Customer Reviews

Bitter Fruit: A Novel

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Author Achmat Dangor has given me a penetrating look at post-apartheid South Africa that I could not possibly get from a newscast. His superb novel resonates deeply with the legacy of racism that lingers well after official policies have supposedly liberated all of the country's residents. Dangor is intimate with the subject of apartheid as he worked to defeat it there and then participated in the slow process of rebuilding after the African National Congress came to power. He divides the book into three parts - Memory, Confession and Retribution - which suggests what direction the book will go, but it's a surprising and involving journey every step of the way.

The focal point of the novel is Silas Ali, a former political activist who has joined the new government as a lawyer working with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He lives with his wife, Lydia, a nurse, and their grown son, Mikey, in a township near Johannesburg. There is an inherent irony to their existence - Silas works with the government agency that grants amnesty to those who committed crimes under the old regime, but he and his family remain traumatized by the one hate crime that happened to them. It involves a twenty-year old rape and the sudden reappearance of the perpetrator, a white policeman named François du Boise. Much like Andre Dubus circles the dramatic wagons in his short story collection of revenge and retribution, "In the Bedroom", Dangor does a masterful job in building the tension within the family. Silas doesn't confront du Boise, so the much needed cathartic release is instead directed at the family, triggering a chain of events that leads to its disintegration.

The sharply observed narrative carefully interweaves the differing perspectives of Silas and Lydia. Whereas Silas is deadened by his own stoic resignation of what occurred so long ago in the past, Lydia's suffering is far more intense as she irrevocably retreats into herself. The irony is that there is no truth and reconciliation at home as Silas continues to fulfill the concept at a national level. The unfinished business between Silas and Lydia is palpable and ultimately shattering in bearing the "bitter fruit" of the title. Caught in the middle literally is their psychologically conflicted son Mikey, who has internalized his parents' pain. As he relives the past through his mother's diary, he finds out revelations which make him feel more emotionally detached than he is but subsequently lead him to take matters into his own hands. Dangor provides such vivid detail in his account that it's hard to put down.

The book has an interesting premise: what happens when a man who was witness to his wife's rape runs into the rapist in a grocery store? How does this chance encounter affect the amnesia of convenience that has been created in the intervening 20 years?

What we get instead is a smorgasbord, as there isn't much that doesn't find its way into "Bitter Fruit": rape, recovery from rape, memory, differing perceptions of the same even, incest (three different ways), police brutality, gun violence, marital tensions, biracial people, racial tensions, angst about identity, nature vs. nurture, religious confusion, unwanted children, and, to top it all off, mysterious Muslim men with an unclear agenda, until reading starts to become painful. The book is more indigestible than bitter. It's simply too much.

This is a powerful novel set in post-apartheid South Africa. It focuses on the lives and feelings of three people in a family, and the impact of an act of violence during the days of apartheid on their lives in post-apartheid South Africa. It is well written and moving, about people and their personal foibles, their pain and isolation, and also evokes very believably the greater political scene - the political climate in South Africa just as Mandela is about to step down as president. I could not help comparing this book to The Kite Runner and feeling that it was the superior book - better written and tighter, and yet it has been The Kite Runner that became the best seller!

As a young man, Silas Ali is a member of Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, but Silas' wife, Lydia, is unaware of the degree of his commitment. Early in their marriage, Lydia is raped by Lieutenant DuBoise, an Afrikaans officer who takes her with impunity before her helpless husband. Such atrocities are commonplace at that time, but the event remains a personal shame until twenty years later, when Silas encounters DuBoise in the street.

South Africa is now awaiting the results of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an attempt to make peace with the brutal excesses of the country's past. The chance meeting with DuBoise stirs up years of anguish and resentment for Silas and Lydia, throwing their troubled marriage into stark relief before their extended family, but especially their son, 19-year old Mikey. Used to his parents' lack of communication and marital idiosyncrasies, Mikey secretly reads his mother's diary, which holds stunning revelations, a shocking truth that will shake the foundations of Mikey's world.

Silas has the task of informing Lydia that DuBoise has requested a public apology before the Commission and has named her as one of his victims. Although Lydia begs her husband to stop DuBoise, Silas cannot and their lives are clouded by this knowledge. Lydia watches as her husband becomes even more isolated, her son more distant: "She sees in Mikey an enslavement to another, more puritanical God: his will." For his part, Mikey dismisses the older generation, with their need for "legacy", envisioning themselves as "heroes in the struggle". The nature of betrayal is exposed, leaving Silas, Lydia and Michael without framework as the past turns against the future, the truth destructive, shattering the fragile walls of family.

