Nature Lessons: A Novel

By Lynette Brasfield

Book Overview

A first-rate, beautifully-written novel about an ?migr? living in the States who goes back to her native South Africa to look for her missing mother--a fictional debut that will be a draw both to critics and to readers of fine, accessible fiction Set against a backdrop of South Africa's troubled history, natural beauty, and complex contemporary society, Nature Lessons is a riveting story of a forty-year-old woman, Kate Jensen, struggling to come to terms with the legacy of growing up with a mentally ill mother--including an inability to form long-term, committed relationships--and the guilt she feels as a white person who grew up during the apartheid era. As the story opens, Kate, an advertising copywriter, has just broken up with her third fianc?.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031231034X
• ISBN13: 9780312310349
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.0" x 5.9"

Customer Reviews

A Must Read! Paranoia, Reality and Delusion

After the opening chapters, I could not put this book down.Part mystery, part political thriller, part travelogue, it is fascinating in its description of South African society during and after apartheid. In human terms, it explores the strain in family and social relationships that may arise from paranoia rooted either in mental illness or an oppressive political regime. After 20 years in the United States, a woman returns home to search for her mother and the "truths" of their family history--and comes to understand how the past continues to damage the present. If you liked the movie "A Beautiful Mind" or the books "This Much I Know To Be True" and "Rescuing Patty Hearst," then make sure not to miss this one. Lynette Brasfield is in a league with Wally Lamb in showing how psychotic delusions often reflect the surrounding cultural reality, how the two may be confused, and how what is "real" and what is "paranoid" also may depend on a person's racial or class perspective. What makes the novel exceptional is its cross-cultural perspective: the very fact that it is set in South Africa allows sufficient distance for American readers to perhaps understand and accept more easily the painful roots of paranoia that exist in our own society. Keep Nature Lessons in mind the next time you pass a homeless person holding a sign that protests FBI and CIA surveillance, or read about African American complaints about police stops based on racial profiles. Remember it also in recalling your own family's oral history, especially any vague stories about "eccentric" relatives or upheavals followed by social withdrawal. Nature Lessons ultimately is about all of us. No one is immune.

Insane Politics=Personal Insanity

Reads like a novel/mystery/memoir. Ms. Brasfield is a storyteller of the first rank. Poignant, with a sense of place and description that joins the reader with the main character. You are taken to Durban, So Africa, wading through the truth, lies and confusion of the country and the mind of a mother who is mentally ill, or is she? Couldn't put it down.

An exciting story about a young girl and her mother

I was hooked on this from the first page. I couldn't stop reading. Lynette Brasfield took me from middle America and dropped me in South Africa of the 1960's and carefully brought me forward telling a wonderful story about a little girl and her mother using South Africa as a backdrop. I got a history lesson within a novel that examined the lives to a mother and daughter trapped in a crazy world. Brasfield kept me guessing every chapter and in the end I was satisfied that all the pieces of these shattered lives had been put back together so I could understand. I loved reading this book. Exquisite writing and delicate handling of the characters and their environment.

Poignant and Compelling

Whether you are looking for a book to curl up with on a cozy afternoon or to understand more as to how a country in turmoil can mimic the delusional perceptions of a person with mental illness, this book will make you want more from this extraordinary new author.Brasfield explores relationships and morals as her character comes of age with a backdrop of maternal schizophrenia and a country suffering through the apartheid era.It's the book for anyone who wants to understand more about the impact of maternal mental illness on a child or the inhumanity of apartheid on its victim. It's also the book for anyone who just wants a poignant and compelling read.

Astonishing first novel

The first thing that struck me about this book is how real it is. The central character Kate takes on a journey, not just back to South Africa to find her mother but also back to her childhood to discover who she was and is now. Unravelling the twisted world of delusion and paranoia, she remains uncertain of many truths but comes to see herself more clearly. "What you see depends on who you are," says a character, and this novel is about that. The conflicting and colliding perceptions of the characters in the novel are so skilfully delineated the reader is drawn inexorably along with Kate on her discoveries. Her prickly exterior, her choices to flee rather than fight and her vulnerability make her a fascinating person the reader comes to care for.The novel is written in a spare and uncluttered style that is a triumph of controlled writing. Woven into the texture of the novel is humour and intelligence, sadness and the small everyday joys of being alive. Setting the novel essentially in an apartheid South Africa, the novelist has avoided the trap of strident politicism and managed to convey very clearly the way in which the whole country was in conflict within itself as the perceptions of the black and white protagonists of the time collided. The paranoia of the mother figure reflects something of the paranoia of a society which was aware of hidden activities below an apparently calm surface, deeds done and never admitted or discussed openly.This story absorbs and fascinates from the beginning. It is an astonishing first novel.