Tag Archives: love

Review: Sea Star Summer by Sally Partridge

The award-winning YA author, Sally Partridge, has been writing about the trials and turbulences of growing up since her debut novel, The Goblet Club, in 2007.

Partridge’s latest novel for young adults, Sea Star Summer, is her seventh and tells the story of the sixteen-year-old Naomi on holiday with her parents in Jeffreys Bay, where all she wants to do is enjoy some solitude and read good books. Yet, a dashing but dubious local surfer, another unusual and wonderful holidaymaker called Elize, and her intriguing brother, have other plans in store for Naomi. There is nothing more magical than falling in love for the first time. Equally magical can be reading about it in a novel when the book manages to capture, as Sea Star Summer does, that unforgettable and intoxicating mixture of wonder, revelation, anxiety and possibility that is young love.

“There’s only one person out there, a dark-haired girl about my age, kicking her feet through the incoming tide. The way she’s laughing and shrieking, clearly in a world of her own, makes it look like she’s having a great time. I envy her lack of inhibition. If it was me, I’d be worried about who’s watching.” This is how Naomi first encounters Elize. Meeting her sets in motion a chain of events and discoveries that allows Naomi not only to find herself and what she wants, but also to find the courage to proclaim it, even if only softly, to the world.

“Even the sea and sky seem larger, more real than before, like I’ve been walking around half asleep this whole time and have only just woken up.” The sea moods and beach adventures of Jeffreys Bay are vividly portrayed in this sensitive and empowering story that will appeal to young people and those young at heart alike.

Sea Star Summer

Sally Partridge

Human & Rousseau, 2020

Review first published in the Cape Times on 14 August 2020.

Book review: Pleasure by Nthikeng Mohlele

PleasureThe title of Nthikeng Mohlele’s fourth novel delivers on its promise. Pleasure is a mesmerising, unusual book. At times I was hesitant to call it a novel. The story of Milton Mohlele, his dreams and musings, which he attempts to distil into writing, reads like a meditation. As literary history echoes in his name, Milton could be an alter ego for most writers seeking to find not only meaning but pleasure in the written word – to capture that elusive something which makes us sigh deeply with content when, if ever, we truly encounter it.

Pleasure opens in a bathtub, with Milton reminiscing about the women in his life and his late father, who was a writer of note. One of Milton’s preoccupations is to figure out how to avoid having to tread in his footsteps: “What more is there to say other than that the man was brilliant and is deceased?”

Often, I found my mind drifting, with the book’s images and insights as my guide. Exquisitely written, Pleasure allows you to abandon yourself to language: “This made me happy; a feeling that fell like snowflakes, like confetti showered on couples at weddings, like raindrops illuminated by car headlights, fireworks exploding sky high in magnificent, temporary fiery arrangements, falling back to earth in languid, crystal, dazzling, smoky slow motion.” Milton assures us that he “notices things”, “even the smallest, most insignificant of them”.

The observations are precise, beautiful, also in the face of evil (“a word stripped of all pretensions”). A dream sequence in the book adds a profound dimension to Milton’s considerations. In the dream, an American soldier’s life is spared and he is taken prisoner by a SS commandant. He meets an alluring woman at Wolfschanze, Hitler’s headquarters, where he finds himself among men “who could will anything into being”, including a reality in which the ash of their victims rains into coffee cups across Europe.

Once awake and contemplating the meaning of his vision, Milton is not oblivious to the fact that similar horrors happen right next to him, in present day Cape Town. He insists that Africans “should dream, or imagine themselves outside of only being black and colonised and enslaved”, that we are all part of a wider world. Towards the end, he also realises that depending on context, killing can be an act of kindness.

Pleasure never lulls us into easy answers, not everything can be “scrutinised, fully known, owned.” But it is a book full of wisdom which invites the reader to ponder the intricacies of existence. Its proclamations on love and the preciousness of the opportunities life offers are stunning: “Pleasure, I have learned, is a solitary phenomenon; it does not mix well with remorse and regrets and mistakes…at its most elementary pleasure survives on selfishness, on discreet contracts, undemocratic arrangements.” After all, most of us “want to die being able to say, I have loved in my life – truly loved, been molten and cooled and hammered by love, cast and polished.” Some of us, transformed, write.

Pleasure

by Nthikeng Mohlele

Picador Africa, 2016

Review first published in the Cape Times on 20 May 2016, p. 10.

