Writes Helen Grange
buttoned-up golf shirt, check jacket and Hush Puppies, the product of the World War II era (Seun was a prisoner of war during the North Africa campaign); and the younger man a near ideological inversion of that, a graduate of the then left-wing Rhodes University, disdainful of traditionalism and as libertine as the times allowed.
The old man is the epitomé of conservatism and duty – he worked as a fingerprints clerk for the then SA Police – and reminds Len, often, that he has never had a drop of alcohol or smoked in his life, and has only ever slept with one woman, his wife and Len’s mother. Len wonders how his late mother put up with the cantankerous old man, who habitually judders his foot and picks at his thumb nail.
Yet it’s in the curt, short-lived Sunday conversations, relayed by Len who, on one occasion, confesses to his mind wandering to his lover’s nether regions as his father repeats events that can be quite startling in their brutality, that we begin to appreciate and find sympathy for Seun, a man deeply wounded by his past and now, old, vulnerable and living dangerously alone in his house in Lyttleton near Pretoria.
As Seun takes shape as a character, so too does Len, who emerges as a man with his own vulnerability and anxiety, particularly concerning the state of the nation at the time of Thabo Mbeki’s reign (one wonders what Len would make of the Zuma cabal).
He worries about his father’s security, for good reason as it turns out, and manages on occasion to cajole Seun into leaving his loyal dog at home and go out for breakfast. In reality, Sonnekus surmised only near the end that his father suffered post-traumatic stress syndrome, the reason the old guy would hardly ever leave his home.
While the themes of the book are universal – divorce, sex, the complexities of filial love – the context is vintage South African: the racially charged office politics at the newspaper, the national obsession with Robert Mugabe (“Uncle Bob”) and failings of Thabo Mbeki’s government (“our Supreme Leader”) at the time, and not least, the violence that was escalating everywhere in South African society, plaguing us worse than ever today.
The crime rate weighs heavily on Len’s mind – as it did for Sonnekus – and ultimately the decision is made to emigrate. Sonnekus left for New Zealand in 2010 with his wife and two children, and has a film production company, Stinkwood Films.
When he returned to South Africa recently for his book launch, he reminded us it was the murder rate – which has increased since he left to an average of 50 a day – that seeded his choice to leave.
Given the terrible fate of his father, described in the book, he had good cause to be rattled into flight (even though he stresses that the decision was made before the event).
Len’s destination is not specified, but the denouement is a scene on a boat in the Pacific Ocean that will break your heart as it finally fuses the Sonnekus we know with his entertaining, if repugnant, alter ego Len. It’s a page-turner, a South African gem.