Adult Reading Group - February

The adult reading group will meet on February 7th at 6 pm to discuss "Frankie and Stankie" by Barbara Trapido. All welcome, and refreshments are provided!

In "Frankie and Stankie" Barbara Trapido returns to her South African roots
with a highly autobiographical novel which tackles one of the most divisive
political issues of the twentieth century as she tells the story of Dinah
growing up in 1950s South Africa. Using simple straightforward language, Trapido
wields humour to great effect in exposing the lethal combination of prejudice
and ignorance.Dinah’s father, a maths lecturer, shouts loudly at the daily
championing of apartheid on the radio. Her mother, a quieter dissenter, makes
friends with Francis-the-Gardener, an Indian who helps her create a gorgeously
exotic front yard. Since racism is not a part of the de Bondt household, Dinah
is mystified when she is asked at school if she would ‘rather have a native girl
or a koelie to make her sandwiches.’ (page 30). She has never heard a black
women referred to as a ‘native girl’ and has no idea what a ‘koelie’ is. The
novel follows Dinah through the increasingly dark days of the National Party’s
rule, to her marriage to a one-time political activist and the couple’s arrival
in 60s Britain. As Dinah grows from a thin asthmatic little girl into a bright
stylish university student, she makes a succession of increasingly colourful
best friends: Angela chooses the non-academic domestic science route and is
displaced by a wilder friend; Catherine, the daughter of a rabidly anti-Catholic
mother, eventually converts to Catholicism; and Maud is the daughter of a
coalminer’s wife and her racehorse-owning lover. Shortly after Dinah arrives at
university in Durban she begins a three-year affair with the urbane but slippery
Didi which finally ends when she realises that he has betrayed her. Her
friendship with Sam leads to marriage and then to London, as Sam flees the
persistent attentions of Special Branch.