A Blade of Grass : A Novel

Amazon.com
Lewis De Soto's debut novel, A Blade of Grass, tells the story of Marit Laurens, a young woman of British descent, recently orphaned, who has moved with her new husband Ben to a remote farm on the contested borderland between South Africa and an unnamed country. When Ben is killed by a bomb in an act of guerilla warfare, she decides to stay on and run the farm. Alone in the world, she befriends Tembi, the daughter of her black housemaid, who has also been killed, in an accident. Struggling to transform herself as the surrounding countryside descends into bloody conflict, Marit finds herself caught between the fear and prejudices of the local Afrikaner community and the shifting loyalties and growing feeling of entitlement of the indigenous black workers. When first the Afrikaners and then the blacks flee the area, and the outside world starts to encroach menacingly on the isolated farm, Marit is stripped of everything that gave her a sense of self and a sense of belonging to this place.

A Blade of Grass is a delicate, if at times naively sentimental, exploration of the arc of a courageous relationship between two women from different societies, each an outcast from her own, during the death throes of apartheid: from the rigid structure of master and servant, through the tenderness of the shared experience of aloneness and defiance in the face of societal pressures, to betrayal. De Soto has transformed the quiet immensity of the South African veldt into spare, luminous prose. He contains everything--repression and ownership, belonging and loss, humiliation and hope--in the small gesture, the seed, the blade of grass. The story's brutality is barely graphic in its depiction, but the terror is present nonetheless, lurking insistently beneath the surface, waiting at the edge of the farm. --Diana Kuprel, Amazon.ca


From Booklist
Part historical fiction, part war-survivor story, this beautiful first novel is above all an intimate drama of two young South African women who cross apartheid barriers in their search for home. The time is the 1970s somewhere near the border. When the civil war comes close and a farmer is killed, his widow refuses to leave with the other whites. Her housekeeper, Tembi, is the only black person to stay on when the government soldiers drive away her people. The story is told from the women's alternating viewpoints as they break down the mistress-servant relationship, care for each other, and work the land, even when they lose electricity, running water, crops, cattle, and all outside contact. Tembi's voice is sometimes too distant, but her personal story brings close the apartheid atrocity of family breakup. With lyrical simplicity, DeSoto evokes the elemental landscape of the veldt that survives even the screaming military jets. In the tradition of Olive Schreiner's classic Story of an African Farm (1883), the focus is on women, their loneliness and strength. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Economist
"[One] of the most interesting novels to have emerged from South Africa recently…. Brutally effective."


Book Description

Set on the border between South Africa and an unnamed neighboring country in the 1970s, A Blade of Grass is a suspenseful novel about a bitter struggle over a small farm and its dramatic consequences for two women, one white and one black.

The story centers on Märit Laurens, a young woman of British descent, recently orphaned and newly wed, who comes to live with her husband, Ben, on their newly purchased farm. Shortly after her arrival, violence strikes at the heart of Märit's world, leaving her alone and isolated. Devastated, confused, but determined to run the farm on her own, Märit finds herself in a simmering tug of war between the local Afrikaner community that surrounds the farm and the black workers who live on it, both vying for control over the land in the wake of tragedy.

Märit's only supporter is her black housekeeper, Tembi, who, like Märit, is alone in the world. The women are determined to hold on to the farm, but the quietly encroaching civil war brings out conflicting loyalties that turn the fight for the farm into a fight for their lives.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
A Blade of Grass is a graceful and stunning epic set in 1970s South Africa, on a remote farm owned by a newly married couple. The mistress of the house, M￯﾿ﾽrit, is young, recently orphaned, easily intimidated, and unaccustomed to rural life. With no close neighbors or friends, M￯﾿ﾽrit feels isolated in the house while her husband works in the fields all day. M￯﾿ﾽrit's displacement is soon echoed in the character of Tembi, the daughter of M￯﾿ﾽrit's household maid, who assumes her mother's responsibilities in the farmhouse after she is hit by a car.

