Frankie and Stankie

 

Some thoughts on Trapido's book: I came to it expecting to read an illuminating tale of life in apartheid South Africa and was greatly disappointed as this aspect, although undoubtedly there to some degree, is completely overwhelmed by so much else. I could certainly have done without most of the little girlie with her favourite doll or dolls stuff and the endless, schoolgirl ramblings around best friends, teachers, their pets and clothes etc. etc. The more it went on, and on, the more it made each Kindle page cry out “Time to abandon ship and spend time on something more rewarding.”

The book is as clearly autobiographical as anything I have read that claims to be something else. But it is also in some part a family history, with largely irrelevant details about all the German relatives, who then disappear off stage, plus a potted history of the country after the arrival of Europeans, but especially in the apartheid era. Add the parts together and what do you get? Definitely not a coherent whole. Whatever it is, it's nothing I would call a novel.

If there is no plot – and there is no plot – the writing must sparkle enough to maintain interest. The author has indeed been praised at times for her fine prose. Hmmm. Well, I found little to admire about her way with words in general, whereas for me at any rate, there were some severe lapses that made my tummy complain. When I read about men who had to bend their heads in order to “affect an entry”, that “nobody else can take its sequence on board”, that “her mum will have an absolute fit” (what are absolute and non-absolute fits and is there something between?), and when “cranial undulations” came along to crown it all, there was not only a severe disturbance to my literary digestion, but my poor innocent Kindle was placed in grave danger of being tossed into the Californian wildfires. After that, though, I could almost have forgiven the second sentence in Chapter eight for being sixty-two words long. Almost.

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