The Rights of Desire [Hardcover]

Andre Brink (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 20, 2001

Ruben Olivier leads an isolated existence in a Cape Town suburb. His wife has died, one of his sons has settled in Australia, and the other wants to emigrate to Canada. The only constants in Ruben's life are the old family home, the ghost of a seventeenth-century slave girl who haunts it, and Magrieta, the elderly housekeeper who comes in to look after him. When Ruben's neighbor and best friend is brutally murdered by marauding gangs, the subtle yet pervasive threat of violence hovering over life in Cape Town becomes frighteningly real.

All agree that taking in a boarder might be a good idea, and Ruben is pleasantly surprised when young Tessa Butler walks in out of the rain one Saturday night. She restores passion and intrigue to his life, but he has little time to enjoy the infatuation, for soon Ruben finds himself in a web of deceptions, manipulations, disappearances, and lies.

This extraordinary novel is at once a rich story of enigmatic characters and a boldly disquieting meditation on the attempt to build a future of hope and promise from the legacy of the past.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A December/May romance (ardent on the December side, platonic-but-teasing on the May side) blooms against the backdrop of postapartheid South Africa in Brink's latest offering. Librarian Ruben Olivier, the 65-year-old narrator, was forced into early retirement in Capetown to make way for a black replacement. Violence has personally touched Ruben: Johnny MacFarlane, his neighbor and close friend, was recently murdered. His grown-up children want him to leave the country for his safety; to appease them, Ruben sublets part of his house to 29-year-old Tessa Butler, who is beautiful, untrustworthy, confiding and promiscuous. Also present in Ruben's household are two other women: Magrieta Daniels, Ruben's housekeeper, and Antje of Bengal, a ghost. Magrieta has an implacable sixth sense for the house's odors and order; Ruben can hide nothing from her. Furthermore, Magrieta is on good terms with Antje, who was the slave, lover and accomplice in the murder of her 18th-century owner, Willem Mostert. Brink (A Dry White Season, etc.) has a wonderful time delineating Ruben's character from his veldt childhood to his discovery of "the deeply satisfying sublimation of travelling through the pages of books" and his unsatisfying marriage. Tessa, on the other hand, remains a stereotypical sex object. A subplot involving Magrieta's neighborhood, from which she is forced to flee when she is accused by a neighborhood gang of being an "impimpi," or police informer, edges the central romance with an ominous hint of violence. Although this isn't Brink's best effort, he remains a consummately professional storyteller, and the voice of his narrator, with its subtle wit and vulnerability, is a welcome one.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Ruben Olivier, a retired librarian, lives alone in an old family home in Cape Town, South Africa. His wife and friends have died, his children have emigrated, and his only companions are his elderly housekeeper and the ghost of a 17th-century slave that haunts the property. Olivier, who is something of a prig, spends his days rereading the great books and listening to classical music. But his monastic lifestyle is threatened when he agrees to rent a room to 30-year-old Tessa, a troubled free spirit who drinks, smokes pot, and sleeps with a bewildering assortment of men, both black and white. Olivier is immediately attracted to her, but Tessa sends mixed signals, flirting with him outrageously one day, ignoring him the next. For Olivier, it's the Temptation of St. Anthony all over again, with himself in the title role. Meanwhile, appalling acts of mob violence occur almost daily in the suburbs of Cape Town. Is the violence specific to postapartheid South Africa, or is it a condition of modern life in general? Brink seems to favor the latter explanation. Less overtly political than A Dry White Season, this novel is essentially an old-fashioned and somewhat predictable May-December romance. For larger fiction collections.
-DEdward B. St. John Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (April 20, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151006547
• ISBN-13: 978-0151006540
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,411,520 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compulsively readable, thematically complex., March 24, 2001

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Rights of Desire (Hardcover)

It is a measure of Brink's genius that this compulsively readable novel seems so straightforward, at least at first, when one is deeply engrossed in the twists and turns of the main characters' changing relationship. Primarily a love story, it chronicles the complex, sometimes masochistic, interaction between Ruben Olivier, a lonely former librarian in his sixties, and Tessa Butler, an attractive free spirit, almost thirty, whom he has taken into his home and who claims to have deep feelings for him. But while Tessa enlivens his days with her attentions and conversations, she also toys with him, flaunting her numerous relationships with other men at night. As Tessa settles in, Ruben finds his once-orderly and peaceful world shattered, the memories with which he has consoled himself after his wife's death destroyed, and his view of himself and the world permanently changed.

