invested with a lot of hope for change, Samuel sadly finds that “Power made men hateful. Power made men forget everyone but themselves.” The depths of his disillusionment and pain which has disconnected him from his family, loved ones and country make his solitary state feel not only reasonable but necessary. A late encounter he has with a woman that he once had an intense relationship with feels all the more tragic because rather than being a sentimental reunion it lays bare the desperate circumstances they've been reduced to. The ending of the novel is especially disturbing and haunting because after everything Samuel has gone through there’s a devastating logic to it. I desperately wanted the story to end another way and I still optimistically believe that no one has to be an island… but I haven’t experienced the gruelling torture that Samuel lived through.

I found it really powerful how Jennings writes an engaging specific story that gradually unfolds to ask much larger and universal questions about identity, nationhood and the meaning of our relationships. It also suggests that there are perhaps more interesting, less well known stories to be told. I’d like to read a companion novel to this book which gives the perspective of the other man that arrives on Samuel’s island, but this isn’t Jennings’ story to tell and, as much as I wanted to know more about his life, she was probably wise to avoid delving into his perspective. Instead we get a surface understanding of his state of mind through his gestures and reactions to Samuel’s erratic behaviour which allowed me to feel sympathy for him having to live alongside this deeply unstable older man. It’s interesting how “The Promise”, the other South African novel on the Booker Prize longlist, raises a similar dilemma in consciously not giving us many details about Salome’s life. As accomplished and moving as both these novels are, I can’t help feeling somewhat frustrated that as a reader I’m only getting white perspectives on a deeply racially divided nation that I’ve never personally visited. That’s not the fault of these writers or the book prize, but I think it raises larger issues concerning publishing, privilege and whose voices are given a public platform.

The Promise by Damon Galgut

Damon Galgut's brilliant 2014 novel “Arctic Summer” was a fictional reimagining of the life of EM Forster which describes his experiences after the publication of his novel “Howard's End”. Forster's classic book about who will inherit a house serves as the structure for Galgut's new novel “The Promise”, but it's set in South Africa in the years immediately before and after Apartheid. It follows the experiences of a relatively-privileged white family who own a small farm and their fates over time. An annexe to their property is inhabited by Salome, a black maid who has worked for the family for many years and the novel begins with matriarch Rachel on her deathbed requesting that the deed to this property be given this woman who has served her so faithfully. Although her husband Manie promises to fulfil her wish, the transfer of ownership to Salome is delayed year after year after year. The self-consumed and selfish family members are so concerned with their own dramas that fulfilling this bequest always seems tediously inconvenient or perhaps it's a power they are unwilling to relinquish. But youngest daughter Amor witnessed the promise being made and persistently reminds her family it should be honoured (much to their exasperation.) Just as Forster's novel symbolically asked who will inherit England, Galgut's story asks who will inherit South Africa but I think his query is much more complicated than that simple concept sounds. 

The striking thing about how this novel is written is its impressively fluid style which artfully weaves in and out of certain perspectives, briskly navigates through different scenes and frequently switches point of view. At first this felt almost disorientating to me as transitions in focus are made so rapidly it sometimes requires careful attention to follow the narrative, but it soon became mesmerising as I felt caught in the flow of time and Galgut's gorgeously poetic language. However, the apparent freedom of this narrative to roam wherever it wishes (even into the perspective of the dead) is deceptive. As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that in following the fates of different members of the Swart family we're also tragically locked into the white gaze from which they cannot escape. Their prejudiced views saturate the sensibility of this novel. Their assumed superiority and odious casual racism appears with wincing regularity. For example, a typical paranoid statement made about black servants is that “You have to get rid of them before they start to scheme.” If these racist attitudes come to feel exasperating and if the reader longs to instead get Salome's perspective I think that's fully intentional. It's something the Swart family with their myopic view of the world never considers and so the reader is similarly denied access except for brief glimpses such as the family's black driver Lexington who observes with exasperation: “It is not always possible to please two white people simultaneously.” As such, we come to understand the real crisis in a country where legalized segregation may have ended but the tragic divide between two groups of people remains.