Towards the end of the novel, Michael is told the story of his grandfather, a harrowing tale set in motion when the British occupied India, forcing European values upon their subjects, the seed of resentment planted in the early days of Imperialism. Much of the chaos unleashed has been years in the making. A product of the new South Africa, Michael reaches for the roots of his Muslim past, bringing him face to face with murder, both a personal and generational vengeance. The family, divided by self-interests, is a reflection of the country, factions oblivious to common ground.

The novel is perfectly written, emotionally spare, yet with a subtle intensity that unveils the secret shame and hidden truths complicated by corrupt politics and the betrayals of power. Each character startles awake, as if from a long dream, able to survive only in another, freer identity. The true nature of change is abundantly clear and the enormous price it exacts. Dangor's story is personal, a reenactment of a familiar tragedy. Indeed, in his novel "rape is a metaphor for the abuse of ordinary people in South Africa." In a world defined by Apartheid, newly released from its constrictions only to be cast into the nightmare of the AIDS epidemic, there is no voice for the anguish of imposed silence, many driven to act out their repressed memories. Beautifully understated, Bitter Fruit is a life-changing exercise of integrity and courage. Luan Gaines/2005.

In spite of trying, I could not complete the 'Bitter Fruit'!

This is a story of a black middle-class family in post-apartheid South Africa. After years of struggle and deprivation they now enjoy material comforts, but events from the brutal past give them no peace of mind. The story of Silas family’s struggles to come to terms with the past, even as prosperity and equality beckons, is used as a metaphor for the dilemma in present-day South Africa. While the Truth and Reconciliation Committee works to heal the society from the indignities of the apartheid-era, individuals must still confront their demons from the past in private.

In this story, Silas and his wife see their lives turned upside-down when he runs into a white policeman who raped her a long time ago. It is fertile territory for Mr. Dargor with his social activist background, but the result falls short.

Rape, incest, broken marriages, endless bitterness, rage, sorrow, and self-destruction. As I write this, I realize I am flying in the faces of all the serious reviewers who have weighed in about the historical importance of this work, of its reflection of a post-apartheid era where the wounds of the past take their awful toll on every aspect of living for both blacks and whites in South Africa today. Nonetheless, I found this work to be unbearable, stifling, suffocating, and terribly written. Its self-conscious literary style was embarrassing. Its pace makes a snail look like a racehorse. Its endless redundancy drove me nuts!! Its minute observations about the three main characters, Lydia, Silas, and Mikey, made me hate them. Its self-important deadly seriousness made me want to die. Its structure is that of (1) memories of brutalities and divisions, (2) confessions of crimes committed, and (3) bloody vengeance taken. Not a pretty story. Not a pretty book. Its title is perfect. Be prepared, gentle reader, to drink from a large cup of bitterness, if that's where you want to go. I personally found it impossible to feel the full weight of the bitterness this author has to offer here because I have not lived his life, nor have all the reviewers who have "enjoyed" this work. If I had it to do over again, I would not have suffered through this book. It was torture. But perhaps that was the author's point, to project the torture these characters have lived through. Even so, bad writing.

At a climactic moment of Achmat Dangor's novel, "Bitter Fruit" (2004), a secondary character relates a traumatic story which works to the following conclusion: "There are certain things people do not forget, or forgive. Rape is one of them. In ancient times, conquerors destroyed the will of those whom they conquered by impregnating the women. It is an ancient form of genocide." (p. 204)

In the novel, a rape which can neither be forgotten nor forgiven plays a central role. The violation of rape is important in itself, and it also serves as the defining metaphor for Dangor's picture of apartheid in South Africa and its consequence. The novel is set in the late 20th Century as South Africa struggles to emerge from its apartheid past. It is set against the background of the amnesty policy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in which the evils of the past would be memorialized and acknowledged but without bloodshed. The hope was for the country to move on while minimizing vengeance, vendettas, or grudges.

The primary characters are Silas Ali, a former activist and attorney for the TRC, his wife Lydia, and their late adolescent son Mikey who mid-way through the novel begins calling himself Michael. Silas and Lydia are both of mixed racial background but are otherwise quite different from each other. About 20 years before the story begins Lydia had been raped by a white policeman, Du Boise, in the presence of Silas who was unable to prevent the outrage. Then, 20 years later Silas runs into the aged Du Boise at a supermarket and a confrontation almost ensues. During the intervening 20 years, the couple had rarely discussed the incident which festered between them. The marriage was unhappy, sexually and otherwise. When Silas tells Lydia of his meeting with DuBois, something snaps inside both husband and wife. Lydia cuts her feet on broken glass, "dancing on glass" and is hospitalized. While visiting her, Silas has a stroke and is also hospitalized.

