The problem with knowing author Muff Andersson — and I suspect many people who first pick up her book will do so because they know her — is that one spends a lot of time trying to find autobiographical references in her novel.
Does detective MK Makatini have anything to do with the author’s past involvement with Umkhonto weSizwe, for instance; and who does ex-super spy Philemon Skosana resemble? Is ‘Struggle Mama” Thandi, ‘trained always to put the interests of the collective above the individual”, more than just a stereotype? And why does the journalist have to be the psycho?
The book is blurbed as ‘a racy ride through the less salubrious zones of post-struggle South Africa, by an author who knows them from the inside”. It is Andersson’s debut novel (the first of a projected trilogy), though she has established her credentials in popular culture with Music in the Mix, a seminal study of South African music. She is also reading for a PhD on political memory and popular culture. In manuscript form, Bite of the Banshee won the Ernst van Heerden Award for unpublished work.
The novel is a whodunnit, set in a hip new-millennium South Africa that is instantly recognisable. For this reason alone it is worth reading, even if you don’t know the author. I found it a page-turner, with an intriguing storyline.
The story revolves around solving the gruesome and bizarre murder of a human rights lawyer, Dodie Katz, tied up and sexually assaulted in a Cape Town hotel room. The suspects are a quirky mix of characters: a teenage drug dealer, a disillusioned Cabinet minister, a New Age healer and a shady journalist.
Without giving the story away, there is an intriguing sub-plot about Cabinet ministers smuggling drugs that are more dangerous and expensive than crack cocaine. Again the question arises: is Andersson hinting that she’s privy to insider information, or is this pure fiction? For obvious reasons, we’ll never know.
In solving the murder mystery, the story touches on many topical issues of contemporary South Africa: transfrontier conservation areas, corruption, HIV/Aids, American imperialism, drug abuse, cross-cultural relationships.
Andersson uses an intriguing double perspective in telling the tale, moving between the first-person narrator Abby Moeketsi, a rap singer and lawyer, and an omniscient narrator who tells the rest of the story. Andersson is experimenting here with narrative conventions, including those of crime fiction, romance and soap opera. Not that this gets in the way of one’s reading of the novel.
There are parts that jarred for me: I didn’t quite understand the significance of the banshee of the title, and the characterisation of the female protagonists is a bit thin.
What the novel lacks in prose it makes up for in plot and accessiblity. It’s an easy, interesting read — and you may even recognise someone you think you know.