The crucial character in this tale and its moral ballast is Amor who slowly comes to understand the poisonous society in which she's being raised. At first she has a childish innocence about this: “Amor is thirteen years old, history has not yet trod on her. She has no idea what country she's living in.” As soon as she realises how her family and nation are locked into insurmountable prejudiced attitudes she removes herself from them and the novel itself. We're fed very little information about her life other than how she trains as a nurse, works with AIDS patients, has a relationship with another woman and ends up living on her own. But the more intricate details and her emotional reality are something we can only imagine just as the narrator wistfully imagines furnishing her sparse apartment. Amor only appears when a crisis occurs in the Swart family and it's very difficult for them to locate her because she's made it almost impossible to contact her or doesn't respond to their calls. She realises there isn't a way to change her family's attitude or mend the deep fissure which exists in this country. Nor does she presume to know or understand Salome and her son's situation. All she can do is insist upon the rightful ownership of a crumbling piece of property. Herein lies the tragedy of every person's position in this system which Isabel Wilkerson wrote about so powerfully in her book “Caste”.

Galgut's inspiration for the plot of this novel may have come from a book frequently cited as one of the greatest works of English literature, but its message feels more rooted to me in the 1950s classic Hollywood melodrama 'Imitation of Life'. In this film, a white woman named Lora takes in an African-American widow named Annie whose mixed-race daughter is desperate to be seen as white. When Annie dies, Lora looks shocked at the enormous amount of people who come to mourn her maid and how Annie had a full life outside of her home that Lora was entirely ignorant about because she never asked. The radical thing about this is that the director is also asking the audience to consider why they didn't think about Annie's life outside of the circumscribed boundaries of Lora's white world. Similarly, late in the novel “The Promise” the narrator makes an accusation of his reader “if Salome's home hasn't been mentioned before it's because you have not asked, you didn't care to know.” While we avidly follow the story of justice being served to the Swart family as their archaic world implodes over the course of the novel, there are different characters' stories we are being denied access to... or perhaps we are wilfully blind to the reality of certain people different from ourselves. This is an unsettling distinction and I admire Galgut for raising this point in such an artfully constructed novel.

Evening Primrose by Kopano Matlwa

Immigration is such a heated political topic in Britain - especially since the Brexit vote last year - that it's interesting to consider how other countries have experienced waves of anti-immigration sentiments in recent times. Kopano Matlwa's “Evening Primrose” is set in a post-apartheid South Africa where a growing wave of xenophobia causes an especially brutal period of cruelty and violence against foreigners. Not only are Zimbabweans, Nigerians, Somalis and Chinese immigrants targeted, but those who support them are derided, threatened and attacked. The novel is written as a series of journal entries by a good-hearted, but conflicted young woman named Masechaba. When the novel opens she's just graduated from medical school and she's quickly introduced to how harsh it is working within South Africa's healthcare system. Her feelings of frustration are exasperated by suffering from depression and the grief of recently losing a close family member under tragic circumstances. Becoming an anti-xenophobia campaigner empowers and fills her with hope, but it also leads to unforeseen events that produce crushing heartache. Her story is a moving account of faith, friendship, a deeply conflicted society and finding the right path in life.

It's not till the end of the novel that you discover the reason why it's called “Evening Primrose.” I rather like it when novels (like Marlon James' “A Brief History of Seven Killings”) do this as it feels like a special secret which only a dedicated reader is allowed to know. But it's interesting that this novel was published in South Africa with the title “Period Pain.” When Masechaba recounts her painful years of puberty and the extreme difficulties having her period caused her it becomes clear why this alternative title is entirely valid. Reading about these experiences made me cross my legs and understand how privileged I am as a man not to have endured this challenging stage of development. Masechaba didn't choose to study medicine for idealistic reasons but to seek help to deal with her unusually heavy amount of menstrual bleeding. Although she goes into the profession thinking they'd only help people she's quickly disillusioned because of how many people doctors aren't able to save. It leads her to feel that doctors are “Murderers, all of us. Murderers.”

