Up Against the Night

November 9, 2015
Cartwright (Lion Heart) writes a tale of one South African man that combines beauty, joy, and foreboding. Frank McAllister is a scion of the Retief family, whose most famous member, Piet, led a group of Boer settlers to their deaths at the hands of the Zulu king, Dingane, in 1838. Frank left South Africa behind to become a very successful businessman in London. Now he is making his annual return visit to his seaside vacation home on the Cape with his new love, Nellie Erikson; his daughter, Lucinda; and Nellie's son, Bertil. Frank is trying to keep away from his cousin, Jaco Retief, a drunken failure of a man with a violent temper. While Frank is surrounded by gorgeous scenery and his loving family, the reader also follows Jaco's ominous progress across the country as he purchases a gun and moves inexorably toward his cousin. Frank himself describes the land "as a kind of tapestry, intimately woven of beautiful landscapes and violent death." His love of Shakespeare contrasts sharply with Jaco's low vulgarity, but both lend this work an air of impending tragedy.

October 15, 2015
South-African born novelist Cartwright (Lion Heart, 2014, etc.) casts a sardonic eye on a London expat who's trying to uncover, if not openly parade, his Afrikaner heritage. For most of his adult life, Frank McAllister, Oxford-educated child of a liberal South African journalist, has succeeded wonderfully in keeping apartheid's history at bay by adopting an English identity. A canny investor, he's acquired an art collection and horses and a few good friends who are gamely paddling against the "onrushing middle years." His one foothold in South Africa is a beach house nestled on the Cape Town coast where he can escape dreary London winters and his ex-wife's bizarre demands. He's relishing the chance to share this paradise with his new love, Nellie--a Scandinavian domestic goddess--and her mildly miscreant teenage son. Warming to the role of Kaapstad Prospero, Frank has planned nifty diversions for his guests. All the while, he strives to minimize their exposure to his not-distant-enough Afrikaner cousin, Jaco Retief. A once-promising snorkeler with extortionist tendencies, Jaco's status dive in the "new" South Africa pricks at Frank's conscience. Jaco's presumption that "oom" (uncle) Frank and he are holdouts "up against" the current regime baffles and unnerves him. (At several points in the story, Jaco's unfiltered rants whiz by--fast, highly comedic, loaded to kill like a psychopathic scuba fisherman's spear gun--giving some urgency to Frank's quandary over how to banish this badass kinsman for good.) Frank also wants to get on a fresh footing with his 21-year-old daughter, Lucinda, just out of rehab, who arrives on scene with a small black child whose parents' whereabouts she promises to explain. Frank hopes she'll open up on their planned trek to a few historical sites tied to his pioneering Boer ancestor Piet Retief. Retief's infamous murder by a Zulu chief (re-created for Veldt tourists by live actors) doesn't entirely match up with contemporary accounts, and Frank feels compelled to sort it all out. Shockingly, his born-again curiosity and engagement with a country and people he's stood back from for so long expose him to a new "custom" he doesn't see coming. Evoking Coetzee's Disgrace and Gordimer's The House Gun, Cartwright brings new twists and a sure touch to his tragicomedy about a decent man's rude awakening to shared history's capricious side. Caveat emptor, Ancestry.com.

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October 1, 2015
The juxtaposition of beauty and savagery in the author's native South Africa is the backdrop for this novel about a middle-aged man on the brink of getting his life back together. Frank is a South African who has made good in London. Divorced from a bitter wife and with a daughter in rehab, he takes his new love, a Swedish paragon named Nellie, to his beach home in Cape Town. Frank's life grows more idyllic daily. Nellie's son likes him, his daughter returns from rehab with a darling toddler who calls him Grandpa, and he and Nellie begin to plan a wedding. The only fly in the ointment is a ne'er-do-well cousin, who asks Frank for money and seems more unhinged with every phone call. There is also the poverty and violence always just out of view and the family story of Frank's ancestor, killed by Zulus while trying to colonize their land. Up against the Night is not the most well-crafted novel, but fans of J. M. Coetzee may enjoy this tale of a modern man haunted by brutality.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2015

In 1838, a small group of disaffected Boer colonists, led by Piet Retief, trekked into the wilderness and were savagely murdered by a party of Zulu tribesmen under orders from their king, Dingane, whose docility Retief had badly misjudged. Years later, Frank McAllister, a descendant of Retief, returns to South Africa from his home in England, seeking a better understanding of his Boer ancestry. Along with his Swedish girlfriend, her sullen teenage son, and his daughter Lucinda, a recovering drug addict, Frank hopes for a restorative visit. Arriving late, Lucinda has with her a black child whose connection to her seems mysterious and tenuous. On a collision course with McAllister is his unstable cousin Jacko, a recent escapee from the church of Scientology who's hell-bent on a path of destruction. VERDICT Cartwright's (In Every Face I Meet; Other People's Money) provocative tale of one troubled family mirrors the history of South Africa, from its brutal beginnings through its repressive apartheid years to its violent, vengeful present. Strongly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 5/17/15.]--Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2015

This latest from Whitbread Award winner Cartwright (Lion Heart) features Frank McAllister, who's none too pleased to be descended from Piet Retief, leader of the South African Great Trek. Though Afrikaner legend proclaims Retief a hero, Frank feels otherwise. Even as he deals with a daughter fresh from rehab after her parents' acrimonious divorce, Frank begins to understand how the 1838 massacre that took the life of his ancestor and multitudinous followers connects to the violence of South African apartheid.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.