Skinner's Drift

by Lisa Fugard

Ten years after leaving South Africa, Eva van Rensburg returns to her dying father, a violent stuttering man whose terrible secret Eva has kept since she was a child, and to Skinner's Drift, the family farm, a tough stretch of land on the Limpopo River where jackals and leopards still roam.

In this beautiful, brave, and extraordinarily moving first novel, Lisa Fugard paints a haunting portrait of a young woman coming to terms with her family's violent past as her homeland, South Africa, confronts its own bloody history. Fugard moves with extraordinary agility between intimate and revelatory domestic scenes and the fiercely challenging land, "like the ravaged hide of some ancient beast." This is a powerful story from a stunning new writer.

Genres: Fiction, Africa, South Africa, Contemporary, Womens, Book Club

320 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 2005

About the author

Lisa Fugard was born in South Africa and came to the United States in 1980. After working in the theater, performing in New York, London and South Africa, she turned her attention to writing. Her short fiction has been published in Story, Outside and literary magazines. Her many travel articles and essays have been published in the New York Times. Skinner’s Drift is her first novel. She now lives in Southern California where she is working on a second novel and leading writing workshops.

Reviews

[Saleh MoonWalker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Onvan : Skinner's Drift - Nevisande : Lisa Fugard - ISBN : 743272994 - ISBN13 : 9780743272995 - Dar 304 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2005

[Dianne Landry · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was so boring. Nothing about it made sense and the writing was terrible I got no feeling for South Africa and couldn't have cared less about any of the people in it.

[Marguerite Hargreaves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skinner's Drift is a look back at South Africa during apartheid by an expatriate who returns to the new South Africa to see her dying father. Eva grew up on a farm in the 20th century amid the Boer culture, though her mother was "English." The latter dynamic might explain her remove from the culture -- and the role of outsider is one of the novel's themes. But her father's violence and prominence in Eva's life also play a role in her voluntary exile. Lisa Fugard uses flashbacks and a journal to move back in time. She fits the politics and culture into the story neatly, in passing. The characters are nuanced, for the most part, though Martin and Katinka are somewhat shallow. Fugard doesn't help me understand their actions, their motives. But I guess an expatriate would and would have experienced a lot of bewilderment in South Africa. Fugard's story is engrossing, and I didn't mind the lack of a more definitive wrapup because I think it's consistent with the situation: No one knows exactly how the South Africa story is going to end. Fugard maintains the tension in the story, even though the reader knows the identity of the "perpetrator" in her novel early on. Her writing is clear and easy. She's lyrical about the land and wildlife. I'm not sure there's a definitive South African novel, though Fugard has some reading suggestions: In the Heart of the Country and The Smell of Apples and in non-fiction, Country of My Skull and My Traitor's Heart. Among black South African writers, the NYT recommends The Quiet Violence of Dreams, Dog Eat Dog, Ways of Dying and The Heart of Redness. Black women writers are harder to find, except in some anthologies I've seen. Anyone?

[Jennifer Kepesh]

This is a book I would never have known about if it weren’t for a book exchange some of my colleagues and I spontaneously pulled together in the last week of the last semester of the year. Lisa, who had actually nannied for the author, lent me her personally inscribed copy. This is a story most often told within the perspective of 27 year old woman who has reluctantly returned to South Africa ten years after she left, following the accidental death of her mother. Her family is white, though not Boer. They own a farm at the boundary of Botswana, from which guerrillas cross the Limpopo to fight apartheid. White farmers are increasingly on edge during a years-long drought, and as apartheid becomes increasingly untenable. Eva’s father, a seemingly fairly moderate farmer, practices benevolent racism, especially with his staff. In the summer of the accident that leads to her mother’s death, Eva, the apple of her father’s eye,goes with him as he illegally hunts through the night,, and convinces her father’s black overseer to find the slaughtered creatures. The narrative is heavy with the resonances between the drought-caused deaths of crops and animals, the culture of hunting, the silent threat of violence to the black people who make the towns and farms economically viable in their near-slavery conditions. Something has to break; many things break. It is this heavy, rotten, parched atmosphere that haunts me after I close the back cover, maybe especially as my own country seems set on a path of unbearable oppression.

[Vivian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve never understood the meanness of Afrikan bosses towards their workers. This book disturbed me. The story was of downright cruelty. Martin was a despicable person. It’s no wonder both Lorraine and Eva suffered emotionally. The book,though beautiful in its descriptions of the wildness of South Africa, was unsatisfying from a story standpoint. It felt unfinished with unresolved matters.

