Betsy Kline
Delivers with a wallop on all levels...a grabber that pricks the conscience and challenges old notions of social justice.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Publishers Weekly
- Publisher's Weekly
A December/May romance (ardent on the December side, platonic-but-teasing on the May side) blooms against the backdrop of postapartheid South Africa in Brink's latest offering. Librarian Ruben Olivier, the 65-year-old narrator, was forced into early retirement in Capetown to make way for a black replacement. Violence has personally touched Ruben: Johnny MacFarlane, his neighbor and close friend, was recently murdered. His grown-up children want him to leave the country for his safety; to appease them, Ruben sublets part of his house to 29-year-old Tessa Butler, who is beautiful, untrustworthy, confiding and promiscuous. Also present in Ruben's household are two other women: Magrieta Daniels, Ruben's housekeeper, and Antje of Bengal, a ghost. Magrieta has an implacable sixth sense for the house's odors and order; Ruben can hide nothing from her. Furthermore, Magrieta is on good terms with Antje, who was the slave, lover and accomplice in the murder of her 18th-century owner, Willem Mostert. Brink (A Dry White Season, etc.) has a wonderful time delineating Ruben's character from his veldt childhood to his discovery of "the deeply satisfying sublimation of travelling through the pages of books" and his unsatisfying marriage. Tessa, on the other hand, remains a stereotypical sex object. A subplot involving Magrieta's neighborhood, from which she is forced to flee when she is accused by a neighborhood gang of being an "impimpi," or police informer, edges the central romance with an ominous hint of violence. Although this isn't Brink's best effort, he remains a consummately professional storyteller, and the voice of his narrator, with its subtle wit and vulnerability, is a welcome one. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Ruben Olivier, a retired librarian, lives alone in an old family home in Cape Town, South Africa. His wife and friends have died, his children have emigrated, and his only companions are his elderly housekeeper and the ghost of a 17th-century slave that haunts the property. Olivier, who is something of a prig, spends his days rereading the great books and listening to classical music. But his monastic lifestyle is threatened when he agrees to rent a room to 30-year-old Tessa, a troubled free spirit who drinks, smokes pot, and sleeps with a bewildering assortment of men, both black and white. Olivier is immediately attracted to her, but Tessa sends mixed signals, flirting with him outrageously one day, ignoring him the next. For Olivier, it's the Temptation of St. Anthony all over again, with himself in the title role. Meanwhile, appalling acts of mob violence occur almost daily in the suburbs of Cape Town. Is the violence specific to postapartheid South Africa, or is it a condition of modern life in general? Brink seems to favor the latter explanation. Less overtly political than A Dry White Season, this novel is essentially an old-fashioned and somewhat predictable May-December romance. For larger fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/00.]--Edward B. St. John Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
