Barry Gilder's Reviews > Absolution

There is no doubt that this book is beautifully written, cleverly structured, delicately observed and well-worth getting to the end of. (I read it in two days).

It tells the story of a white South African man, academically educated in the United States, who returns to post-apartheid South Africa to engage with an elderly white South African woman author as a prelude to writing her biography. As the story unfolds the complex historical and personal interconnections between Clare - the woman author - and her biographer reveal themselves in a complex interplay of different perspectives, different rememberings, and different self-projections.

As I got into the early chapters of the book I had already decided to give it four stars, but as I read on something began to bother me and my reading was progressively interrupted by longer moments of reflection, of trying to get my mental hands around what it quite was that bothered me.

Before starting the book I noted the observation by a number of reviewers of the remarkable way in which Flanery, a non-South African, had captured the feel and detail of place, space, and the historical time trajectory that set the the scene of the novel. As a South African myself, I entered the book intrigued to find out how he did this and if he did so successfully. At a practical level, my conclusion was that Flanery must have spent a considerable time in South Africa with a voluminous notebook or a prodigious memory.

I can't fault Flanery on his delicate and precise observation of place. But I felt increasingly discomforted by his portrayal of the historical, political and social context in which his characters engaged with each other and their world.

For one thing, a South African author would have given more sense of the race and ethnicity of their characters. Given South Africa's history - and its current realities - race (without racism) is a key determinant of how South Africans understand themselves, understand others, and understand their surroundings. But one often struggles in this book to be sure of the race or ethnicity of many of the minor characters. Of course, it is clear that the major characters are white and there is a clear sense of the privilege and advantage that their whiteness entails. One almost gets the sense that Flanery, consciously or unconsciously, is trying to prove his own non-racism by refusing to clearly identify the ethnicity of his 'non-white' characters.

For instance, the police woman assigned to investigate a house invasion experienced by the main character, Clare, is not clearly identified as a black woman. (In fact, she is named 'Ms White'). But it becomes clear from her resentful interactions with Clare that she is black. Her ethnicity dictates her attitudes, but why make the reader guess? Simplistic descriptions of characters as black or otherwise is not what I am advocating, but it is not difficult to clearly locate them in South African social hierarchies through description.

Another minor, but telling, example is a small anecdote in the book - potentially quite poignant - in which the biographer, Sam, and his wife are in Sandton and overhear a child saying to its parents 'Do we really have to go back to South Africa?' But the poignancy of this observation is determined by knowing the ethnicity of the child and its parents. Seeing the space outside Sandton as South Africa and Sandton as somewhere else has significantly different meanings for a white child or a black child. Again, why must the reader guess?

But Flanery's partial avoidance of the ethnicity of some of his characters is not what primarily bothered me about the book. It is only an observation that a South African author would have had less hesitation in understanding the importance to the reader of knowing the social standing (historical and present) of their characters.

What really bothered me is that such a talented author should have failed to adequately convey the complexities and subtleties of the South African political and social context. For want of a less crude characterisation, the book is imbued with a white and European (including the Europeans who emigrated to north America centuries ago) perspective on the South African reality. The book seems to buy into the common, largely white, public discourse that post-apartheid South Africa is simply a country of crime and corruption. Certainly, it is acceptable that Flanery's main characters would perhaps have this view and the more progressive among them would feel some disappointment that the new South Africa does not fulfil the promise of their own ideals and values nurtured in their opposition to apartheid. This is a reasonable reflection of reality. But Flanery does not draw a clear line between the views of his characters and the realities and complexities beyond their own perceptions.

Perhaps Flanery shares his characters' views of South Africa today, or perhaps he just got lost in his characters, but my concern is that readers of 'Absolution' will come away with a simple confirmation of the stylised and unmitigated view of democratic South Africa as a bitter disappointment and a place of ever-present danger, begging, crime, corruption and generalised evil. Perhaps, to be fair, that is how Flanery experienced South Africa during his visits there. If so, I must play the man rather than the book.

All that being said, the book is exquisitely written and a good read, and my concerns only lost it one star.