Bestselling author Kathy Lette recently visited South Africa. MADELEINE WACKERNAGEL met her
ONE morning spent eavesdropping in Sandton Square was enough to convince Kathy Lette that her next book had to have a South African element. “What great material! I actually overheard someone saying `Ja well, no fine’!”
She describes her discovery of that great northern-suburbs phenomenon, the kugel and bagel. At least the boys have nice buns – she makes no secret of her penchant for perving in the gym – but the cell-phone as surrogate earring was a bit irritating.
Keeping up with Lette is not easy, as anyone who has read Foetal Attraction and her latest, Mad Cows (Picador), will attest. Her speech is punctuated with exclamation marks – as well as a string of puns, some familiar from the books, others off the cuff, almost all offensive to the male of the species. Forget feminism – or even post-feminism. It doesn’t exist – and be warned of the man who believes he falls into either category. Women have gone soft, she says; we’ve lost most of the ground covered in the 1970s.
But Lette is no man-hater. She just wants women to take control. News of a female orgasm pill has cheered her up enormously – men will become completely superfluous and women will finally get to have their say.
I mention that Mad Cows had the effect of putting me off motherhood for life and she is delighted. “It’s a conspiracy,” she says. “Nobody tells you how boring having children really is. Nobody warns you about haemorrhoids, cracked nipples, varicose veins and the rest. Plus, your brain takes a long holiday.”
So why did she do it? “I didn’t really think about it, I suppose. But now I know better. Whoever says you can’t be fulfilled, a `real woman’, without having children is talking nonsense.”
Would she do it again? Ummm, she reflects for a while. “Look, there’s no equivalent to the kind of love you feel for your children, and they are very rewarding. But ….”
That’s why she wrote Mad Cows. After Maddy’s misadventures with the cad, Alex, and the cream of British snobbery in Foetal Attraction – “I’ve never looked up so many noses in my life. And these people are shorter than me!” – Mad Cows is a no-holds- barred account of single motherhood in Tory Britain, albeit cloaked in humour verging on the slapstick as Maddy goes from one farcical encounter to another.
The tone may be light-hearted, the subject- matter not. Women couldn’t win, she says. First, it was the single mothers who were targetted in the Conservatives’ “Back to basics” family-values campaign. When that came a cropper among allegations of sleaze, the Tories set their sights on working mothers.
She’s no right-on left-winger sprouting polemics; her children go to state schools and they are the only ones to live in a “big house”, as opposed to a council flat.
After eight years in Britain, she still hasn’t got used to the class-system – and never will. In Australia she is one of the aristocracy, the descendants of the original convicts. In Britain, the opposite applies: Australians are way down the social ladder, along with South Africans. (Having spent 10 years in Britain, I can sympathise.) But being an outsider does have some benefits: she can appreciate all levels of UK society in a way a local couldn’t.
Does she miss Australia? Very much. Her husband, Geoffrey Robertson, QC, is another Aussie, albeit transplanted 27 years ago, and is highly sought after as a libel and human-rights lawyer. So not much chance of returning home in the near future. Despite being a member of the male species, he is wonderful. Not that he helps much with the kids, but then it’s hard to take the moral high ground with someone whose work involves defending prisoners on death row.
Only one question floors her: have her kids inherited her sense of humour? Her daughter is hilarious, her son terribly serious, to the extent of berating her when she gets dressed up to go to the theatre. “You’re a writer, mummy, not an actress. Take off your make-up.” Just as well she can see the funny side.