The Year the Gypsies Came

Emily is almost 13 and she is growing up in the apartheid South Africa of the 1960s, a privileged child of the white elite yet also the neglected child of two estranged parents who have little time for Emily or her older sister, 15-year-old Sarah. Any parenting that Emily gets comes from Lettie the black nanny and Buza the Zulu night watchman who tells her stories and who has the capacity to really listen to her and tune in to her unhappiness. Emily, who longs for her narcissistic mother’s attention but is also the witness to her mother’s infidelity, has much to be unhappy about.

Emily’s parents perform well together for an audience and invite visitors to their troubled residence as a diversion from their problems. So it is that an Australian family living in a camper van, is warmly welcomed into their midst, including their two boys, 13-year-old Streak and slow and lumbering 16-year-old Otis who is to become devoted to the beautiful Sarah.

Narrated in the first person, the focus of this debut novel based in part on the author’s childhood experiences of South Africa, is on the internal life of her heroine Emily, an acute observer of those around her and chronicler of unfolding events that are to lead to tragedy. Glass has a fresh and confident tone and conveys exceptionally well the perspective and troubled feelings of this child caught up in powerful events that the white grown-ups deny or do not see – her mother’s ongoing affair, the way that Otis’s father beats him and, all around their suburban enclave, the violence and cruelty of apartheid.

There are moments when the novel falters. Lettie and Buza come over as archetypes rather than characters and there is a stereotypical description of gypsies at the beginning of the novel. It is also unconvincing that Emily’s mother should suddenly become insightful as a result of tragedy. But in the grand scheme of Glass’s achievement these are minor matters – she is a startling new talent.