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March 22, 2013
Writer deserves recognition
Post-apartheid novel a masterful mix of poetry and journalism.
BERNIE BELLAN
The power of fiction in describing real-life events is superbly conveyed in The House on Sugarbush Road, a beautifully written novel by Winnipeg’s own Méira Cook.
A former South African journalist and poet, Cook left South Africa prior to the legal dismantling of the apartheid system, ending up in Winnipeg with her physician husband. Set in 1994, The House on Sugarbush Road (Enfield and Wizenty, 2012) tells the stories of a set of characters, some black, some white, and one Indian, whose lives interweave in fascinating and often surprising ways.
While the plot line develops rather slowly – perhaps frustratingly slowly at times – it is in Cook’s absolutely astonishing use of language that the story takes flight. Every sentence is crafted in a way that puts Cook into a category of writers whose first art was poetry rather than prose.
Even when it comes to describing mundane events, such as shopping for ingredients for a recipe, for instance, the most minute detail is described when it comes to testing fruit for freshness or aroma. (Never mind that so many of the foods that are mentioned in this book are so utterly foreign and, frankly, don’t sound particularly appetizing, especially something called miliepap.)
Yet Cook’s obvious talent as a journalist shines through in her descriptions of the savagery that overtook South Africa for years following the handover of power to the African National Congress. Anyone who saw or heard of the particularly horrendous practice of “necklacing,” in which a hapless victim had a tire put around his neck, which was then set on fire, is well aware of the depths of depravity to which so many people sank in South Africa.
But Cook is relatively dispassionate in cataloguing the innumerable horrors through which that beleaguered country’s citizens were forced to wade: the random and horrible violence, the deterioration of its once-sophisticated infrastructure, the ascendancy of brutal gangs, and the seemingly never-ending settling of scores – not just between blacks and whites, but also between blacks themselves.
Into this milieu we find ourselves following the lives of two families in particular: that of a black servant by the name of Beauty Mapole and that of the family for whom she works. Beauty has labored for years – with resentment – for a well-intentioned, albeit patronizing, white family by the name of du Plessis.
Beauty is determined to carve for herself a home that she can proudly call her own – and her entire life is devoted to achieving that almost-impossible dream. At the same time, she feels a strong sense of responsibility to others, notably her elderly and sickly mother-in-law, who lives in a decrepit shanty.
In counterpoint to her mother-in-law, Beauty also finds herself caring for the frail Ouma du Plessis. While Beauty seethes with resentment at the stark contrast between the situation of her white employer and her own bleak lot in life, she still carries out her duties with a grim perseverance.
Into this mix we meet Dr. Benjamin du Plessis, whom Beauty has cared for since he was an infant. Even though Beauty was actually allowed to raise her own daughter, Givvie, alongside Benjamin, Beauty chafes at Benjamin’s liberalism, which she regards as nothing more than patronizing.
Cook is able to show full well the extent to which the apartheid system filled so much of the black population of South Africa with hatred for whites, no matter how well-meaning some of those whites may have been at times. Here is how Cook describes Beauty’s attitude to Benjamin, the man – not Benjamin the child:
“In truth, she’d never stopped loving the little boy, that little boy whom she’d held and rocked to sleep. Whose food she had cooked and whose sheets she had washed. No, she loved him still but the man he’d become and whose food she still cooked and sheets she still washed she did not love, no, quite the opposite. It was a riddle but one she did not care to solve except through spite and such small daily acts of belligerence as lay within her scope.”
The House on Sugarbush Road moves along at a rather languid pace. At times one may be left wondering whether the narrative is all going to come together, but be forewarned: the end of the novel is quite shocking, although there is a foreshadowing of incipient violence throughout.
If there is any specific deficiency with this novel, it is one that, not surprisingly, tends to be found in novels written by poets: the poetic language can be distracting. I had to reread sections of the book more than once, as it was sometimes not easy to follow the narrative. Further, Cook regularly intersperses the dialogue with a stream of foreign phrases, often entire sentences, in languages that range over the map, including a fairly easy-to-recognize Afrikaans, but also African dialects that are simply impossible to understand.
At one point in the novel, reference is made to the many different languages that are spoken in the Johannesburg area, where the novel is set. It might have been easier were Cook not such a gifted linguist who is apparently totally at ease in all those languages, and ready to use the vernacular at any point. (Given the large number Jews in South Africa, I suppose that all that would have been needed to make this book even more authentic would have been to have one of the black characters lapse into Yiddish – the way Mel Brooks did as an Indian chief in Blazing Saddles.)
The House on Sugarbush Road concentrates on mood and atmosphere as opposed to plot. Characters appear and disappear, seemingly at random, and typically in the middle of a chapter, so when they appear again later in the book, it is not always easy to remember where they fit in with the story. Yet, this is the way life is: events happen at random; people move in and out of each other’s lives, and it is only with the passage of time that we can look back and perhaps make sense of our own lives and events.
A truly astounding work of art, A House on Sugarbush Road should be destined for recognition come book award season. And, to think, Cook is actually one of our own (even if she is a transplant)! Frankly, not enough has been written about the many South Africans who have come to Manitoba over the past couple of decades, whose contributions to so many aspects of our lives are so deeply appreciated. Thank you, Méira, for having chosen Winnipeg as your new home.
Bernie Bellan is the editor of Winnipeg’s Jewish Post and News, where this article was previously published.
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