Achmat Dangor (1948–2020)

Apartheid is over and Silas and Lydia have moved out of the township to a suburb of Johannesburg. Silas works as a lawyer for the Department for Justice and his wife Lydia is a nurse. The pair are haunted by a past cruelty towards Lydia and they seem trapped in a loveless marriage, staying together because that’s easier than parting. Living with them is their 18-year-old son Mickey who is studying literature at university. He and his parents have problems communicating with each other.

One day whilst out, Silas recognises a man called François du Boise, an Afrikaner policeman and the man who caused so much misery to Silas and Lydia 20 years ago when he raped Lydia whilst Silas was forced to listen. Silas makes the mistake of telling Lydia of the encounter and she reacts by dancing on broken glass, leading to her being hospitalised.

Mickey goes off the rails and his parents discover that he has had an affair with two older women – a colleague of Silas’ and with one of his university lecturers. Mickey decides to track down his estranged paternal grandparents, who are Muslim and as he spends increasing amounts of time with them he becomes even more withdrawn from his mother and father as their relationships crumble.

Overall I found this rather an unsatisfactory book. I did not warm to the characters at all, which made it hard to have any empathy with them. Had South Africa not been a country I needed to do for my World Challenge then I wouldn’t have continued with it.
… (altro)

I thought it would be interesting to read a novel set in post apartheid South Africa, but unfortunately, this one failed to hit the spot as an enjoyable read.
As others have said, the novel is obsessed with bodily functions, sweating, sex, bad breath etc and is full of highly intuitive characters who seem to just know things. Was the author trying to show that South Africa is still a country rooted in superstition and survival instincts?
Silas started out as a character I had some sympathy for and the early scene where Lydia cuts her feet is very moving, but then it is down hill from there.
There is so much inappropriate sex and desire for sex between mother and son, father and daughter, lecturer and pupil etc it just got silly.… (altro)