Review: Divided Lives – Dreams of a Mother and Daughter by Lyndall Gordon

Divided LivesOn 26 November 2012, Time published this tiny obituary: “DIED Valerie Eliot, 86, who married TS Eliot in the last years of the great poet’s life; she edited an edition of his epic The Waste Land that included annotations by Ezra Pound.” Not even three dozen words to sum up the life of a woman who was infinitely more than just an editor of her famous husband’s most famous work. When they married towards the end of his life, “Eliot at last found himself ready for forgiveness. Horror, gloom, and penitence came to an end with his discovery of the unconditional love of a young woman,” writes Lyndall Gordon in TS Eliot: An Imperfect Life (1998).

In her biography of Eliot, Gordon retraces the poet’s insatiable search for perfection and his troubled relationships with the women who accompanied him on his quest: “His passion for immortality was so commanding that it allowed him to reject each of these women with a firmness that shattered their lives.” The exception was his second wife, Valerie, who despite being his junior by nearly four decades was the one who bestowed grace upon the final years of his life. Gordon’s biography emphasises the profound change Valerie’s love brought to Eliot in the light of all his previous precarious commitments.

In her biography Henry James: His Women and His Art (1998, revised edition 2012), Gordon sums up the distinguished writer’s ability to explore “the inward life: the unvoiced exchange and the drama of hidden motives … his skills, as well as a power, beyond that of any other man, to plumb the unknown potentialities of women”. James never openly acknowledged the influence such strong, independent women as the American writer Constance Fenimore Woolson had on his writing life and his heroines, but it was immeasurable, as Gordon’s biography shows. While in Venice last year, I was reminded of a striking scene she describes in the book: Henry James helplessly trying to drown Fenimore’s black dresses in one of the lagoons a few weeks after her death. Like balloons the dresses kept surfacing…

Continue reading: Review of Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and Daughter by Lyndall Gordon

Published by Virago Press, 2014

What I’ve learned about my brain in love

FogFor Women’s Day, my husband and I attended a special lecture-breakfast with Mark Solms at Solms Delta yesterday. We arrived in a dense fog, left bathed in sunshine. It wasn’t only the weather, but the illumination which came after the lecture entitled “The Brain In Love”.

Most of us know what love is. It’s individual and universal. The sum of all world literature is the grand story of love. Love is also science.

Scientifically speaking, it seems, there are five main observable components of love:
~ Bonding, forming attachments, pair-binding; it starts the moment you are born, first it’s the baby-carer bond which is naturally induced by opioids (love is a true addiction), then it develops into all the other attachments we form during our lifetimes; losing an attachment figure results in panic, ‘air-hunger’, withdrawal, which can shift into despair; then (if you are lucky) you let go and form other attachments.

Mark Solms with guests

Mark Solms with guests

~ Nurture and care, as opposed to the need of a child to bond; on average females (in all mammals) are more attached and caring than males.

~ Reward mechanism, also called the wanting mechanism, or the seeking system, or the basic appetite system, or optimism system – by whichever name it is dopamine-controlled; this is what makes us go out there into the world and seek fulfilment; it generates desire, doesn’t satisfy it.

~ Play, which is essential for survival; establishing the rules of engagement is crucial, it is all about finding boundaries; the 60-40% rule applies, which simply put means that none of us want to be submissive for more than 40% of the time, on average the 40% will apply to women, the 60% to men; if the 60-40% rule is upset, it usually ends in tears, fear, anger, or in the worst-case scenario in abuse.

~ Sex drive (obviously).

SunshineAll of us mammals engage in these activities. What makes humans unique is our developed pre-frontal lobe in relation to all emotional mechanisms. It is responsible for inhibition. This is our override mechanism. We can control our emotions. This is why we ‘don’t know our emotions as well as all other animals do…we are opaque to ourselves.’

Memorable quotes:
‘Love comes at you, it’s all about feeling…it’s not a cognitive business.’
‘Love matters to us.’
‘Love and randiness are not the same thing, but it comes into it.’
‘We scientists call it copulation – a simple matter.’

André's PHILIDA at the Solms-Delta Museum van de Caab

André’s PHILIDA at the Solms-Delta Museum van de Caab

‘No thinking happens during orgasm.’
‘You don’t have to give birth to your boyfriend to love him.’
‘Don’t overestimate the frontal lobes.’
On marriage: ‘I promise to be with you together forever even though I have a seeking system.’
On love: ‘It’s a complicated thing.’
(Don’t we know!)