Masechaba's conflicts feel all the more intense due to the directness of the narrative. Journal entries naturally contain a lot of raw emotion which is usually edited out in other forms of communication. It also adds an element of much-needed light relief to the many dark aspects of this book because she can sometimes be gossipy and humorous in her accounts. Writing the novel in journal entries also has its drawbacks where some sections rush through and skip over events. Other forms of narrative would go into more detail which would help emotionally prepare the reader for certain startling revelations. But the novel-as-journal also introduces a level of complexity to Masechaba's psychology as the person she's directing these entries to changes over the course of the book. Each section is proceeded by a quote from the bible and much of the novel shows her own reckoning with and questioning of God. Other entries are directed towards her artist brother Tshiamo. But the reader is always aware that this is a really deep meditative conversation that she's having with herself. Her quest to establish a stable and solid sense of identity is intensely felt, especially when she's utterly lost: “I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know what defines me. I feel like a failure.” The great beauty and pleasure of this novel is that she ultimately finds strength of character from an entirely unexpected source.

The Curator by Jacques Strauss

This is the third new book from South Africa that I’ve read this year and it’s rather startling to discover common themes between all of them. SJ Naude’s book of stories “The Alphabet of Birds” describes a variety of characters’ estrangement from South Africa where they seek to build a new life elsewhere or struggle against seemingly insolvable social systems within their own country. Eben Venter’s “Wolf Wolf” follows the plight of a son seeking to prove he can be financially independent from his dying father. There are issues of alienation, insecurity, masculinity and severe family strife in both. These themes are also strongly represented in Jacques Strauss’ novel “The Curator.” The chapters in this novel alternate between a rural South African town of Barberton in 1976 and the more urbanized environment of Pretoria in 1996. We primarily follow Werner Deyer who is calculating, sexually-repressed and dangerously angry, but seeks to find an expression of something intangible in art through a copy of Salvador Dali’s representation of Christ and later in the house of a victim of a brutal childhood attack who now obsessively paints scenes of that attack. The reasons why Werner is like this gradually unfold over the course of this frequently disturbing, but gripping novel. The novel also powerfully deals with racial attitudes in South Africa, sexual molestation and the breakdown of family.

I didn’t think there could be a book published this year with content as disturbing as “A Little Life,” but in some ways I feel that “The Curator” is even darker. Of course, they deal with difficult issues in a very different way, but let me explain why I found reading certain aspects of this novel even more harrowing.

Firstly, the deadly violence in “The Curator” is directed between family members in a way which is terrifyingly insidious. Werner’s family hears news of a nearby farmer who shot his entire family before shooting himself. Werner’s father Hendrik fixates upon this story and has fantasies of dispensing with his own family – even going so far to employing a maid who witnessed the family attack and finds himself becoming sexually obsessed with her. Twenty years later, Werner becomes fixated on killing his father Hendrik who is now severely disabled after an anonymous attack. The author skilfully shows the way violence percolates in the closed environment of the home: “This is how it started. Before you knew it, you were hitting and beating and kicking and shooting everything in sight to make things okay again.”

Secondly, like “A Little Life,” this novel also deals with sexual molestation, but we’re shown this from the perspectives of both the abuser and the abused. Steyn is a man who works on the Deyer’s property and drinks heavily after leaving his family. He takes advantage of the adolescent Werner and seems to disturbingly believe that we are cognizant of acts of desire even at a young age: “If there is one thing we are born knowing about, it is sex.” Steyn eventually moves on to taking advantage of Werner’s younger brother Marius which makes Werner very jealous for the attention he’s no longer receiving. It’s unsettling the way this book shows how the desire for affection, especially for vulnerable children who aren’t receiving any love from their parents, can become dependent on adult sexual predators.