The book is deceptively many-layered, for while Brink is exploring rights and desires in the relationship of Ruben and Tessa, he is also simultaneously exploring rights and desires in a political sense. In the newly independent South Africa, the formerly oppressed black majority is now in power and asserting itself. In the confusion of the power transfer, many young men, apparently feeling that "might makes right," have formed marauding gangs, attacking, raping, killing, and essentially doing whatever they desire, their only motivation being revenge for past injustices. No one is safe, and Ruben and Tessa, who had hitherto ignored the danger even when it struck close to home, find that they are not immune as they face a defining moment of terror.

The atmosphere of the novel is dark, the mood of violence is palpable, and a sense of foreboding lies heavily over all. The relationship of Ruben and Tessa is unsettling, strange, perhaps even clinically sick, but it is powerfully seductive in a Nabokovian way. The ghost of a slave, Antje of Bengal, 300-years-old, walks the house, haunts the inhabitants, and keeps them and the reader constantly on edge. Throughout the action, Brink's language is so fluid, his first-person narrative so smooth, and his sense of timing so keen that his style achieves an elegance few others could achieve, given the sometimes bizarre subject matter. This is a thematically complex tale of many interconnected relationships, and it's fascinating. Mary Whipple

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This book is deceptively about South Africa, July 14, 2001

By A Customer

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This review is from: The Rights of Desire (Hardcover)

and while I may be accused of missing the point, I found the relationship between Ruben and Tessa extremely annoying. I bought the book thinking it would deal more with the South Africa of today, but even that was trite, with violence and corruption the two prevalent elements. As I read on, Ruben became a joke of an old man and Tessa a sadistic tease. I did enjoy A Dry White Season and why this author has decided to sink into the musings of an old man rather than explore more about South Africa and the myriad layers of its society after apartheid is a mystery to me. I must admit that I did read through it avidly and with some anticipation, assuming there would be some deeper meaning. If there is, I will have to have it explained to me because I didn't find it. It is well written and easy to read but certainly no more than that. One would be advised to read Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee instead.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Rights of Revenge., June 11, 2005

By 

Hadeel Altreiki "Hadeel Al.Treiki" (Paris) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Rights of Desire (Hardcover)

This is the first book I read for Andrea Brink and probably the 1st ever book for a South African writer, if my memory is still intact( Alan Paton being the exception).
This is probably one of the most complex and daunting novels that have been written between 2000 and 2005, and its complexity lies deep within the ethos of the issues and subjects tackled. It is not merely a novel about post apartheid south Africa, but constitutes a conscience and often bloody account of not only South Africa from 1930, but of human nature in general. It's a narration of fanatical Christianity, of the despair and hope of many Boers, of the often harsh daily realities that are often ignored or merely trespassed in modern historical narration of that historic epoch. The story centers around two main characters Ruben and Tesse; the former is a retired librarian, who has witnessed the rise and decline of various South African generations and political ploys, while the later is a young 30sh old bohemian, who for better or worse is living the turbulences of a changing world and society. Their lives intertwine and are linked for a short period of time, yet despite the brevity of their relation, they both share an intenseness that renders returning to a state of normalcy quite unbearable or unachievable. The energy and youth of Tesse forces the main male protagonist to confront not only his present old age, but also to soar back in time to his lonely childhood, on a desolate farm, his initiation into adulthood, his melancholy and often hypocritical marriage, that was marred by dismay and deception, to his current status as an old man, living in an empty house, surrounded by notes never to be completed and articles never to be written, with the sole presence of an ancient ghost murdered 200 hundred years ago. Perhaps this ghost is only a reflection of all the occupants miseries, and phantoms of sadness. Anjtee even though witnessed by various generations of passers by in the house, is merely a reflection of the conflict between human desire, sin, a need to reconcile differences and simply move on.
This is quite a complex novel, multiply layered and quite extravagant in both style and manner, nevertheless, it surely needs some careful reading and contemplation.