Etienne van Heerden

The Magistrate comes to the farm in a remote area of South Africa to investigate the death of a young boy that fell into a drilling hole. As he investigates and learns about the past and current generations of farmers, from the farms founder to the current inhabitants of the land, both in the core family and the illegitimate or scorned family branches, he paints a picture of life in rural South Africa at the time and how parental expectations and individual characters clashed and resulted in a complex environment full of resentment, racial and social separations.
I liked the way the past generations were present in the story by way of their spirits. Each of them in turn was present at the site of the young boy's death and in showing up, lets us in on some of his history. As we learn what happened that day, the event is put into the context of the family history.… (more)

This book started out as a straightforward tale. Ingi Friedlander wanted to make a name for herself in the art world. She was a fairly new curator at the National Gallery in Cape Town. Word had come in of a spectacular new sculpture, The Staggering Merman, to be found in the farthest reaches of the Karoo region in the yard of one Jonty Jack, a sculptor. Found, that is, as Jonty insisted he had nothing to do with its creation, insisted that it just appeared there one day fully formed.

Ingi was determined to acquire this work for the gallery and persuaded the senior people of its merit, sight unseen."Museums almost always bought works on hearsay, desperate to capture the new spirit of now, desperate to remain relevant in the context of merciless cuts in government culture budgets". When she arrived in Yearsonend though, trailer firmly attached to Peugeot in full blown anticipation of attaining her goal, Jonty turned her offer down flat, not even allowing her a glimpse of the merman. Determined not to return to Cape Town without the sculpture, Ingi decided to stay in Yearsonend until she could persuade Jonty to change his mind.

This is where the novel veers away from narration and into a world of magic realism. Bit by bit Ingi learns what makes Yearsonenders tick, staying first in the Stonecutter's Cottage, then in the Drostdy with its turrets, gables and secrets. Bit by bit she becomes attuned to the spirit world of the town, a town where the dead continue their lives unseen beside the living townspeople. Unseen, but not unnoticed. These spirits are some of the strongest characters in the novel.

Van Heerden has created a tandem universe of townspeople going about their daily lives and vivid ghosts still going about theirs, still shaping and guiding the town, still splitting the town along the old family loyalty lines in the never ending search for the gold of the doomed President Kruger, the gold brought to Yearsonend in 1901 and hidden. The only person untouched by all this is the other outsider, Mario Salviati the stonecutter. Mario had arrived in the town with a convoy of Italian prisoners of war in 1940, prisoners sent to work the hinterlands. Mario was deaf and dumb then; by the time Ingi met him he was blind as well.

Fact, speculation, myth: lust, love, longing... Ingi patiently worked through the layers as the townspeople, left with nothing but the past, became more and more possessed by the thought of the lost gold and the search for its hiding place. For them, there was no other future. Despite what she managed to learn "...Ingi knew she couldn't intervene; that events took their course and that stories completed themselves in their own time. Life went on its tragic way; irrevocably, forcefully, as water flows along a channel. You couldn't stop it."

My only difficulty with this book was that the ending fell somewhat flat. Seeing that was almost a month ago, I have had time to reconsider and realize that it made complete sense. I suspect I just wanted to stay in other worlds a bit longer.… (more)

Several months ago, I was perusing the new books section of Barnes and Nobles, and this book stood out to me. It’s a little larger than a regular trade paperback, and has a bright yellow and orange spine, with bold, black, gothic script writing. The back sounded interesting, and the reviewers compared it favorably with 100 Years of Solitude, one of my favorite books. So, I decided to pick it up. I’d never heard of the author before.

Etienne van Heerden is Afrikaans; thus, this book is set in South Africa in a time just after the Apartheid. The reviews are correct in that this book is told in the tradition of 100 Years of Solitude. In the same way that 100 Years of Solitude is both a story about a town and a family, so is The Long Silence of Mario Salviati. The town is called Yearsonend, and the book tells the story of this town as it is framed by its two most notorious families, the Bergs and the Pistoriuses. Also like 100 Years of Solitude, there is an element of the fantastic to some of the stories of the town. For instance, it is said that Big Karl Berg, one of the main players in the book, was born with a small gold nugget clutched in his hand.

The book is somewhat through the eyes of Ingi Friedlander, an outsider from the Cape Town National Gallery who first comes to Yearsonend to buy a statue supposedly carved by Jonty Jack Berg. However, Ingi soon loses sight of the reason that she has come to Yearsonend, and instead begins to piece together the history of the town as it is told by its inhabitants. The Long Silence of Mario Salviati tells the story of Yearsonend through three familial generations, starting around the turn of the century. The main portions of the book tell of Big Karl Berg’s efforts to bring water to Yearsonend (Lighting Water) and the search for the mythical Kruger gold and the black ox wagon. But, alongside of the main story, Van Heerden touches upon other more realistic themes, such as the racial issues present in South Africa before the Grand Apartheid, and the role that art and music play within a community.

This book is not another 100 Years of Solitude. It lacks Garcia Marquez’ lyrical writing, and the parts of the story that center around Ingi Friedlander take away from the stories of the past which is where the real interest of this novel is. That being said, it’s a good read and I recommend it.
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