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A Blade of Grass

by Lewis DeSoto

A Blade of Grass, the first novel from Toronto writer and painter Lewis DeSoto, is an impressive, if flawed, debut, a compelling examination of race and place, the personal and the political, in South Africa. DeSoto, a South African immigrant, pulls no punches and offers no platitudes in this harrowing account, not only of relations between the races under apartheid but also of relations within the races, between Boers and British-descended newcomers, between black revolutionaries and farm-workers.

Newlyweds Ben and Marit are new arrivals to the rich farming country in northern South Africa, near the border of an unnamed country. Ben is a transplanted Englishman who dreams of land to call his own, of an almond plantation to pass on to his children. Marit grew up an only child in Johannesburg, and married Ben shortly after the accidental death of her parents.

They fit uneasily into their community, on good terms with the African farm workers and their Boer neighbours, but Marit is keenly aware of their difference, of how ill-suited she is to life as a farmer’s wife. She is also unsettled by the political uncertainty of their district; the young couple was only able to afford their farm because of the area’s instability, the incursions of guerillas crossing the border from the north to burn farms and commit other terrorist acts.

After Ben is killed in one of these guerilla actions, Marit feels compelled (and devoid of other options) to maintain the farm on her own, turning to her young maid Tembi for help and moral support. The political and social turbulence increases and the workers leave the farm, leaving the two women to fend for themselves.

As the relationship between the two women deepens, questions of identity, racial and personal, come to the fore. Marit adopts the clothing and behaviour of her maid, driving a further wedge between herself and the neighbouring Boer farmers as the district declares itself “for whites only.” The novel unfolds gradually, to a conclusion that is shocking, yet oddly inevitable.

DeSoto’s writing immerses the reader in an alien culture and landscape. A Blade of Grass is a novel of the earth, an inquiry into the nature of ownership, and the author conjures an intimate, haunting understanding of that small piece of land and of the blood and violence that has been spilled over it. DeSoto juxtaposes passages of idyllic beauty with ones of casual cruelty. But his tone is passive and gentle, as if the novel is borne along by currents it cannot hope to control or contain.

The characters are developed as richly as the landscape and social milieu. Marit and Tembi, in particular, emerge as fully rounded, often paradoxical, creations. Marit is alternately sympathetic and off-putting, committed and self-absorbed, but convincing in her inconsistency. Tembi is more enigmatic, struggling with her own identity and the confusion of roles in which she finds herself: maid, friend, alien, intimate, integral, disposable.

DeSoto unfortunately falls victim to soap opera impulses that undermine the power of the novel at the cost of the integrity of its characters. The arrival of the mysterious stranger Khoza at the farm precipitates the novel’s final act, but the jealousy and competition between the two women is unconvincing and incongruous with their previous development. The series of role reversals and confrontations that ensues strains credibility.

The novel’s plot is almost too tightly constructed, too deliberate. DeSoto’s symbolism (of Tembi planting the seeds of a mysterious fruit in a secret garden at the beginning of the novel, or the whitewashing of a baboon to chase off members of his tribe) is appropriate, but often heavy-handed. The recurrence of these symbols, coupled with portentous foreshadowing (“This is a wild country – perhaps it belongs only to the animals”), is a crude tool in a novel otherwise characterized by lyricism and grace.

DeSoto ultimately provides readers with a valuable and unique perspective on the ongoing legacy of racial segregation and violence in South Africa, and the lingering instability of life post-apartheid.

 

Reviewer: Robert Wiersema

Publisher: HarperFlamingo Canada

DETAILS

Price: $34.95

Page Count: 390 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 0-00-200555-7

Issue Date: 2003-7

Categories: Fiction: Novels