[Natasha Thomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

I regret buying this book

Poorly written, some parts were gripping but there was no character development, no reckoning, nothing. I feel... nothing. I wish I could get a refund but I suppose that’s the price one pays for ignoring the other 1 star reviews.

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a light-hearted book for sure! It kept my interest. I guess I am drawn to these books set in Africa, because I try to understand the “love-hate” relationship people who have grown up in Africa often allude to. Africa seems to drive people crazy in many different ways.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

odd

[Anita · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed learning about South Africa's landscape, animals and history, but the ending left too many questions for me.

[Ciahnan Darrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A textured, and rich novel the delves into the vapors of the past in an evocative and unsettling intervention in post apartheid South African literature.

[Matthew Turnbull · Rating 3 out of 5]

a little long winded but read like it was meant too, a diary and a suppressed childhood memory......

[Hanneke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. The descriptions and language used evoked memories of growing up in South Africa.

[Laura B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this years ago and remember it as a perfect book. I like the sparcity I remember of it. It is NOT a book about a whole country or political situation. It is a story about a family. Loved it.

[Lady · Rating 4 out of 5]

a very interesting story that you will struggle to put down. I found it on libby as an ebook and used pocketbooks to read it out loud just like an audiobook.

[Bookmarks Magazine]

Critics agree that Lisa Fugard knows how to paint a picture with prose. Her evocative language, put to good use as a travel writer for The New York Times, delivers a vibrant illustration of Skinner's Drift and Fugard's native South Africa. Beyond its descriptions, though, this ambitious first novel suffers from some uneven plotting and overly simplistic characterizations. Reviewers agree that the first two-thirds of the book contain "moments of true grace" (Christian Science Monitor). But the book peters out to an "imperfect resolution" (Chicago Tribune). While critics don't call the novel an unbridled success, they praise Fugard's talent (while connecting it to her father, South African playwright Athol Fugard) and admire her tackling of a tough, painful subject.

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

[Carl R. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Skinner’s Drift is Lisa Fugard’s debut novel, and I think it’s a bit of a fraud. There’s some good language, many interesting characters--so many that the book loses focus. However, the important flaw is the way Fugard treats the secret that lies at the heart of the story. She commits the unpardonable sin of hiding that secret with no motivation except that it serves her authorial purpose.
We spend many pages inside the minds of everyone who knows the secret. It’s something that has changed their lives, yet not for a moment of the hours we wander through their memories and feelings do they ever think about it. Why? Not because they wouldn’t, but because Fugard wants to save it till the end.
It’s a dishonest writing technique that irritates me enough to invalidate whatever else is good about the Skinner’s Drift, and even though the New York Times made it a notable book, there’s only one reason it will get on my notable list--as an example of what not to do.

[Karen Germain · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the top books that I have read this year. I bought it at a book fair and really had no idea what it was about. A woman recommended it and I bought it without even reading the back.

I grabbed me right away and I was captivated throughout the entire novel. Set in Africa, this book is not for the squeamish, as it has several very graphic descriptions of taxidermy, poaching and bush life in general. The book is sort of a mystery and it unfolded in a way that I didn't expect. It also has really interesting characters and has a very relatable drama at it's core. Another key element of the story is African politics/race relations both current and during the apartheid.

I cannot highly recommend this book enough

[Ruth Chatlien · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had not heard of Skinner's Drift by Lisa Fugard until a friend gave it to me. It's set in South Africa of the 1990s--after apartheid has ended and while the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is looking into old crimes. Eva, the main character, has been living in the United States since shortly after her mother died. Now she has come back to her homeland because her father, a farmer whose land bordered the Limpopo River, is dying. Once there, Eva has to face the past she fled from and its terrible secrets. The book held my attention even though I had to break halfway through to read something else for a deadline. By the way, Fugard is the daughter of the well-known playwright Athol Fugard.

[Leila Summers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a South African who read this book after taking part in a writer’s workshop with the author, Lisa Fugard. Set on the farm, Skinner’s Drift, the stirring family drama takes place during the strife-ridden 1980s in South Africa. From the rich language and absorbing plot to the complex characters and sensory imagery, this book had me engaged from beginning to end. I was also impressed by the effortless manner in which the author moved through different time frames and points of view. If you enjoy a well-crafted and thrilling story that unashamedly looks at the diverse aspects of human nature, then you will thoroughly enjoy this read.