When shit happens…

Piran przypadek…Read and write, choose your stories wisely
…Wandering exhausted in your dreams aim for the doors of friends in Woodstock (thank you, Verushka)
…Listen to Lana del Rey and put on a red dress tonight
…Walk along the sea, not into it
…Eat rare steaks for breakfast
…Chocolate is the answer
…Remember Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson who never had alcohol, but sipped champagne daily
…Acknowledge your dark places
…Embrace the beyondness of beyond, the loveliness of lovely, and the wonder of wonderful
…Hug a hot water bottle
…Talk to cats, they know everything
…Cast your hair
…Be kind
…Believe in miracles
…Love deeper

A tribute to Nadine Gordimer

Signature “And then took up her way, breath scrolling out, a signature before her.” The last sentence of Nadine Gordimer’s None to Accompany Me (1994), my favourite of all her novels, still takes my breath away. It is a “biting ebony-blue” winter night when Vera Stark, the narrative’s protagonist, steps into the garden of her new home. Everything is “stripped” outside, bare and clear.

The night Nadine Gordimer died I dreamt of wanting to visit my grandmother. I was walking up the staircase to her flat when I realised that I could no longer see her because she had been dead for several years. I woke up unsettled. The dream was so vivid that it scared me on the morning of the day when my husband André was to undergo surgery. It also made me think about all the precious people in my life.

Continue reading: A tribute to Nadine Gordimer – LitNet

Blog hopping with Alex and Sally

Devilskein and DearloveAlex and EliasMy dear friend and colleague writer, Alex Smith, invited me and and another friend, S.A. Partridge, to take over the blog hopping baton from her. She asked me to answer the following questions and to nominate two other women bloggers to continue with the chain. Before I respond, the nominations:

Page PluckerSophia from Bournemouth, UK, of the wonderful book reviewing blog: Page Plucker. Even though Sophia does not seem to be active right now, I hope she will resume her reviewing soon. It was her review of Philida which first attracted my attention to her blog.

Girl-wallpaperHelen MoffettHelen Moffett, a woman of many talents: editor, writer, cricket expert, poet, activist, cat-mother, and dear friend. She is the Helen in Helena S. Paige, one of the authors of the Girl series (I am currently reading Girl Walks into a Bar and Girl Walks into a Wedding which also has something to do with ‘hopping’ – between scenes of various erotic encounters…). Helen has also published one of my favourite volumes of poetry, Strange Fruit. Ever since I met her, I have also known that one day I am going to hold a novel in my hand that has only Helen’s name on the cover. I am looking forward to that moment very much.

THE BLOG HOPPING Q&A:

What am I working on?
I’m in the process of completing my next novel. My working title is Ordinary. It is a boy-meets-girl story for a young adult audience. I live near Bishops and I love going for walks on the school’s campus. The idea for the novel came to me during one of these walks. At first, I did not want to engage with it because I was in the middle of another novel. But Ordinary refused to go away, hijacking my creativity and keeping me awake at night, so I decided to give it a go. The other novel is on the backburner, but I hope to have both finished by the end of this year.

How does my work differ from others in its genre?
In my work I skip between genres all the time, so I am going to concentrate only on Ordinary for this answer: I hope to be able to portray teenage sexuality in a way that many teenagers will be able to relate to. Something between the extremes of over-the-top promiscuity and total innocence. I’m frustrated by both ends of the spectrum when I read YA literature. I recently saw a film that made me think of what I am trying to achieve in my novel: The First Time with Britt Robertson and Dylan O’Brien. The film is like a teenage version of Before Sunrise. Great stuff! But there is a much darker dimension to my novel than to the film.

Britt Robertson and Dylan O'Brien in The First Time

Britt Robertson and Dylan O’Brien in The First Time


Why do I write what I do?
I cannot imagine a life without reading and writing. Sharing stories gives meaning to my existence.

