Read of the week: Of All Things, We Need Hope

Sally Cranswick

Modjaji Books

Review: Linda Curling.

If your son is murdered, who has the right to tell you how to behave or what you need to do to get over it and return to normal – your previous version of normal, that is?

In this novel set loosely in Cape Town, grieving mom Heather views her son’s killer, Smith, as some other mother’s barely grown-up boy. Contrary to prevailing sentiment that her son’s murderer is a monster who must rot in jail to pay for his crime, Heather charts a different course, convinced that two wrongs don’t make a right.

Having only recently learned about the terrible conditions in South Africa’s prisons, Heather resolves that she will have to help Smith survive his time in jail.

Despite warnings from her husband and their lawyer that no good will come of it, this becomes Heather’s mission in life, even going behind her husband’s back to do so. Her new normal centres around a routine of visiting ‘her’ prisoner every week, sustaining him with home-baked meals and small comforts, willing him to have hope in a future beyond his eventual release.

Nothing else seems to hold much meaning for her, and she is unable to find a sympathetic ear amongst family, friends, colleagues or even a therapist. She’s damned if she will pretend that everything’s okay, just to make people feel less uncomfortable around her.

And so she abandons her old life to plod doggedly along the path that she’s decided upon. Despite Heather and Smith being on opposite ends of Cape Town’s social divide, Cranswick has written a credible story that is likely to cause interesting discussions in book clubs.

It is not a bleak or heavy novel; rather, it is a fairly light read, with an unexpected twist at the end.