Conville & Walsh

Jack is the son to an Afrikaaner father and British mother. It’s the very late 1980s and early 90s and FW de Klerk scraps apartheid, lifts the 10 years state of emergency and Nelson Mandela is released. Not that 11 year old Jack is particularly aware of any of this: politics is rarely spoken about, but nevertheless is a divisive force, dictating the content of school history worksheets and the subject of morning assemblies. Jack is brought up too late to truly understand the old ways, and lacks the maturity to see quite how the future is being forged.

Jack is more consumed by his passion for masturbation. He’s the centre of the world, wedged between a younger and older sister, and with two mothers – his maternal mother who’s too busy to fuss with everyday care, and their beloved black maid, Suzie, who’s there for every scrape and pratfall. It’s during one particularly humiliating event for Jack that he unwittingly seals the fate of his dear Suzie and perhaps his very own.

This is ostensibly the story of a boy with identity problems and a meditation of the rivalry between English and Afrikaans communities. With a winning combination of fabulous, enlivened writing, wit, insight, and truth, this is a very human story that never once preaches or gets bogged down in the weighty issues. Jack‘s voice is completely original, powerful, and extraordinary and it‘s his wonderful meditations and meanderings that arrests the reader‘s attention.