Finally, “The Curator” shows the pernicious long-term racism that occurs from longstanding social divisions. The white characters in this novel show an extremely derogatory attitude towards the majority of black people they encounter. There is also a class division between white people who live with certain privileges and poor white people who are viewed as no better than “kaffirs” (a contemptuous term for a black Africans). In one scene the mother of the family Petronella is disgusted by how dirty a neighbouring white girl has become so she aggressively bathes her: “she wanted to wash away the kaffir, so that everything was wholesome and normal.” There is a strong desire shown to keep the races separate. These divisions are rigorously reinforced through social pressure and there is a strong sense throughout the book that the characters fear crossing these racial boundaries. The novel also demonstrates what a heavily dominant and repressive force men make in this society. Petronella feels so belittled over time that she pleads that “I want to be treated like a human being.”

'Christ of St John of the Cross' by Salvador Dali

It feels as if there is something stirring in the political and social atmosphere in South Africa at this time which is provoking authors to create such compelling new novels with similarly frustrated characters who perpetually feel like outsiders. These authors have something important to say which is different from the most prominent South African writers who are globally well known. At one point in this novel Werner thinks he’ll pretend to be a writer when staying at a hotel and looking at a Scandinavian family he muses: “Those two stern-looking adults and their beautiful offspring probably have a lively interest in post-colonial literature; would want to discuss Coetzee and Gordimer and Lessing. He imagines having dinner with the family. He could tell them how he grew up not far from here and how those early years still exert a significant force on his work. In what way? They would ask. Oh, you know, the politics, but also the land. There is something, he would say, about this place that is unforgiving.” Jacques Strauss makes a powerful statement with this story about the “unforgiving” aspect of South African society where some issues are suppressed causing people to explode into violent action.

Having enumerated all the ways “The Curator” deals with such hard issues, you may be scared away from it. But I think this is an absolutely striking, original and skilfully written book that you won’t regret reading. It gave me such fascinating insights into a culture and conflicted consciousness so different from my own. By honestly representing and discussing issues raised in such a powerful novel, Jacques Strauss is bearing witness to the violence that can erupt in a repressed society.

The Alphabet of Birds by SJ Naude

If you don’t feel like you belong in the place of your birth, can you ever really feel at home elsewhere? This seems to be one of the questions at the heart of SJ Naude’s book. The six long stories which make up “The Alphabet of Birds” range in characters and locations, but all describe individuals groping for a connection and an affirmation of identity somewhere “other.” Many of the protagonists are South Africans struggling with an internal battle between asserting that their country of origin is the place where they belong and trying to emphatically dig their roots in elsewhere. Some prominent characters are gay men who meet other men in distant locations as if they are both survivors. There is a consolation in coming together, but there is no suggestion that there will be a lasting fraternity or that the artistic friends’ houses, German castles or drug-fuelled night clubs they find themselves in can ever closely resemble somewhere that can be called home.

A character purchases a Noh mask in Japan which changes emotion depending on how it is tilted

Most notably the female character Ondien who appears in two stories founds a musical group that fuses together world sounds with African instruments. The group dissolves, yet she still seeks to write a music which creates unity. She embarks on a quest to visit her siblings who have settled in America, Dubai and London only to discover they are all in desperate circumstances. Their new homes have transformed into uniquely suffocating traps. She returns to South Africa to live an increasingly impoverished existence. Wherever these characters go they are accompanied by a profound sense of isolation and are plagued by loss. She discovers that “You steal from someone weaker, the stronger ones steal from you. You return to your weaker victim. Things circulate. A life cycle, an ecosystem.” The society portrayed is one founded on transactions of taking rather than exchange. Even when a woman named Sandrien in the story ‘Van’ dedicates herself to a life of philanthropy giving medical care to rural villages, her efforts are drowned in tidal waves of red tape, corruption and indifference.

