QUEEN OF THE FREE STATE: A MEMOIR

By JENNIFER FRIEDMAN , Tafelberg A year before Friedman was due to start Sub A (now Grade 1), the principal of the local Afrikaans school told her mother the little girl would be allowed to enrol only if she could speak Afrikaans fluently. Her mother looked him squarely in the eye: “Mr De Bruin,” she said, “my daughter will be starting school here next year. I assure you she’ll be fluent in Afrikaans.”

So it happened that Friedman came to be a pupil at an Afrikaans school in a small Free State town. But after her first day she arrived home in tears because the children had mocked her for being Jewish.

Friedman describes the Free State of her childhood in the ’50s and ’60s in vivid detail, including the next-door neighbours: Mr Le Roux drove a taxi and Mrs Le Roux was a drunk with her hair in curlers most of the time “so my vaifs stay perfect”, as she told Jennifer’s mom.

The little girl was over the moon when Miss Potgieter, her Sub B (Grade 2) teacher, finally asked her to walk with her hand-in-hand to her Volksie to help her with her books. But it all went awry when she lifted “Juffrou’s” hand up to her mouth and sunk her teeth into the fleshy thumb – because it looked so juicy. As she explained to Ma later, “I thought she’d taste really sweet – like a pink toffee, you know?”

Friedman’s lyrical descriptions transport you back to a time that would have been idyllic had it not been for apartheid and a bullying father. A book not to be missed. – ELNA VAN DER MERWE