Masterfully woven
Diehard fans can expect a rich tapestry of intriguing characters
VLAKWATER, the 2015 offering of one of South Africa’s most distinguished novelists, Ingrid Winterbach, has been given an English makeover as The Shallows.
Hailed as a masterful storyteller, Winterbach’s substantial oeuvre includes 10 other highly acclaimed novels, five of which are also available in English.
The Shallows will not disappoint diehard Winterbach fans. True to her style, the novel is a rich tapestry of intriguing characters and events mirrored by a parallel narrative.
So be warned. If you are into a fast-paced, plot-driven literary escape, steer clear of the murky waters of the existential angst and theatre of the absurd which propel her writing.
Even though the synopsis gives the impression, The Shallows is not a run-ofthe-mill detective who-dunnit novel:
“After separating from his partner, painter Nick Steyn
moves to Cape Town’s City Bowl. He soon befriends the young boarder who moves in with him.
“One night she doesn’t return home and his attempts to trace her prove futile.
“A few weeks after her disappearance, prosperous artist Buks Verhoef makes an offer on Nick’s house.
“Nick starts to wonder whether these events are related and, if so, could Nick’s former friend, the author of the outrageous novel The Shallows, Victor Schoeman, be involved?
An anonymous Stellenbosch woman writing a monograph on the famous Olivier brothers witnesses the murder of Buks Verhoef in a coffee shop. Soon thereafter a sinister man starts stalking her.”
Winterbach once spoke about her novels as not being plot-driven and compared writers to sea creatures.
According to her, some have impressive, strong fins with which they propel themselves through the twists and turns of the novel’s plot; others develop short flippers that serve similar purposes, but perhaps less obviously and with fewer display tendencies. Winterbach admits to belonging to the latter group. Therefore, expect a horde of characters trudging through The Shallows. There’s plenty of references to great authors, artists and paintings, which is not surprising considering Winterbach and her husband, Andries Gouws, are both painters and she fancies turning a lot of the characters in her novels into artists themselves. This adds to the level of intellectual and intertextual discourse generated in her work, cleverly adding yet another parallel narrative. The Shallows, masterfully translated by seasoned Winterbach translater and fellow author Michiel Heyns, is a complex yet most rewarding read by one of our literary landscape’s best. ý The Shallows is published by Human & Rousseau and retails for R275.