It all sounds quite bleak and much of the striking drama in this book is undeniably solemn. Yet, Naude has a beautiful way with his prose that makes these stories feel consoling rather than harrowing. It faces up to reality rather than avoiding uncomfortable dilemmas or feelings. Sometimes the thoughtfulness of Naude’s writing grows too abstracted from the action of the story so it’s difficult to decipher what is actually happening in certain parts. Yet, through a persistent accumulation of images, scenes and feelings the reader is left with impressions of experience. This isn’t a light read, but it’s in many ways a hypnotic one. I did come across a rare passage which made me chuckle. One younger character admonishes an older one that “You should leave behind all the gym nonsense; the weight of weights settles into your muscles after a while.” What a fantastic justification to give up the gym! This appears in the final story ‘Loose’ which has a special radiance with its descriptions of dance as a way of strategically carving a way through the space of the world and expressing emotion. The title itself, one letter away from the word “lose,” suggests perhaps that a loss of self can be prevented by remaining in perpetual motion.

Wolf, Wolf by Eben Venter

Anxiety over the “right” way to be a man is something many men face. Pressure is frequently placed upon men to continue a legacy for the family by taking on the father’s business and creating progeny to carry on the family name and bloodline. This is something that the central character of Mattie in “Wolf, Wolf” by Eben Venter has refused to do. Rather than joining his father’s successful motorcar business, he’s spent his twenties travelling, engaging in sexual escapades and indulging in narcotics. When the novel begins he’s back at his father’s home in South Africa where he’s become his Pa’s primary care-giver. His terminally ill father has lost his sight and his physical health is rapidly declining due to the chemo-therapy he’s been receiving. Before his Pa dies, Matt wants to prove to him that he can be a responsible man with a successful business of his own. His father is a committed Christian and disapproves of Matt’s homosexuality and his relationship with a teacher named Jack. Matt needs his father’s financial backing to get his plan to establish a healthy food stall. With each man wanting the other to compromise their beliefs about what a man should be, father and son are embroiled in a battle of will.

Venter writes about family relations with great sensitivity and insight. In particular, the connection between father and son feels very heartfelt. Matt tenderly cares for his father during the elderly man’s severe illness, yet becomes too possessive about it and wants to assume all the responsibility over other members of his family. He admires a certain kind of manliness he sees in his father’s character and even in his signature: “It’s pure, that’s what it is. It is masculinity, the essence of it, that engenders such a signature.” Yet, he instinctually knows that this isn’t the same kind of man he could or would want to become. The father Bennie appreciates his son and dearly wants to support him to establish himself. At the same time, he’s torn apart by knowing “Our bloodline stops with you, Mattie… I suppose that’s the will of the Lord, I don’t want to kick against it. But let me tell you this today, Mattie, it’s a bitter pill for Pa to swallow.” As the novel progresses, you question whether the caring and support they show each other is genuine or if each man is motivated by the desire to be the dominant one to assert how masculinity is defined.

The novel also presents a unique representation of a long-term gay relationship. Through no real fault of his own, Jack encounters trouble at the school he teaches at which causes him to lose both his position and residence. He secretly takes up living with Matt at his father’s house and plays a game where he hides under a wolf mask to disguise his presence. This game takes on a weightier kind of symbolic meaning as the novel progresses – where men who are counter to the mainstream become the threat which lies in wait outside of the house or society in general. Matt and Jack’s relationship has its own difficulties as their intimacy flounders due to Matt’s addiction to porn. Rather than confront the issue by speaking directly to each other, Jack takes the issue up with friends by posting public messages on Facebook. Throughout the narrative we get the projections of his consciousness in these messages rather than reading his unmediated voice. Similarly we’re given the messages Matt’s father records on tape for his son where he speaks with a confessional sincerity he can’t use with Matt in person. It’s a complex way of presenting ongoing emotionally-stilted relationships between men.

“Wolf, Wolf” is ultimately a tragic take on the way dominant ideas about masculinity can overshadow the feeling between a father and son. Looming over Matt’s relationship with his Pa is “an arrogance as hard and cold as an old, old mountain; orthodoxy elevated over love.” This novel has a fascinating perspective on what being a man means and how men can be filled with such contradictory behaviour. As Matt’s father observes “Men are such odd creatures… A man is a strange thing.” It’s also a multi-layered portrait of a new South Africa with its own particular difficulties to do with class, religious and racial differences. This is a strikingly original novel that has an unsettling, haunting effect.