One Tongue Singing
by Susan Mann
(Secker and Warburg)
That this strangely patchy novel should have been published by Secker & Warburg, JM Coetzee’s publishers, is a little mystifying. After Coetzee one has come to expect from them a certain austerity and rigour, a certain uncompromising elegance. But perhaps one should not be too surprised by their decision to publish Mann’s novel, for it contains many of the themes of Disgrace, but packaged in a more popular form. At times it even seems the esteemed S&W may be hoping for a toehold in the Mills & Boon market, for this novel deals with a series of interconnected love stories, often a little sugary.
At the centre is Zara, a talented art student, damaged by her childhood experiences. If you buy the notion of the “mystique of the creative artist”, you may find her engaging, but to me she seemed a little wooden. No matter; the rest of the novel swirls about her to create a colourful patchwork of slushy romance, cute kids whose “tiny hands” are often mentioned, academia, the South African fine art world, Boer-bashing and an engaging French grandfather. Camille, Zara’s mother, is a French nurse, fleeing an unhappy love affair and drawn to minister to the coloured farm labourers in the Franschhoek area. An annoying foreign do-gooder, she meets her comeuppance from those she seeks to help, echoing certain aspects of Disgrace.
Another similarity occurs in the character of Jake Coleman, a distinguished teacher/artist, but also an old roué, an exploiter of the sexually vulnerable (his secretary and Zara). And then there is the apparently inexhaustible issue of the relations between rural whites and people of colour. Afrikaner bashing is such a tired old cow, dragged once again from the sloot (to use a good Afrikaans expression). But milking this old bovine apparently appeals to the British reading public.
Despite the lurching between penny novelette and passages of clearly didactic purpose, it proves to be worth reading this novel through to the end. The character of Jake is amusingly and stringently observed, and that of his wife Maria sufficiently engaging to make one want to know how it will end.
There is also a sub-plot involving a friendship across race and class lines, which does ring true. The Zara-and-Camille-in-Franschoek fantasy could have been cut back to allow more genuine takes on life to dominate. In the novel Zara’s best art works emanate from her imagination; but in One Tongue Singing those parts that seem a little more pedestrian and acutely observed are more satisfying.