October

November 25, 2013
Mercia Murray, a 52-year-old English teacher living in Glasgow, has recently been abandoned by her partner of two decades. Distracted from her work and daydreaming about her family back in South Africa, Mercia returns to her hometown of Kliprand, where she must face her alcoholic brother, Jake, his provincial wife, and their five-year-old son, Nicky. As she strikes up a tepid relationship with the boy, Mercia reflects on her childhood—defined by a guilt that “ran like a dye through their days... tingeing all with fear of trespassing and disappointing their virtuous parents”—and finds herself facing truths about her family that have long been hidden. In Jake and Mercia, Wicomb (Playing in the Light) contemplates the meaning of family, the limits of forgiveness, and the deep responsibilities of having children. The novel provides an insightful look at how “memory is bound up with place,” and at what it means to return home.

January 1, 2014
A heartsick academic heads from Scotland to her native South Africa to help repair her brother's broken family--and somberly, slowly muse on her past. As in her previous novels and stories (The One That Got Away, 2009, etc.), this novel reflects Wicomb's interest in bridging Europe and post-apartheid South Africa--or, more precisely, showing the extent of the gap. Mercia's thoughts of home are already intense after her longtime partner leaves her, and they deepen once she receives a letter from her brother, Jake, suggesting that she needs to return to South Africa to take care of his young son. When she arrives after 26 years away, it's clear that his life is in chaos: He's sunk deep into alcoholism, and his wife is at loose ends at the impending foreclosure of their home. Though the setup is dramatic, Wicomb's writing is patient and meditative; early in the novel, Mercia reads Marilynne Robinson's novel Home, which seems to serve as a thematic and tonal model here. Mercia's visit inevitably sends her into the past, thinking of her mother, who died young, and her domineering father, who sent both of them fleeing on different paths. We also learn more about Mercia's relationship with a poet and the woman he left her for. Wicomb touches on South African politics and racial divides (Mercia's family is black), but the novel stresses a more interior story, which turns on a harrowing revelation about Mercia's father. At times, this story feels wan and undramatic, as Mercia continuously muses over the question of whether her true home is in Glasgow, Kliprand or Macau, where there is a potential new teaching gig. But its closing pages are genuinely affecting, intensifying the overall mood of heartbreak. A carefully crafted, if at times overly austere, study of home and loss.

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January 1, 2014

Recently honored as a recipient of the 2013 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, Wicomb again explores issues of racial identity in her South African homeland, though she focuses on the nature of family and the concept of home. When Mercia Murray's longtime partner abandons her, she escapes Glasgow for her hometown, Kilprand. There she begins a less than idyllic reunion with her alcoholic brother Jake. His binges of drunkenness threaten his life, and his unsophisticated wife Sylvie is challenged to support their young son Nicky. Seemingly, Mercia has plunged into everywoman's midlife crisis, questioning her career, mourning the loss of a significant relationship, and struggling with her appearance. VERDICT Wicomb deftly draws upon these elements of Mercia's life to deliver a more complex narrative, one that delves into Mercia's limbo of emotions, memories about her South African childhood, and her collapsing adult life in Scotland. The emergence of family secrets introduces yet another challenging aspect not unlike the way undisclosed family histories shaped Wicomb's earlier novels Playing in the Light and David's Story. Recommended especially for readers of international fiction.--Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis

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