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Summary
Summary
First published in 1925, Pauline Smith's beautiful collection of stories set in the South Africa of her childhood is a lyrical and moving look at growing up in a remote landscape. Smith captures life in the heart of the Little Karoo, a mostly uninhabited terrain, where rain may not fall for years at a time. Poor, white early-Afrikaner settlers beset by hard times and an unforgiving landscape, the characters in her stories overcome tragedy time and time again, refusing to be broken.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
With the simplicity of folk tales, the powerful lilt of ballads, the sharpness of woodcuts, these poignant short stories pierce the psychological armor of the Boers who make up South Africa's dominant minority. First published in 1925, the stories still ring true in their empathetic yet clear-eyed portrayal of a stern, obstinate tribe of white settlers at war with an unforgiving God. In ``The Miller,'' a tubercular farmer whose sadistic torments have turned his wife into ``a nervous hen'' dies in her arms, forgiven by his tearful mate. In ``The Sisters,'' a Boer's love of his land drives him to sellliterally? yup his daughter, who endures her fate stoiccally. Women in these 10 tales submit to husbands' or fathers' iron wills. ``Ludovitje,'' the only story that touches directly on race relations, unites a dying boy and his ``Kaffir'' servant in a sort of evangelical mysticism. Smith, an English-born writer who grew up in the Little Karoo--the vast red plain of old Cape Colony--captures her neighbors in strongly cadenced prose. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Smith's collection of short stories (first pub~lished in 1925) is set in the still, hot, parched Karoo, an area of near-empty veld inhabited by isolated Afrikaner farmers close to the Old Testament and far from town and change. Whereas Olive Schreiner's Story of an African Farm (1883) is anti-pastoral, focused on a liberated girl who rebelled against the constraints, stasis, and cruelty of the isolated farm, Smith's elemental stories are about the poor white Afrikaners on those farms, struggling innocents for whom the Bible is law and family and work the only bonds in the huge desolation. When a stranger asks for shelter, it's the will of God--even when he brings betrayal. Two stories, "The Pain" and "The Schoolmaster," are masterpieces, heartbreaking in their simple humanity. Novelist Caroline Slaughter says in her introduction that these sad, wise stories reveal the psychology and strength of the old Boers, and she asks "if these qualities could only be extended beyond clan and color, what could not be achieved in the country that produced them?" (Of related interest: see First and Scott's biography of Olive Schreiner on p.134.) --Hazel Rochman