THERE are several novels some good, others weak lurking inside South African Andre Brink's complex, narratively ambitious and uneven new work, Imaginings of Sand (Seeker & Warburg, £15.99 in UK). Drawn by the approaching death of Ouma, her fantastical grandmother, Kristien Muller returns to South Africa, the homeland she has rejected. Her opening observations suggest that she is a tough, independent, abrasive woman - or at least that this is the image she wishes to project to all who cross her path, especially marauding men, of whom she meets more than her share. Having absented herself in London for 11 years, Kristien at 33 is coming back to a country facing historic change.
In common with his compatriot Nadine Gordimer, Brink is a writer whose work has always been marked more by the importance of what he has to say than by lyricism or refinements of style. His is a deliberate craft, not an art. Yet for a novelist who has repeatedly been classified as a worthy commentator, he has always forced his talents and his fiction to its limits. No one could accuse him of writing the same book twice. Since his semi-auto-biographical debut, The Ambassador, first published in Afrikaans in 1963, and on through novels such as Looking on Darkness (1974), the Booker-shortlisted An Instant in The Wind (1976), and Rumours of Rain (1978), A Dry White Season (1978), A Chain of Voices (1982), States of Emergency (1988), An Act of Terror (1991) and the disappointing On the Contrary (1993), he has explored history, myth, politics, the past and the present always with integrity, and often with more invention and far more stylistic risk-taking than be is credited with.
In this new novel he sets out deliberately to walk the tightrope between the urgency of a narrator desperate both to confront and avoid the realities of her own life, and the chaotic atmosphere of a fearful a society on the edge of change. Brink makes a brave attempt to enter his female narrator's mind. She is a tense, egocentric, uncertain individual at war with herself, her past mistakes and most other people. By making it difficult for the reader to like her, Brink creates problems for himself yet ultimately survives the risks. But be warned, this book is not an easy journey.
So intent is the author on portraying the, for him, forbidden inner world of a woman, that many of the early exchanges between Kristien and her elder sister Anna are often embarrassingly stilted. But this is true to the nature of their almost non-existent relationship. Still, the reader does, have to battle on; liking Kristien is not easy. In contrast to her edgy personal narrative is the drama and flamboyance of her dying grandmother.
Now in her 103rd year, the ancient lady has, by outliving everyone, begun at last to outlive herself. It is not illness that has finally brought her to her deathbed. It may seem unlikely territory for Brink, but much of this novel is filtered through a magic-realist portrayal of family histories, all featuring bizarre females. Ouma is a figure straight out of an Isabel Allende novel; her life force consists of an indomitable sexuality. It could be argued that Brink's main failure in trying to create a novel sustained by suffering but heroic women is that it is almost entirely rooted in rampaging sexuality and multiple births. The sheer extravagance of Ouma's exhausting yarns, as they stretch and bend logic and force history into strange twists and turns, repeatedly tests both the reader and the author. There are serious stylistic lapses; there is the question of whether the old lady is telling her stories or Kristien is paraphrasing either way, there are serious inconsistencies of tone. Regardless of the charm of the magical death-bed confessions, which initially serve as a welcome sanctuary from Kristien's harsh narrative, the family histories quickly become tedious and it is a relief to return to Kristien's black and white world.
When she moves away from herself and attempts to recall her own family story and her deeper sense of South Africa, Kristien becomes both reliable and even likable. Visiting the family graves, she considers the parents she was never close to: "This is the first time I have seen their graves, twin-bed style, in keeping with the mores of their generation. It is unnerving to see their lives reduced to these spare facts; perhaps that is why I find it so hard to relate to them... I stare and stare, urgently wishing I could feel something, perhaps even break down and cry; but I can't. I remain unmoved. They lived, they died; they never really were part of my life, or I, I think, of theirs."
It is interesting that while the reality of her own life in South Africa has never been real to her, her grandmother's surrealistic existence is. While she shares in her grandmother's blackly comic preparations for death which include fetching an old coffin kept in the attic, and listens to the rambling, fantastical tales of long-haired, otherworldly girls and tough women, Kristien also discovers the tragic world of her sister's unhappy marriage to a violent man.
This long often ponderous, ultimately human novel ends strongly. At several points Kristien has referred to being a big girl now"; it is an irritating refrain, yet by the end she has reached an impressive level of self-understanding. "I have chosen this place, not because I was born here and feel destined to remain; but because I went away and then came back and now am here by choice."
Brink's unlikely balancing act between reality and magic realism has many flaws. The final pages, with their account of domestic, slaughter, have an unnerving sense of the Biblical. As a political metaphor these scenes are overpowering - as is much of the narrative - but the humanity and honesty of this strange, brave book about an odd family and an even odder society succeeds because of, rather than in spite of, its shortcomings. Recommended.