While his parents are hospitalized, Mikey, a brooding and introspective lad with an interest in literature finds his mother's diary and reads it. He has reason to think that he is the child of Du Boise's rape of his mother.

Besides the three primary characters, the novel offers glimpses of their family and colleagues. The latter part of the book includes a portrayal of the portion of South Africa's Islamic community which either sponsors or condones terrorism. Besides the pivotal rape incident, the book includes many scenes of other forms of sexuality, including child abuse, incest, bisexual and polyamorous relationships, closeted gay sexuality and more. Most of the sexual activity is of forms that are offensive as is most, but not all, of the sexual conduct itself.

The book was Booker Prize finalist. It offers a portrayal of the difficulties South Africa faces in moving forward and beyond its tarnished past. For the most part, I did not find "Bitter Fruit" convincing as a novel. Here are some of my reasons. Many of the individual scenes as well as the dialogue are sharp and crisp. But they contrast with the story line which drags. Other than the three primary characters, most of the other people in the book receive shadowy portrayals which distract from the story. In minute detail, the book describes the vileness and the long-term effects of rape and his analogy between rape and apartheid has some effect. The author is critical of the Truth and Reconciliation policy and he suggests that neither rape nor apartheid should be readily put aside without some attempt at what appears to be vengeance. The novel did not move me to share such a conclusion. Furthermore, the book's focus on the vile and debasing forms of human sexual practices, in addition to the rape on which the story turns, did not seem to me to add a great deal to the novel.

The novel's focus on the Ali family and on the various sexual issues of the family members and other characters also distracted from considering the book as a story of the difficulties of an emergent South Africa. The book was more the story of a sharply dysfunctional family. And the focus of the book wanders unconvincingly from Silas, to Michael, to Lydia. Lydia ultimately works to some degree of freedom from the rape and from her marriage in a brief sexual encounter with a young man after which she leaves Silas. The story line seems to shift from a metaphor about South Africa to a story of a woman in search of a difficult personal and sexual freedom. This is an inadequate denouement for the book. The story of apartheid and its aftermath encompasses people of many and diverse backgrounds as well as people of both genders. Overall, this novel does not succeed.

Robin Friedman

This story takes place in South Africa. It starts off with the promise of a great read as Silas encounters Francoise Du Boise, who had raped his wife Lydia decades earlier. This wound is freshly reopened not only for Silas but for Lydia when he tells her about it.
Then the book becomes boring and as slow as molasses with very little action, which when it fleetingly appears is interspersed with a whole lot of thinking. Example: On page 95 "he urinated" but since page 92 we'd been hearing of the hospitalized Silas's "unbearable need to urinate."
On page 30 the action here is Mikey peeing and watching "the steamed froth with some satisfaction, shivers with delight at the end. How pleasing the simplest acts of gratification." I think the author loves to pad.
The story improves slightly (pg.36) when Mikey remembers how he and Mireille as youngsters "played Ghandi." However when Mikey falls asleep while he is looking at Lydia's diary hidden in her bureau, for which he went out of his way to search for the key, there was something definitely askew here, I thought.
On page 78 Kate stumbles on Mikey's ritual but the story gets diluted with that time when she sees a leopard up close. Aouch!!
And that "stuff" between Silas and Betty was..... (pg. 98). I persevered to page 100 (1/3 of the book). Couldn't take more.
The author's positives were in some of his descriptions, which were sometimes interesting and humorous.

I usually read novels, thick and thin, within a week; but this book took months. I couldn't stand to read more than a few pages at a time because it was just that terribly written. It was probably one of the worst books I've ever read. I'd much rather read a boring textbook on math theory than read this again. I don't understand how it won the awards it did because I don't think it deserved it. The progression was dreadfully slow, and many times the author was redundant and appears to be just filling space. Also, I don't think it dealt much with apartheid at all, but more so about a dysfunctional family in general. And Michael's rage and his driving force (in the end) was really appalling and so fitting with the sensationalism in society and the media today. This book was rubbish and I wish there was a 0 star rating because it definitely isn't even worth one. Don't waste your time.

This is one of the best books I have read in my life! I never heard of this author, I just happened to pick up the book while I was in an airport. I was so engaged with this book I could barely put it down! As an African American who has never been to South Africa I felt this book was absolutely extraordinary and I loved the intertwining of so many characters while not losing the identity of any of them. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in books that are for pleasure but also cause you to reflect.