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Tracey Farren on her second novel, Snake.

Review and interview by Beth Shirley

Tracey Farren’s second literary offering, Snake (Modjaji Books), is something she refers to as ‘‘strange’’. The book is a kaleidoscope of the weird and wonderful – traumatised children, psychopaths, murder, broken parents, missing police-officers, fanatical nuns, friendly snakes, a rooster called Mugabe, a beautiful flute, a fat German lady, a ruthless tabloid journalist, sordid love-making and a sometimes intolerable level of suspense.

After reading this equally disturbing and redemptive book, you will feel pushed off centre, but drawn to your deepest self again.

Snake centres on its young protagonist Stella, whose family is changed forever after Jerry, a charming sleazeball, arrives on the farm where they live. Stella initially sees him as a saviour for seemingly piecing her broken family together. But as he becomes more dangerous, Stella discovers heartbreaking facts about him. The horrendous events that ensue are told through her eyes to a tabloid journalist after a sensational scoop. The chronicle told to the ‘‘Truth Lady’’ is indicative of Stella’s deep anxiety and desperate need to ‘‘tell the true story’’ because Stella has witnessed much more than the others and her life has almost been destroyed by lies.

The contrast between Stella’s innocence and the Truth Lady’s calloused thinking asks the reader to steer their own line between the truths. The Truth Lady’s intentions seemed honourable to Stella.

But, as the author says, “a tabloid saga seemed like the perfect, amplified place to investigate the shadow aspect of human nature. I created the kind of scenario that shouts at us from tabloid posters and sent an earnest little girl into the middle of it.

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‘‘Stella was perfectly qualified. She is immensely loving and naturally wise. Her first inclination is to look for the light. She wades through the madness, vigilant for signs of grace.”

Even though the truth is ultimately skewered, Stella is not defeated. “As a coloured child in a poor family, Stella arrives (to the reader) without power. She is a lonely child, patronised by weak, whimsical landlords; (is) entirely at the mercy of her parents’ inept attempts to make their marriage work. To make matters worse, she becomes trapped in a pact that forces her into silence. Yet this helpless child seizes the story. She is gutsy and loving in the midst of trauma; relentless in her search for the truth,” Farren says.

More than a murder mystery and the subsequent attempts to frame a meaningful narrative, Snake is about the tragic optimism, yet creative resilience of the underdog; in this case, it is Stella – the everychild. She embodies all our childhood selves, holding intense despair and longing. We are, as JM Coetzee said, children without end, and so, Stella’s terror at her family’s dissolution and her utter resilience in the face of great trauma, is our own experience.

“Stella’s greatest fear is the break-up of her family. I remember scratching the names of my own family members into tree branches and school desks, binding us in lists… I suppose my own forgotten memories must have risen to the surface and melded with Stella’s.”

Moreover, Stella’s story holds a mirror up to this post-apartheid era, where alcoholism and violence remain wretched realities. The political truth is expressed through the child’s deep insecurity about her home – where her family might live and if they move, how they will eat. They pin their hopes on a small government grant for previously disadvantaged farmers, but their dream is tenuous. It relies on the ‘‘willing-seller’’ principle. “So yes, the realities of religious hegemony, racial inequality, inadequate land redistribution are readable in the minutiae of Stella’s life. She even forsakes her own language to tell the story in English, a language she associates with authority.”

But instead of feeling hopeless for Stella, and sometimes having the urge to become disassociated from her pain, we walk alongside her as she takes us into “disturbing places… into the heart of reality. But we end the book with our eyes open, changed by empathy,” the author says.

Regardless of Stella’s trauma, inherited, too, from her mother and father and those before them, she delights the reader with her imaginative twists of language, what Farren notes as Stella’s strange rhythm and her invented metaphors: Amy Winehouse’s hair is likened to a koeksister; and ankles are pronounced unkles. She is a curious, passionate child who adores Rihanna and Winehouse and other pop stars. They provide a soundtrack to her sparse, dust-filled life and bring a richness that she doesn’t find at all ironic. “This excitement, I think, expresses the miraculous resilience of children.”

One of the enduring images left with the reader is of Stella high up in her tree, making music from the colourful glass bottles she has hung from the branches. She continuously creates something beautiful.

Farren published several short stories in SA collections before writing her first novel, Whiplash. These include stories in the South African Short Story Review, Urban One, Urban Two, Nobody Ever Said Aids, Women Flashing and Writing the Self. Whiplash was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction prize in 2008 and won a White Ribbon award from Women Demand Dignity for its activism against women and child abuse.