I suppose it’s my own fault for not starting one book and sticking with it. This books starts with a rambling report of a murder on the veld then jumps to the story of a young lady and her rise to independence as an office worker. Until it dawned on me I was reading about the murder victim I was wondering, was I reading the same book. So, the book begins at the end and then backtracks to show us how we got there. Many of the books I’ve read lately jump from the present to the recent past, and then to the distant past passing back and forth in a stream of consciousness that often leaves the casual reader guessing where he is and when. Forgive me for wishing for a book that finds a starting point and works its way to a conclusion in consecutive order.
A successful office manager who enjoys social life and culture marries a failed farmer who is the butt of his neighbour’s jokes. Never having had to manage black workers she fails to grasp the relationship between she as employer and her native houseboys. Her parsimonious nature makes her a mean-spirited employer and her houseboys sullen stand-offish employees. She cannot keep a houseboy more than a month at a time. Her two-room home with attached kitchen has corrugated steel roof, white-washed walls, and animal-skin-covered hand-poured brick floors and lacks a ceiling. Located in a natural bowl it bakes hot and dusty in the dry veld. The husband whom she married after only meeting him twice cannot provide her with the luxuries to which she’s been accustomed and she proves to be a frigid sexual partner. The scene is set for dissatisfaction and unhappiness.
This is a couple headed for tragedy. The husband is wedded to his land and will do whatever is necessary to protect his farm. A successful year would give him the opportunity to make improvements to his home and the land. The wife dreams only of making good so they can get off the land she has come to despise. The fact that she is a better manager than her husband is no consolation but her relations with their black workers in the field and at home go only from bad to worse. The adjoining landowner is cynically awaiting his neighbour’s inevitable failure so he can use his land to pasture his cattle. Since the entire plot is given away in the initial chapter these can hardly be termed spoilers. The book is about the tragic descent of this couple into madness. It also documents a dark time in British Colonial History in the land then called Rhodesia.
Black laborers work only when their white boss is present to direct them and see that they are on the job. Otherwise they remain in their compound and get drunk on local brew. When the husband gets ill the farm is neglected. His wife has become so detached she allowed her chickens to die of lack of food and water. Mary’s failure to properly handle her black workers constitutes a threat to the order of things. It was considered dangerous to give ‘the Blacks’ ideas, that Blacks were in any sense equal to whites.
A successful office manager who enjoys social life and culture marries a failed farmer who is the butt of his neighbour’s jokes. Never having had to manage black workers she fails to grasp the relationship between she as employer and her native houseboys. Her parsimonious nature makes her a mean-spirited employer and her houseboys sullen stand-offish employees. She cannot keep a houseboy more than a month at a time. Her two-room home with attached kitchen has corrugated steel roof, white-washed walls, and animal-skin-covered hand-poured brick floors and lacks a ceiling. Located in a natural bowl it bakes hot and dusty in the dry veld. The husband whom she married after only meeting him twice cannot provide her with the luxuries to which she’s been accustomed and she proves to be a frigid sexual partner. The scene is set for dissatisfaction and unhappiness.
This is a couple headed for tragedy. The husband is wedded to his land and will do whatever is necessary to protect his farm. A successful year would give him the opportunity to make improvements to his home and the land. The wife dreams only of making good so they can get off the land she has come to despise. The fact that she is a better manager than her husband is no consolation but her relations with their black workers in the field and at home go only from bad to worse. The adjoining landowner is cynically awaiting his neighbour’s inevitable failure so he can use his land to pasture his cattle. Since the entire plot is given away in the initial chapter these can hardly be termed spoilers. The book is about the tragic descent of this couple into madness. It also documents a dark time in British Colonial History in the land then called Rhodesia.
Black laborers work only when their white boss is present to direct them and see that they are on the job. Otherwise they remain in their compound and get drunk on local brew. When the husband gets ill the farm is neglected. His wife has become so detached she allowed her chickens to die of lack of food and water. Mary’s failure to properly handle her black workers constitutes a threat to the order of things. It was considered dangerous to give ‘the Blacks’ ideas, that Blacks were in any sense equal to whites.
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