(Reviewer: Marcia Leveson, Vol. 69, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2014)
Ken Barris has written an extremely satisfying novel of life in the 1960s in Port Elizabeth. It is seen through the eyes of the three young Machabeus brothers, living a suburban life in a middle class, not all that religious, but very consciously Jewish family. In the present literary climate this novel is surprising because it is a straightforward story, telling of the inner workings of family with virtually no contact with politics or a wider world, not even with girls. There are no dark, hidden secrets, no interaction with black people, hardly even with servants; and the Gentile world out there is peripheral. And it is very easy to identify with the family dynamics and the trajectory of the protagonists.
Ken Barris writes like a poet, with an eye for detail and the apt and appealing phrase, and a style that is lucid and accessible. He conjures the scene, seemingly effortlessly, whether under water, bracing against the Port Elizabeth wind battering the ugly apartment buildings, or the boys’ childish pranks and awkward interactions with each other or at school, concealing the craft that goes into rendering daily happenings meaningful. Family conflicts, stretching down the generations, are played out against the backdrop of a very ordinary but instantly recognisable place and time.
In its seeming simplicity, this story nevertheless captures – as old photographs do – hidden or half-forgotten moments. If a deeper meaning is intended in the naming of the characters who belong to the family Machabeus – and making an ironic reference to the Maccabees – this is unnecessary to the enjoyment of a novel. It is true that Barris’s fictional family belong to a world which has almost completely disappeared – and perhaps that is indeed the historical connection.
Barris’s novel is therefore universal but also a very Jewish book, and an important contribution to our literature and to our understanding of Jewish life in a particular time and place. It can simultaneously be read as a timeless take on adolescence and more importantly, I think, it should be valued as a much needed evocation of a neglected corner of South African life.
Ken Barris, Life Under Water Kwela, 2012.
Dr Marcia Leveson, a long-serving member of the editorial board of Jewish Affairs, is a former Professor in the English Department and currently an Honorary Research Fellow at Wits University. She has written extensively in the area of South African fiction and edited a number of anthologies of fiction and poetry.
