Author Marita van der Vyver chats to YOU

Marita van der Vyver chats to YOU about her new memoir

THEY say you should write what you know. Based on this, writing a memoir should be a piece of cake because you’re writing about what you know best – yourself.

And yet Marita van der Vyver was surprised to discover how difficult doing that actually is.

“There were all kinds of moral issues” the acclaimed South African author tells us as she chats to us by video call from her home in France about her new memoir, A Long Letter to My Daughter.

Because she was writing about real people it was important to her to do them justice. And then there was the problem of deciding on the tone of the book.

“I didn’t want it to be deadly serious, I wanted there to be humour.”

She knows this sounds strange, considering it’s a memoir, but most of all she didn’t want it all to be “me-me-me.”

But then she had a brainwave. As she was planning to focus mainly on her childhood, why not write it as a long letter to her daughter?

That automatically allowed her to get the warm, informal tone she was wanting. And as Mia is 21, it also provided the opportunity to explore the generational divide.

The thing that surprised Marita (62) most about the writing process was how hard it was to remember.

“I realised as I was writing that there are some things that we suppress. I think we don’t want to remember them. But as I started to bring out memories, more and more came out and then I had to decide, okay, what am I going to put in the book?

“I tried to select things I hadn’t written about before. And also things I might have written about in fiction form because I thought that might be interesting for readers who know my books. I use my own life in my fiction but disguised it.”

While many writers have struggled to write in the time of a global pandemic, Marita found that being secluded in her big, rambling house in Provence, actually made it easier. She lives all alone with her French husband, Alain Claisse (62), as their four kids have all flown the nest.

“I was literally locked in my house,” she says. “I had nothing else to do.”

The book was released earlier this month in English and Afrikaans. So has her daughter read it?

Marita says Mia has decided to wait until the publisher sends a copy across to France in paper form.

“I said to her, ‘Look, you don’t have to read it while I’m alive. Maybe one day when your mother isn’t here and you’re going to wonder about things, then you can read it.’”

During the editing process Marita sent Mia the proofs to look at – because she talks about her so much, it felt important that her daughter get the chance to read the book before anyone else.

“She kind of glanced through the first chapters and said yes, she trusts me.”