The French terror attacks change the world view of a disconsolate South African writer in this novel, writes
You Lost Me
IT has happened again. A book I found to be well-written but dull has been nominated for a literary award — in this case Little Deaths by debut author Emma Flint, which has been long-listed for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Based on a true crime, Little Deaths tells the story of Ruth Malone, who is accused of the murder of her son and daughter in New York in 1965.
Good women and good mothers, according to the mores of the time, should stay at home, feed their children vegetables, keep their legs together and, if doctorate in philosophy, is a tattooed, pierced, dreads-in-a-topknot waiter in a vegetarian restaurant. His girlfriend Nabila is Muslim, of Tunisian descent. And then there’s the irreverent Jackie, a South African working in Paris, a sprite in pink Doc Martens with a cloud of an Afro. Together the trio of youngsters begin to shift his sclerotic ennui, and his thoughts of suicide recede.
When he and Jackie escape the November 13 attacks in Paris, leaving a cafe minutes before a gunman opens fire on it, Prins is forced to rethink his life. “Tonight is the kind of night that can turn all your certainties into uncertainties.” Unable to contact Maurice, he is deranged with worry, grasping at a forsworn God: “Please, he prays to some or other intelligent higher being he suddenly wishes he could believe in again, please, let my son be safe.”
Van der Vyver was at her home in Provence on the night of the attacks, but equally worried about her three adult sons, one of whom has a girlfriend in Paris and the other two who go to music concerts nearly every weekend. It was only at 2am that she had located them all and ensured they were safe.
“Even so, you feel the horror. I still see it in my children, I see it in their friends, I see it in the French people around me. And then there was the Nice attack, which is much closer to where I live. It’s getting closer and closer. We’re still in a state of emergency. Isn’t it ironic? I left South Africa to live in France and I’m living in a state of emergency.”
On her website Van der Vyver reproduces the diary she kept while writing You Lost Me. It’s a fascinating insight into the process of producing a novel, the research, the plotting, the rewriting. Most surprising is the insecurity she feels about her writing. Despite dozens of books, children’s stories and reams of essays and journalism, she still doubts herself. “The insecurity gets worse,” she laughs, “because people expect more of you and your own standards get higher.”
It’s not stopping her, though. She is full of ideas for more books. “Stories are all around us all the time. Once you have your antennae out, you just have to pick them up.”
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