This a book about South Africa. It follows through four decades of history as is the South Africa as seen from an Afrikaner family – albeit a dystopian Afrikaner family.
Ma dies during the last days of apartheid, but before she does, she asks Pa to make a promise. The promise is that Salome, the maid, be given the house she has always lived in on the homestead. Not just the house, but the land it is on. I think that’s significant because this book is about giving back land. Pa agrees and is heard by their young daughter, Amor. It is this promise which lies at the centre of the book. It echoes the promise white South Africans are about to make to their country. To give them the land they’ve lived on and worked on and died on for years.
Of course, Pa does not give back the land. In her last days Ma returned to her Jewish religion. She had lost her true white South African bearing and could be ignored. Pa, a recovering alcoholic, and philanderer, would rather give money to the church he became addicted to replace his other addictions.
Ten years later Pa dies. The homestead is left to Anton, Astrid and Amor. Yet they still cannot give the house to Salome. Only Amor heard the promise, so how true was it.
Astrid dies and Anton still cannot agree to let the house go. In all of these conversations, there is always a feeling that the promise will be fulfilled, but there is always a reason it never is. Amor moves further and further away from her family because they never kept the promise and because they are dealing with problems she cannot or will not share.
When Anton dies, Amor still has to come to agreement with his life, but by this time the Homestead, the business and the home in the original promise are worthless. Salome has given up hope by the time Amor appears, almost holding the title deeds. “It isn’t much….Three rooms and a broken roof. On a tough piece of land. Yes. But for the first time it will belong to your mother. Not my family’s. That isn’t nothing.” Salome’s son answers, “It is nothing….It’s what you don’t need anymore, what you don’t mind throwing away. That’s what you’re giving my mother, thirty years too late.”
At the same time, Mandela has changed into Mbeki, who has changed into Zuma and the promise made in the 1990s seems all too shallow. The financial success of the homestead and the business falls like the South African economy and it is only when it is worthless is it given to the people to whom it was promised.
Too little, too late.
It’s an astonishingly moving book even though its impossible to feel for sorry for any of the characters – except, perhaps, Salome, who barely appears in the pages. And that is significant as well. This is a moving book, but the people you cry for at the end are the people who were forgotten throughout it.