How does my writing process work?
Stories come to me. Often the trigger is an image, a phrase, a mood. Sometimes it is everything at once and within seconds the whole story is fully fledged in my mind. But usually it takes a few days or even weeks to develop an idea. I cannot begin writing before I know roughly where I am heading. At the bottom of every story is something that I need to understand for myself, and the need or wish of sharing the journey to that understanding with others. Then it is all about finding the voice: who is telling the story and how. For Invisible Others I had to re-write the first 10 000 words of the novel because the first-person narrator I chose for it in the beginning wasn’t working. If necessary, I do research. It is an organic process. The writing takes me a long time, but I don’t mind. I’m extremely patient. I prefer to work in the afternoons, that is when I find myself to be most creative. It took me a long time to understand this, but I know that I can’t force anything when it comes to writing. Every story has its own rhythms. I have learned to respect that. All my creative work happens on the computer, but I do take notes on paper. My desk is drowning in them. I always share the first draft of anything I write with my husband first, then I pass it on to others for comments. The editor gets the third or fourth draft, and the process of revision starts all over. That is when the real writing begins for me.

* * *

For André J. Kershaw’s, my step-grandson’s, review of one of Sally’s novels, Dark Poppy’s Demise, click here.
For my review of Alex’s latest novel, Four Drunk Beauties, click here.

Fresh from Franschhoek: FLF 2014

Nadia and I at the FLF, photo by Jennifer Platt

Nadia and I at the FLF, photo by Jennifer Platt

Another FLF has come and gone. It was my first one as a participating author. My event with Nadia Davids was a real joy. Nadia is wonderfully articulate, kind, a pleasure to talk to, and more beautiful in real life than in any photograph. We discovered that on top of everything else we have in common, she left South Africa the year I first arrived here. We seem to be leading these uncanny parallel lives. I hope there will be many more points of contact. We read from our novels, spoke about writing place and history, being first-time novelists, the genres we write in, and our lives as writers and critics.
With Nadia
(Jennifer Platt from the Sunday Times twitted live from our event.)

The guest of honour at the FLF this year displayed her eloquence with light, shade and colour, bathing Franschhoek in its autumn glory. This is my favourite time of the year, and the beauty of autumn days like these past two fills me with a sense of wonder like nothing else. (There was this one autumn day in 1990 when my mother was hanging up laundry in our garden in Church Street in Warwick, NY, and I was just there, watching her, surrounded by the reds and browns and yellows of dying leaves, basking in the early morning light, the sun on my back, and silence between us when I thought, This is where love comes from, from the beauty of this world, it is nourished and sustained by it. Despite its craziness, the weekend reminded me of that day.)

André with Breyten Breytenbach at the FLF

André with Breyten Breytenbach at the FLF

Franschhoek had all its other treats ready for us. Books and book lovers everywhere. The programme offered tons of stimulating encounters. The food and the wines were divine, as always. Gable Manor, the guest house we stayed in, was charming and cosy. In the words of Kgebetli Moele, the author of Untitled, who left a comment in the guest book the day before us: “Perfection!”
All that was missing was the time and space to enjoy it all, but festivals are by nature hectic creatures, especially if one is participating, leaving you dazed and exhausted for days afterwards. There is something about a festival that often puts me on edge. It’s not the participating on stage or being part of an audience, but rather the in-between of awkwardness when these boundaries are blurred.

I attended four sessions and a show during the weekend. The highlight was the show: Pieter Dirk-Uys’s AND THEN THERE WAS MADIBA! I have heard him speak at FLF and other events before, seen him numerous times on TV, and have cooked with Evita for years now, but I had never attended one of his live performances. Now I know that by not making it to one earlier, for years I have been depriving myself of laughter and insight. I will not be so stupid in the future. Dirk-Uys as Madiba or Zuma or Verwoerd was a sight to behold. He was priceless as Winnie. And underneath all the laughter and fun was a profound message of hope and being all together in this beautiful mess we call the New South Africa. There is always hope for a nation capable of laughing at its follies.

The sessions I attended were truly inspiring, worth every cent:

WHO GETS TO DECIDE WHAT’S LITERATURE
Jenny Crwys-Williams talking to Karin Schimke, Lauren Beukes and Imraan Coovadia about the interactions between authors, critics and readers. I found the following comments interesting:

Lauren said that nowadays authors have to be more social and put themselves out there. As Jenny pointed out, Lauren is highly successful in exploiting social media for book-promotion and is one of the few young South African writers who can write full-time because of commercial success. Lauren said that as a social person she counts herself lucky to be able to engage in the world of social media and enjoy it. She also said that she was fortunate in finding an agent who understood her vision. Lauren helps to promote other local writers by hosting The Spark on her blog. When she started with it, the idea was to have a white and a black writer alternatingly, which has proven impossible. It seems that black writers were not responding as readily to her requests as white writers (I had a similar experience when compiling Touch: Stories of Contact for which I was subsequently criticised, but I did approach many more black writers than ended up in the anthology; for various reasons some chose not to participate in the project; both Lauren and Imraan donated their fantastic stories for which I am still very grateful). She also praised her South African editor, Helen Moffett, who allows her to perform all kinds of acrobatic stunts in the air because she knows who is on the ground waiting to catch her if anything goes wrong. (As part of the trio Helena S. Paige behind the Girl series, Helen is not only a successful novelist, but also a sensual poet and a nurturer of South African literary talent.)

