Skinner's Drift | 
 enlarge | Manufacturer: Scribner
Category: EBooks
List Price: $11.99
Buy New: $9.59
You Save: $2.40 (20%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 18921
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
ASIN: B000FCKRY2
Publication Date: March 6, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
"Ten years after leaving South Africa, the country of her birth and the place where her mother died, Eva van Rensburg returns to her dying father, a violent man whose terrible secret Eva has kept since she was a child. In this beautiful first novel, Lisa Fugard paints a haunting portrait of a family careering toward disaster. She vividly describes the isolation of Eva's rebellious and lonely English mother; the desperation of her Afrikaner father as drought destroys his farm; the conflicts among the black farmworkers as the younger generation questions the loyalty and subservience of their elders; and the dangerous silence of a young girl who witnesses too much. Like Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee, Fugard has written a profoundly moving family drama, subtly set against the backdrop of a country in turmoil. She moves with extraordinary agility between intimate and revelatory domestic scenes and the fiercely challenging land. This is a powerful story from a stunning new writer. "
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
an authentic vivid picture of south africa August 23, 2007
i cannot praise this book highly enough for the wonderful and powerful picture of south africa it draws. she manages to capture the essence of life on a south african farm, the people in the rural community, both farmers and labourers, the land itself, master servant relations, the apartheid era, the truth and reconciliation era, the experience of being an expat and returning to africa, drought, young boys on military service, and on and on. some of the scenes she creates are so very true to life, they hit me in the gut. the servants being forgotten by the roadside the day of funeral and waiting for hours in the sun, still expecting and hoping to be picked up by one of the baas's friends, driving around farm roads at night looking for animals, the careless gun accident, the freedom fighter hiding in the donga and being taken food by a fearful young black woman, fugard gets it all right somehow. if you want to experience south africa in all its beauty and strength and tragedy and pain, this is a great book to read.
 Very disappointing July 14, 2006
5 out of 17 found this review helpful
This book is very disappointing. The writing is not particularly good, only some of the characters are credible and the plot is weak. The ending is terribly disappointing - it just seemed to stop when she ran out of ideas. Don't bother. There are much better books to read.
 A tale for all of us June 15, 2006
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
I have spent much time in Africa, some of it on the banks of the Limpopo where much of this story takes place. Others have summarized the plot. I urge people to read this book for its insight into Africa, its poignant study of apartheid from both sides of skin color but also from the myriad sides of the emotions and feelings of those who were there. It is also a book about regret, mistakes, going home and not wanting to and about the way we all move towards dust. The treatment of love, physical, emotional, love of people, horses, dogs, animals and place are brilliantly rendered. I could smell the bush of Africa in these pages and feel the way in which the characters read each others emotions, not through the words spoken, but through faces, bodies and movement. A tour de force - well done Lisa.
An intriguing debut novel about the struggles of identity and finding a sense of home March 9, 2006
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
In Lisa Fugard's debut novel, SKINNER'S DRIFT, a prodigal daughter returns to her father's farm in Africa for the first time in ten years. Eva van Rensburg fled not only the farm, but her country and her relationship with her father after her mother was accidentally shot and killed. For Eva, South Africa is a place of contradictions, and she must confront them and her relationship to her family and her history as her father's health fails and she is called home.
Skinner's Drift is Martin van Rensburg's farm along the Limpopo River, which forms the border with Botswana. The Afrikaner van Rensburg settles his English wife and their daughter there and begins to carve a life in the dusty hills. Eva feels isolated by her mother's Englishness and later by her father's intensity and violence. Martin is a man fiercely proud of his heritage and his land, humbled only by the stutter that slows his tongue. His wife Lorraine loves the farm at first but comes to resent its hold on her husband and the harsh conditions of life there. Eva and her father share a special bond until one night a hunt turns disastrous. She spends the rest of her time on Skinner's Drift trying to atone for her father's crime and eventually, when her mother dies, leaving her father, the farm, and South Africa for America.
When Eva returns, at her aunt's request, she believes she is coming home to bury her father. The political and social changes that had begun before she left have transformed South Africa into a place unfamiliar to her in some ways. It is 1997 and apartheid is over, but the damage on the culture and people remains. Still, the landscape and many of the faces welcome Eva home. When she finally visits Skinner's Drift she finds Lefu, an African farmhand employed by her father, still working the land and the bond she shares with him is still strong. However, he has learned of the secret she has been keeping all these years about what happened that night while hunting with her father, and he has shared it with his grandson Mpho.
Can Eva come to terms with her past, with her identity, and with the realities of her homeland? Can she forgive her father and herself? Will she begin to understand the depths of her mother's loneliness? Fugard's lovely novel centers on these questions. Although her literary devices are expected (flashbacks, diary entries, family secrets), they don't feel stale or contrived. Fugard's style is fresh and readable, and her characters are frustratingly real. The isolation and tension as well as the natural beauty of Skinner's Drift come alive with the author's descriptions.
Eva is not always an easy character to like. Her sadness and pain are obstacles, and she comes across as smug or uncaring at times. But this is in keeping with Fugard's realism, a realism not untouched by poetry and a romantic streak. By far the most notable characters are Lefu and his family, his daughter Nkele, and her son Mpho. They are an interesting parallel and contrast to the van Rensburgs.
SKINNER'S DRIFT is dramatic and immensely readable. While not wholly original in content, Fugard's style saves the book from being ordinary. Eva's shame and her confusion about home and identity are wonderfully set against the fraught background of South Africa in the 1980s. Fugard nicely captures the tensions of her very real setting as well as those inside her fictional characters.
--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
Great read March 6, 2006
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
I enjoyed this book from the first page - terrific writing, character descriptions and totally engrossing. I especially liked the way the author went back and forth in time and gave the reading reflections from the narrator.
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