Cracks (novel)

Plot introduction

The novel opens with twelve middle-aged women meeting at a South African boarding school where they were once pupils. Their reunion stirs memories of a long hot summer in the 1960s when they were the elite members of the school swimming team, managed by the forceful, charismatic Miss G. But the women share a secret concerning the fate of the missing 13th member of the swimming team: Fiamma, the enigmatic daughter of an Italian aristocrat and with whom Miss G becomes obsessed, leading to sexual jealousy and suspicion among the rest of the team, with tragic results.

Inspiration

As revealed in the authors website, the violent death of her sister thirty years ago in apartheid South Africa caused her to explore in her fiction the theme of "violence within intimate relationships, in particular, the abuse of power and privilege".

One of the swimming team members in the book is named Sheila Kohler and is a writer. When asked whether this was herself she replied that "Although I use a character called Sheila Kohler, I don't think Cracks is any more autobiographical than my other books. It is simply a device to make the reader believe that what one's writing is all true - to blur the lines between fiction and nonfiction." and she goes on to explain about the books setting, "The education we received in a girl's boarding school in the middle of the veld, was much like the one I describe in Cracks. We read nineteenth century literature exclusively, and our history lessons stopped before the first world war, which was considered too recent to be taught. Much of our time was devoted to doing sport to combat sexual urges, I presume, or anyway to teach us team spirit. Also, we were always going to chapel, learning to turn the other cheek. Consequently, life, when I was obliged to face it, came to me as an amazing revelation - and not always one with which I knew how to cope."

Reception