FLF books1Karin conceded that as a journalist she understands that she should be participating in the world of social media, but admitted to finding it exhausting. She made a wonderfully vivid comparison between twitter and being at a crowded cocktail party where all one longs for is a breath of fresh air, but getting to the door proves to be nearly impossible. (I cannot say how grateful I was for that image – I am too frightened to even enter that room – I am the one outside in a quiet corner, sipping the champagne, and reading a book). Karin did not get out of her way to market her book of poetry Bare & Breaking when it was published in 2012. Like most writers, she would love to be able to write in her chosen genre fulltime, but has to make a living otherwise. She has no illusions about being able to live off writing poetry in South Africa, but that is not what it is all about for her. As a writer, one has to understand one’s motives for writing, she said.

Imraan spoke about the difficulty of talking about the reading experience which is deeply personal and not always easily shareable. I loved his comment about the fact that a change in taste is proof of a “living mind”. He also mentioned that for him there are different ways of being a writer in the world. He referred to Damon Galgut who is shy and simply gets on with his writing without unnecessarily putting himself out there. He also said something very interesting: Why spend so much time on publicity if the reason you write is to get rich? Instead, one could invest the time in becoming a billionaire by other, more straightforward ways. For him, writing is about the “book and you”.

(After the session I bought a copy of Karin’s Bare & Breaking. Some time ago, I published a review of four Modjaji poetry titles, three of which I found outstanding, one less so. The positive comments I made about the three books went largely unnoticed. For my comments about the fourth one I got lynched. The heated reaction of the publisher and friends of the author to my negative remarks about the fourth volume sadly put me off further Modjaji titles. This is how I missed out on Karin’s book until now. But some of her comments about the volume and her own approach to writing made me curious enough to ignore my decision to keep away from Modjaji titles. On Saturday evening, I read some of Karin’s poems in the luxurious bath of our room with a view at Gable Manor and the moment I got out, I made my husband read them. We were both bowled over by her “sound-shades”. I look forward to discovering the rest of the volume.)

Here is one gem:

“Morning Work” by Karin Schimke

We are cocked and angled
together like an African chair,
groin-hinged and eye-locked,
small-talking the sun up.
At the join we are genderless
until – out of two flat triangles –
something flowers at us,
blooms bright as though
our eyes are suns
and it must find light.
We give it light, and we laugh,
and then bury it, lids shut,
so it can seed again.

THE CONSIDERED CANON
Imraan Coovadia spoke to Nadia Davids and Michiel Heyns about the Western and the South African literary canons. All three are novelists, reviewers and academics.

FLF books 2Nadia said something very moving about academics having the “privilege of learning to read deeply”. She sees the text as a social document that operates in the world, not only as something read for pleasure. During our talk the day before, I asked her whether her own novel, An Imperfect Blessing, was an attempt to write a people into history who had been underrepresented until recently, and she said yes, admitting that it was done with the full awareness of the pitfall of representation. That was her reason for including minute details of everyday Muslim family life in her story of specific historical moments (time round forced removals from District Six, the state of emergency in1986 and the year 1993, just before the first democratic elections). Michiel mentioned that while reading Nadia’s novel he was aware of her having read Jane Austen. What a compliment for any writer!

Nadia, Imraan and Michiel at the FLF

Nadia, Imraan and Michiel at the FLF

Imraan, who is an excellent book reviewer with the kind of gutsy eloquence which I lack, quoted from the curious Wikipedia entry about South African literature which made most of the audience shudder. Hope was expressed that people engaged in writing these entries will amend it to reflect less biased views. Imraan asked the panellists to name their own personal South African canons. The Story of an African Farm was there for both Nadia and Michiel. Michiel mentioned Bosman, Paton, J.M. Coetzee (Age of Iron and Disgrace); Nadia added Woza Albert!, The Island, Gordimer and Brink. Outside of South Africa, Nadia made a special mention of Anna Karenina, and Michiel of Middlemarch. Harold Bloom’s conservative take on the Western canon was discussed. Imraan found that according to Google the most mentioned South African books are Long Walk to Freedom, Cry, the Beloved Country, Country of My Skull, Heart of Redness, Ways of Dying, Spud, The Smell of Apples, The Power of One, and Master Harold and the Boys. He added Burger’s Daughter to the list himself, because “it should have been there.” I agree wholeheartedly.

