Trinity on Air
by Fiona Snyckers (Jonathan Ball)
Times are tough for those looking for employment in the media world and no one knows this better than Trinity Luhabe, star of South African author Fiona Snyckers’s popular debut novel Trinity Rising. Returning to Mzansi after a two-year stint in London, Trinity spends five fruitless months job-hunting.
After applying everywhere from Business Day to YOU magazine she’s close to despair when a chance appearance on a radio talk show, and her own stubborn persistence, launch her out of her part-time job (as a children’s entertainer at the Bridles Steakhouse in Bryanston. There’s a costume involved) and into the newsroom of Jozi Talks. She’s on the traffic desk for now, but just knows that one day she’ll have her own talk show.
Trinity on Air takes place four years after the events of Trinity Rising, which means you don’t need to read the first book to know what’s going on — and there’s plenty of background information given, anyway. Trinity herself is much the same: a little older, but with the same charming ditziness and cheerful optimism. She needs this sunny outlook when it comes to dealing with the men in her life: Ethan, the Perfect Boyfriend; her irrepressible brothers; and the sudden reappearance of her ex, Farouk van der Linde.
Chick lit (delightfully politically correct for a genre of fiction that concerns itself with modern women’s issues in a light-hearted and humorous way and easily identified by the curvy typeface and arty graphic on the pastel-hued front cover) has been relatively absent on the South African book scene so far — and it seems as though Snyckers has found an exploitable gap in the market. Many who turn up their noses at ordinary chick lit may find themselves enjoying the Trinity books.
What makes them special is that they’re both the same as and completely different from the Western chick lit novels we are used to: the same because many of the central themes are universal (men, clothes, jobs, family, friends), but different in that it is so completely South African. Where else would you come across this statement, as Trinity despairs over her inability to secure gainful employment: “I can’t understand it. I’m black for God’s sake. And a woman. Shouldn’t I be CEO of a company by now?”
The book is full of such home-grown details — minibus taxis, interracial relationships and discussions of modern applications of lobola over dinner.
Snyckers’s writing is engaging, realistic and in parts so funny you will find yourself laughing out loud. But this is not to say the book is entirely froth without substance: issues such as racial stereotyping make an appearance too.
One minor criticism is that it’s practically unheard of for radio newbies to work during daylight hours, never mind a junior traffic reporter swanning into work at around 7.30 or 8am, as Trinity is fond of doing. But Snyckers makes up for this tiny factual deviation with her liberal sprinkling of pop culture references throughout the text: “… today I’m Wonder Woman. I’d talk to Rob Pattinson himself right now if he walked past.”
Get yourself a blanket, some hot chocolate and a sunny spot to curl up in and immerse yourself in Trinity’s world.