Shirley Kossick
FRIEDA AND MIN by Pamela Jooste (Doubleday)
Second novels are notoriously difficult to write, especially when the first one has been a popular and critical success. Pamela Jooste need not have worried, however, as Frieda and Min, though not as consistently appealing as Dance with a Poor Man’s Daughter, has a good story to tell.
Central to the novel is the friendship of Frieda, a Jewish girl from a poor family, and Min, whose background is far more privileged. Well-connected, monied and educated at an expensive school, Min longs to follow in her father’s footsteps as a doctor in a needy area of Zululand.
The two meet after the death of Min’s father, when her mother, soon remarried, unburdens her teenage daughter on to Frieda’s mother. The girls form a close bond, but what strains credulity somewhat is how the quiet, modest and kindly Mrs Woolf could ever have become the friend of such a false, brittle and vaguely anti-Semitic woman as Min’s mother.
On the other hand, the bond between the two girls is beautifully realised, despite what Frieda recognises as the immense differences between them. Min is driven by her desire to serve and help the oppressed and goes on to achieve her ambition. But, in the apartheid years in which she comes to adulthood, her commitment leads inevitably to confrontation with the South African security forces.
Min’s character, convictions and the price she pays for them are persuasively depicted, and many of the lesser figures in the story help to people the worlds of Frieda and Min convincingly. Frieda’s whole family, for instance, especially her sweet-natured brother and incorrigibly philandering husband, all come vividly alive on the page. And Jooste manages to imbue even near walk-on parts with a specific identity and humanity. A short scene with the maid, Beauty, speaks volumes, to cite just one brief example: “Beauty’s crying … It’s only one tear but from Beauty with all the hardship she’s had in her life I think it’s all she can spare.”
This sort of poignant humour characterises much of Jooste’s writing and there are also some unequivocally funny passages. She has the knack of catching the nuances of colloquial dialogue and uses them effectively as indicators of character.
The book opens with a short reminiscence from the vantage point of 1998 and for the rest it is structured around the alternating first- person narratives of Frieda and Min. This takes us from some years before their first meeting in 1964 to the close of the action in 1987.
The device works well for the most part, except for the author’s constant and insistent reminders of Frieda’s Jewishness. Far from making for authenticity, I found the frequent introduction of Jewish customs and Yiddish words intrusive, detracting from rather than adding to the verisimilitude. To whom, for instance, is Frieda explaining the “two white loaves of challa which we call kitke”? And if Mr Silverman’s kosher shop is “shut up just like it always is from Friday early closing until Monday morning”, how is it that “Every Saturday Sadie sends something … and Mrs Silverman slips something into the basket free of charge”?
This cavil and a slight tendency to stereotyping fade into insignificance beside Jooste’s masterful presentation of Frieda and Min’s attachment. All the scenes between the friends are well done, but none transcends their emotional and powerful meeting under the eye of an ever-present guard. Min reflects on “funny Frieda, my friend who brings the light in with her, and it touches me in a way touching hands could never do”.
The whole last quarter of the book is deeply moving, not least Min’s strange, complex and ambivalent relationship with her Afrikaner captor, Evert Brink. What this particular strand of the narrative illuminates is the ordinariness of the people who perform such evil acts in the name of an ideology. As Frieda thinks to herself, “These people may be monsters but the worst part is you can’t tell by looking, which makes them, I suppose, monsters in their hearts, and that’s the worst kind”.