Michiel Heyns is one of my favourite local book reviewers. (For five years, I’d had the honour of reviewing books alongside Imraan and Michiel for the Sunday Independent under the editorial guidance of Maureen Isaacson.) I always say that when I grow up I want to write reviews like his. I also had the privilege of working with him on Encounters with André Brink. Michiel is one of the few South African authors who see the entire world as their fictional playground, daring to write about topics other than local. I applaud him for that! Exciting news is that Michiel’s latest novel, A Sportful Malice, has been published last week. Talking about the Western canon, or any canon for that matter: the title derives from Shakespeare. Definitely something to look forward to! During the discussion, Michiel mentioned merit in relation to Nadia’s reference to the text as a social document. He spoke about literature and the canon as a “moral guide”, of showing you “how to live your life”. A test for any text is whether you are prepared to reread it, he said. I also think of it in terms of whether you want to share it with other people. The moment I find myself buying the same title over and over again for my friends, I know I have encountered a good book.

AFRICAN PASTORAL
DominiqueHarry Garuba talking to Dominique Botha, Claire Robertson, and André Brink about their latest novels, False River, The Spiral House, and Philida, respectively.

Claire and Dominique are first-time novelists. Like André, Dominique writes in both languages, Afrikaans and English. She recommended to everyone in the audience to write in Afrikaans if they could, as she was thrilled with the kind of enthusiasm and reception she encountered on the Afrikaans literary scene. Her novel is based on her family story and she has kept the names of her family members in the book: “It’s my take on something that may or may not have happened,” she said. She is of the opinion that “it is much better to write truth and call it fiction than to write fiction and call it truth”. (During questions from the audience, I asked about her decision to keep the real names for a fictionalised story. She said the names were beautiful and that changing them would not have removed the problematic aspect of the situation. The people involved would still know that they are being written about, only the larger public not. I’m not entirely convinced. In cases like this, I always try to imagine what it would be like for me: I would feel uncomfortable about my own brother writing a fictionalised version of me and using my name for it in a novel. It simply would feel that it wasn’t me. Why my name then? If he was writing a memoir or biography, and attempting to reconstruct memories in the process without intentionally fictionalising them, I would have no issue with him telling anything about the family past we share and using my name. In a novel based on fact, on the other hand, I feel that a name change signifies that fiction is part of the parcel, that the people are no longer the ones you knew in real life but partly imagined characters who might reflect on real people but are their own creatures. This is particularly true for me when one writes about people who are still alive and who owe their own versions of a story. I don’t want to pretend to have final answers to this complicated process, not even for my own work, but I think it is an aspect of writing that should be treated with utmost care.)

Claire, who had the rare experience in South Africa of having her book go beyond the first impression within a very short period of time, spoke about the idea of a farm novel which not only connects us to the land but to something much larger. After she’d finished her novel, it revealed to her that what she had been writing about is the “urge to perform acts of rescue”. While writing, whether as a novelist or a journalist, she looks for “tragic flaws”, not “wickedness”, in people, whether it is in the men of the Enlightenment or the architects of apartheid.

Tellingly, I forgot to note who during the discussion said that memory is a “very personal and unreliable thing”.

Victor and André

Victor and André

For André, whose novel Philida was born on and delves into the history of the nearby wine farm Solms-Delta, the act of writing begins when fact ends and imagination takes over. Through writing the story of Philida, he felt “enmeshed in my own life”. Philida could voice things which were difficult to communicate otherwise.
In the fourth event I attended (LITERARY DOYEN) Victor Dlamini, an insightful and patient interviewer (and one of my favourite photographers), spoke to André about his career, belonging, and Philida.

A note of thank you: Thank you Liz for all your kind words about my novel (you made my day!). Thank you to all for a weekend of literary delights!

Books sold (that I know of): 1 (thank you Nols – very kind of you! I hope you will enjoy it)
Books bought: 3
(I’m clearly not in it for the money.)