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RACEY Farren’s high-speed novel, Whiplash, hits the big screen on February 21, retitled as Tess. “When reading Tracey’s script,” says director Meg Rickards, “I saw the film playing out, scene by scene, in my mind’s eye: in turn shocking, gritty, poignant and wry.”

The original spark for Farren’s 2008 novel came while she was living in Marina da Gama, Cape Town. She found herself “driving past beautiful young women stationed every few hundred metres along the M5”. She says: “I felt compelled to stop and talk to them about their daily lives, so shockingly different from mine.”

The experience led to Farren, a journalist by training, writing newspaper pieces on sex-work legislation. “But their personal stories haunted me until Tess began to form as an outspoken, wildly questing character in my imagination. I did a lot more research with sex workers and after what I had seen and heard, the novel felt like a charge towards the light.”

The result is a tale about a survivor with an admirable sense of humour and a good heart. “Tess is so unflinchingly honest,” says Rickards, “that your skin itches, her dramatic arc so compelling you can’t help but root for her as she