The Rowing Lesson

September 3, 2007
Scenes from the rich, contentious life of a dying Jewish South African country doctor flash before his expatriate daughter's eyes in Landsman's frustrating second novel (after The Devil's Chimney
). A skinny boy with a hot-tempered mother and a good-hearted father, Harry Klein grew up in pre-WWII Germany, where he married a woman from a socially superior Jewish family during medical school and later endured the wartime death of his father from influenza. After his emigration to South Africa, patients of all races revere him as “Doctor God,” but he clashes with his artist daughter (who narrates, maddeningly, in the second person) and can't shake his life-long jealousy of his younger brother, a flashy, respected cardiologist. This novel offers a few insights on death, the frailty of the human body and the ties between parent and child, but the overly lyrical prose tries too hard, and the second-person narration does the mostly opaque narrative few favors.

September 1, 2007
Betsy Klein journeys to South Africa to be with her dying father. During her hospital-room vigils, she talks to the unconscious man about his ancestors from Lithuania, love for life in South Africa, childhood in a large family, and work as a doctor respected by both blacks and whites. Despite his professional success, Harold Klein was not an easy man for his family, but Betsy fondly recalls their rowing lesson on the river, a time of special closeness with him. Her imaginings into her father's life reveal a more innocent time, before World War II changed life for the Kleins and their Jewish friends and before anyone noticed how wrong the separate-but-equal laws were. Landsman (The Devil's Chimney ) liberally sprinkles Afrikaans throughout, described by Harold Klein as "the language that's a mirror into the soul of these earthbound people." Some readers may lose their way owing to Landsman's slow-building swirl of memories and lack of a tidy ending, but this is still a powerful story of the father-daughter bond in all its fragility and strength. Recommended for public libraries with strong fiction collections.-Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO

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