The Little Karoo

by Pauline Smith

Very nice book

Genres: Short Stories

190 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1925

Reviews

[Grady]

These stories, written by a Brit based on her experiences in turn-of-the-century rural South Africa, remind me of Southern Gothic American fiction, stories by such authors as Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner (and, in at least some of her stories, Eudora Welty), but predate O’Conner and Welty by a generation, and are not as subtle. Pauline Smith’s characters are often poor whites; they’re often described as ‘bitter’; the old men are patriarchal and harsh, and nobody communicates very well with one another, a recurring cause of suffering. Occasionally, a disruption in the environment or the social order - a drought, a new arrival in a rural community, a death in the family - offers a chance for improvement in a main character’s lot, but like as not, they don’t take it, out of a sense of self-sacrificing moral obligation, or simply lack of vision. The descriptions of the landscape are precise, though often bleak. The stories are not particularly racist, but are focused tightly on the family lives and relations of poor, rural white farmers and white landholders, and take black African characters entirely for granted. The stories read as an unsentimental record of largely disfunctional white society, but not a social critique.

[Salvatore]

How solid Smith's characters are, though is this due to the land, patriarchal society, and the Dutch church they subscribe to? Notable stories: 'The Pain', 'The Schoolmaster', and 'Desolation'. You can tell that these stories aren't the happiest, but apparently neither is the landscape.

[Elsa]

Brilliant.

[Paula]

Powerful short stories. Bleak, beautiful, human.