a South African Hapworth

    At the moment on the BBC World Service, the writer
    Christopher Hope is reading, each day, a chapter of his recent
    novel Heaven Forbid. This is a narrative ostensibly spoken
    by a little five-year old white boy living in South Africa in the days
    just after the war when apartheid still dominated the land.

    The parallels with Hapworth are evident & the book has been
    criticised by Penelope Lively on similar grounds: that the insights
    (if not the words) are too developed & subtle to be emerging
    from so young a child.

    Although she may have a point 'technically', I personally didn't
    find this aspect of the book at all unsettling - largely because of
    the tone Hope has found for his hero: guileless, declarative, simple.

    This may well be the kind of 'innocent, wide-eyed' attitude
    we sentimentally & erroneously attribute to young children.
    But in the hands of the skilful writer it seems to me to offer
    a powerful freshness when dealing - as here -with both dreadful
    events & hilarious ones. It's the unadorned simplicity of the
    statements - that could so easily become tedious but in this case
    don't - that, for me at least, lends this story such charm & vigour.
    And which, with all his writhings, is so conspicuously absent
    from the Salinger story.

    Mind you, this is all based on hearing the writer read his own words.
    It's a fine 'performance', spoken in a soft authentic Jo'burg accent,
    which in itself may convey more than the bare printed page.

    I suggest, all the same, you give it a try.

    Scottie B.

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Received on Wed Jul 23 04:24:44 2003