[Patti · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found it difficult to put this book down, it held my interest from beginning to end. Set on the farm, Skinner’s Drift, the stirring family drama takes place during the strife-ridden 1980s in South Africa. From the rich language and absorbing plot to the complex characters and sensory imagery, this book had me engaged from beginning to end. I was also impressed by the effortless manner in which the author moved through different time frames and points of view. If you enjoy a well-crafted and thrilling story that unashamedly looks at the diverse aspects of human nature, then you will thoroughly enjoy this read.

[Tessa Stockton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eva van Rensburg returns to her homeland, and to the side of her dying father, only to find South Africa greatly changed from when she left ten years ago. At last she faces her demons and begins coming to terms with family and national politics, combing through harbored secrets both tragic and violent, alongside others with whom she grew up. Beautiful yet bloody, this guilt-ridden story extended tendrils that desperately sought for the existence of clemency.

At the finish, I couldn’t decide between wishing for a slightly different ending and thinking it was perfect. Regardless, I feel enriched having read this novel.

[David H. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a hard book to review, because I really liked the idea of a white South African going home to South Africa for the first time since apartheid and seeing some of the changes. Eva is a very human character, and her relationship with her parents is/was quite troubled. We get interesting perspectives from each of the main and side characters involved on the farm of Skinner's Drift. The landscape and the general illustration of life for both white and black people was fascinating, but the overarching theme and plot just left me feel wanting, enough that I'd find it hard to find a friend to recommend this to (my rule of thumb I defer to when I'm unsure about 2 or 3 stars).

[Karenbike Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written story of a family in the borderlands of South Africa during apartheid. Eloquent in description of the beauty and harshness of the land, the relationship of mother, father, daughter, and the viewpoints of the black people who "served" them. The animals, landscape, rivers all come to life.
The growing tension and nervousness of the farmers and the native people as walls go up and guns are stored all are metaphors for the walls people put around themselves to contain their secrets.

[Ronald Wilcox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lisa Fugard's first novel is set in her native country, South Africa, at a farm called Skinner's Drift. Eva returns after a ten year absence when she hears that her father is gravely ill. Reading through some of her dead mother's diaries from ten year's before, she reminisces about the way life was then and prepares to face the way life is in South Africa after apartheid has ended. Some beautiful writing in the book but truthfully felt the subject matter held so much more potential than is found in this novel. Was good but not absorbing as a storyline for me.

[Susan McBeth (Adventures by the Book) · Rating 4 out of 5]

So glad I happened upon Lisa's book and gave it a chance because, I hate to confess, I was not a fan of the book jacket or the title, but there is a reason that we don't judge books by their covers, and this is a case on point. Fugard's novel beautifully interweaves the story of a white farming family in South Africa with the black laborers who work the farm, while simultaneously conveying the injustice of apartheid racism that prevailed in those cruel times. I look forward to more of this talented writer's work.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skinner's Drift is fabulously plotted. I'm keenly interested in the subject matter: white farmers in South Africa in the revolutionary period leading up to Mandela's release and the period following. Fugard treats her material deftly and rather amazingly handles at least ten points of view, some white, and some black African. The novel is extremely disturbing, as it should be. I was somewhat dissatisfied with the ending, which is not at all cathartic. It feels as if the writer didn't know how to end a novel about whites in the new South Africa.

[Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book more than thought I would and didn't really "get it" until right at the end. This is the story of Eva, a white south african woman who left for America right before the end of apartheid. She goes back 10 years later, when her father is gravely ill. He was the reason she left and we never really find out the whole story as to why until the very end. This book was an interesting look at the relationships of black's and white's in this era of South Africa.

[Evelyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This story takes place in South Africa about a daughter who returns to SA to see her dying father. The chapters flip back and forth between the present (1997) and the past (early 1980s) and the tension of that earlier time period. The first novel for this author, I thought it was rather simply written. Worth the read if you want to learn more about South Africa and the changes occurring during the transition from apartheid.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a quick read and an interesting look into South Africa culture.

I stayed with it and was intrigued by how the story switched from present to past to weave its mystery. However, without giving anything away, I would say I was disappointed in the ending. While you got some answers it felt very unresolved and unfinished to me.

[Mari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Couldn't put this book down, it gripped me from the first page and I got emotionally involved in the story.beautifully written, Lisa Fugard describes the African bush in the most captivating way.She tells the story through The lenses of the different characters .... I felt their joy, their anger ,their love, their pain.