Hi friends,
In high school, I had a teacher who I absolutely adored. She wore an array of flamboyant outfits paired with colourful sneakers, and would sit cross-legged on her desk, strum her guitar and teach us folk songs as part of our lessons. At this time, art was my main talent and I was experimenting with drawing brightly coloured portraits in vivid pastels. They were wild, uncontainable and full of life, just like her. She spotted one while walking past the art class one day, and asked if I could draw her.
I was so nervous. How do I portray a person so humming with life? How can I show how beautifully formidable she appears to me, to her other students? I did what I always do when I draw - I lost myself in the minor details, the curve of her eyebrow, the swoop of her hair. Separate fragments of a bigger picture. We laughed and joked throughout, until I turned the drawing around to show her. She smiled and whispered her thanks, but after focusing on her eyes for over an hour, I knew she was about to cry. Like any 16 year old girl in this situation, I tortured myself with what I had done wrong. Was I not skilled enough? Was it the lips she didn’t like, or the nose? I couldn’t know then that she was going through a divorce at the time as well as a period of personal crisis that would result in her leaving the teaching profession. I portrayed and focused on the details I saw in front of me, perhaps even exaggerated them, but she brought her own perspective to what I had created, and the image in front of her hurt.
This story has probably been on my mind because my new novel releases in March next year (through the incredible Karavan Press), and while it is fiction, it is the first book I have written that is fairly close to my personal experience. It contains detailed descriptions of my grandmother and my grandparents’ home (true) and then a whole lot of additional drama (false) that is rooted in some very real emotions (true). It’s funny, tragic and absurd, like much of real life.
When I sent it to a friend of mine, she got upset with me because she thought I had written her story. I hadn’t, but this is the problem/glory of writing fiction - if you put your whole heart into a story, it is bound to resonate with others to the point that they feel as if you’re speaking to them directly. If you describe a character, setting or feeling in bold, vivid detail, someone is bound to think that detail is describing them. After drawing that portrait of my teacher, I didn’t touch pastels or draw anyone else again. But when it comes to writing, I’m prepared to take the risk. Because I know how it feels to read a sentence and finally feel seen, to see another author describe a private pain or shame on paper. If I can offer up my view of this complicated, fragmented, contradictory world and if it touches someone in that way, then I’d have succeeded.
In short, I genuinely hope that - if you read the book - you enjoy it, and remember that nothing in it is true ;)
Right, onto some recommendations:
I absolutely adored Lauren Groff’s The Matrix and was so excited to find a print copy of her new novel Vaster Wilds in Love Books, my local indie bookstore. I was going to save it for December holidays, but I’m not sure if I can wait that long! Here is a fascinating interview with her, where she talks about the inspiration for the book.
I went to the Joburg launch of Lauren Beuke’s Bridge this week. She spoke so candidly and authentically about her writing process, and was a joy in general. We chatted about sci-fi books afterwards, and she recommended this novel that she said broke her out of her reading slump during the pandemic - The City We Became.
Travel is on my mind, and I am longing to leave my everyday life for some sort of adventure. Adventures are few and far between in this economy, but we have books.
Mirage, by David Viviers, caught my attention with its Karoo setting. Who doesn’t want to decipher an end of the world prophecy nestled in an ancient journal in an old Karoo hotel?
Next destination is South Korea, namely Sokcho, a tourist town on the border of North and South Korea where a French-Korean receptionist forms a curious friendship with a visiting French cartoonist.
Michael Ondaaitjie’s memoir, Running in the Family, documents his return to his home island in Sri Lanka. Apparently it is a masterpiece.
Finally, there is the novel Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, which tells the life stories of twelve individuals seeking shelter on a little house on a forested island just outside Berlin.
Not a book, but this article on The aesthetic of bookishness got me thinking of the superficial aspects of reading and publishing, and what is means for how we consume books.
I hope you have a wonderful few weeks as we limp towards the end of the year. I’ll be back in a few weeks with some festive book recommendations and recipes.
Till then x
Amy