An encroaching civil war soon threatens the tranquility of the farm, and before long a plague of violence descends. Abandoned by the other farm workers, the care of the farm is now left to M￯﾿ﾽrit and Tembi, who begin this new struggle for survival as equals, but whose unity is put to a devastating test.

DeSoto paints an unforgettable portrait of South Africa with tensions, both political and sexual, simmering underneath. Recalling J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace in his portrayal of apartheid, DeSoto explodes onto the literary scene with a first novel of tremendous power and literary skill. His description of a terrifying world gone awry holds at its center a deep understanding of the patience of the land, and the enduring hope for renewal. This is an important book. (Fall 2003 Selection)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Set on the border between South Africa and an unnamed neighboring country in the 1970s, A Blade of Grass is a novel about a bitter struggle over a small farm and its dramatic consequences for two women, one white and one black.

The story centers on Marit Laurens, a young woman of British descent, recently orphaned and newly wed, who comes to live with her husband, Ben, on their newly purchased farm. Shortly after her arrival, violence strikes at the heart of Marit's world, leaving her alone and isolated. Devastated, confused, but determined to run the farm on her own. Marit finds herself in a simmering tug of war between the local Afrikaner community that surrounds the farm and the black workers who live on it, both vying for control over the land in the wake of tragedy.

Marit's only supporter is her black housekeeper, Tembi, who, like Marit, is alone in the world. The women are determined to hold on to the farm, but the quietly approaching civil war brings out conflicting loyalties that turn the fight for the farm into a fight for their lives.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

DeSoto writes lyrically about the African countryside, and he delicately reveals the nuances of interracial sexual attraction.—Tony Eprile

Publishers Weekly

By a South African-born former editor of the Literary Review of Canada, this ambitious, overwritten novel strives vainly for lyricism while tepidly conveying the chaos and terror arising out of the struggle between white Afrikaaners and native blacks in the 1970s. From childhood a victim of a country sitting on a powder keg of racial upheaval, 18-year-old Tembi, the housekeeper for a newly wed white farming couple, struggles to find a sense of security, planting the seeds from an exotic fruit her father has sent her from the distant city where he works in a gold mine as military jets buzz ominously overhead. Her mistress, the recently orphaned Merit Laurens-the uneasy bride of a young Brit lured abroad by dreams of becoming a farmer and the offer of cheap government land-suddenly finds herself a widow, with only Tembi to insulate her from the unwelcoming, still half-wild land and the restive, hostile native workers on the farm. Shunned by the white Afrikaaners because she treats Tembi as an equal, Merit rejects their offer to escape the danger of encroaching war, electing to stay on her land because she has nothing else and nowhere to go. The novel plays out as a downward spiral of hopelessness, with the two women suffering unthinkable hardship in the face of almost certain ruin. DeSoto gives little dimension to the South African landscape or the struggle that ravages it, but more serious is his failure to bring his protagonists to convincing life. Merit's tremulous, repetitive musings and Tembi's stoic resolve alter little over the course of the novel, and their stilted, stylized exchanges ("Why are you sad?" "No, I'm happy, Tembi. I'm happy, because you are such a good person") are leached of meaning and substance. 3-city author tour. (Sept. 19) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In South Africa not long ago, rich, arable land is offered cheaply to anyone willing to take the risk of living on or close to dangerous borders. So it happens that Ben Laurens, an Englishman with a passion for farming, brings new bride Marit to one such border farm with dreams of raising crops and a family on his own land. The dream is short-lived as antiwhite violence erupts and most of the villagers decamp for safer places. Marit, a woman raised in privilege and unaccustomed to manual labor, is determined to remain on the farm with her black maid, Tembi. Their resolve is tested, first by hostile workers and then by suspicious strangers, natural predators, and the elements. Their relationship, which begins as master and slave, evolves through mutual dependence into friendship and, as their difficulties mount, deteriorates again into suspicion and hostility. This fine first novel is tension-filled and swiftly paced. A good choice for most public libraries.-Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Kingston, Ont. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews