Trade Paperback, 288 pages RRP: R145, ISBN 1-4152-0019-X Publication date: June 2006, Category: Fiction Description “Like tadpoles in a jam jar” Hüd and his cousins grow up on the Cape Flats in a Christian family: Granny Marge, his mother Avril, his bingo-addicted aunt Lorraine and her husband “Spanner James”, a car mechanic who runs his workshop from their front yard. When Avvy and Hüd move out on their own, Hüd soon discovers the man who visits his mother and whom she calls Mister Johnson is his father. Nothing much changes for Hüd until one day out of the blue Mr Johnson asks to see him and greets him with the words: “I want you to have my orchids when I die Hüd.” Thrust into the heart of his other family, Hüd meets his artist half-brother Mo, his half-sister Sawdah and her best friend Aouda who live in Australia, his father’s brother Boeta Braim and Boeta Braim’s former wife (who may be recognised by readers of Rayda Jacobs’ Confessions of a Gambler). Immersed in family politics, Hüd soon realises that the bonds that tie families together can also tear them apart ... From My Father’s Orchid, chapter1 “There are two versions of what happened on the day I was born in 1977. According to my mother, Avril, who doesn’t lie but leaves things out, I was born at Auntie Lorraine’s house – flat and simple. According to Granny Marge, a much more reliable source, she and my mother were on their way home from the market in the bus when the first pains hit. They stopped at Mr Logday’s café on the corner. My mother gripped her stomach, and Granny Marge and Mr Cupido who was in the shop buying birdseed for his budgies which he kept in a wire cage on the stoep, helped her home. The pains came swiftly. My mother screamed, and I came right out, on the same bed where Auntie Lorraine’s two babies, Olive and Joe – ten months apart – slept in the back room. I slept in that bed for seven years, the youngest of the three, and slept next to Joe. Olive was at the foot end of the bed, her legs between us. In winter when it was cold, we curled up like kittens and told stories under the blankets long after we’d been told to close our eyes. In the mornings, Joe would have all the blankets, and we would be shivering. Joe would run first into the bathroom, to have a pee, and on Mondays and Fridays had his turn first in the metal bath. We didn’t bathe in the porcelain bath in the bathroom; it would take too much water, and we would sit with our knees up to our chests while my mother or Auntie Lorraine washed us. Olive was second. She was a girl and didn’t want us around when she had her bath. By the time I stepped into the water it was tepid and grey, and I got a double rinse at the end.” To read on From the reviews ... both a swan song and a coming of age novel. – From the reader’s report on My Father’s Orchid. A compelling story of a family divided by class, religion and hidden resentment. – Adele Hamilton, Fair Lady. E-mail us a comment on this book. (Comments may be edited and used on this website.) To buy this book www.exclusivebooks.com www.kalahari.net home   writers   books   contact   buy   rights all content © Umuzi, Random House Struik this website designed and maintained by Guanaco.co.za