2019
The Dream House Novel by Craig Higginson
This is a novel of past secrets, and how those secrets worm their way into
everyday life. About the hold that the past have on us, of how our lives can be
twisted and torn and stretched beyond what we think we can bear. And yet we
do.
1. PLOT SUMMARY
It is set on a farm in KwaZulu-Natal where an elderly couple are spending their
last night in their farmhouse. Developers have already bulldozed the dairy and
the pastures and destroyed the farm roads with heavy machinery.
The narration rotates through the consciousness of five characters, all in the
third-person, authorial voice.
These five are the old whiteys, Patricia and Richard; their faithful chauffeur and
man-of-all-work, Bheki; domestic worker-cum-carer Beauty; and Looksmart –
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,born on the farm and specially favoured by Patricia, who has seen to it that he
went to a proper school – who returns after a long absence.
- Patricia - old and embittered, she is central to the farm and the novel.
Similarly disintegrating, she is only now, at this last minute, beginning to realise
how blind and inadequate she has been for decades. These two miserable old
people, pickled in impunity and ignorance, unaware that they are specimens of a
past era
- Looksmart - cut through with resentment, from the moment he arrives the
narrative takes on a tightness that makes it hard to breathe.
“He lowers his window and inhales the smell of wet earth and rot... It is
still a dream, a world without colour or sharp edges, where everything
fades into everything else – and were you to blow at it, it might
disappear... He told himself that he would be coming here out of hate.
Or, more accurately, out of nostalgia for a time when he could hate
properly.” He could turn away, he tells himself, it isn’t too late. But it is,
and he’s pulled further and deeper in.
There’s a story behind Looksmart’s aggressive posing and the deep seam of
bitterness in him.
- Richard - hard and unyielding, even in the grip of dementia, Richard is aged,
weak, unhinged, not always sure where he is, nor indeed whether he is still alive
or in some unrecognisable afterlife. But he’s still the colonial master, as yet
unchallenged, in spite of the terrible things he has done. Now and then his mind
clears and he reverts to form. Richard’s thoughts are predictably muddled, given
that he is suffering from dementia, yet rendered with a sensitivity that is a
hallmark of Higginson’s writing.
- Beauty - following the rhythms of her life almost unthinkingly, blinded by her
station in life. Beauty is a poignant character carrying a poignant name – for she
feels anything but beautiful in a world that has discarded her in so many ways.
It is the eve of moving day on Dwaleni Farm in the Natal Midlands. The old farm
buildings are being razed to make way for a smart new housing development.
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, The land is in a state of transition and, as the last of its old inhabitants prepare
to leave, they take stock of what has been and mourn what never was.
Patricia, the erstwhile owner of Dwaleni, dreams of spending her final days
staring at the sea from the window of her childhood home in Durban, but she
soon discovers that the past cannot be left behind so easily. She and her long-
time servant, Beauty, are packing the last of their belongings, sorting through a
lifetime of memories and trying to decide what should be discarded. Patricia’s
husband, Richard, is in the advanced stages of dementia and is roaming the
surrounding farmlands, desperately searching for something that isn’t there.
As Patricia trawls through the relics of her past, an unexpected visitor slips in
through the back door. Patricia is about to be confronted with the crimes and
wounds of the past in the form of a boy she once loved as the child she never
had. His name is
Looksmart and his journey to Dwaleni has been fuelled by a deep- seated rage
and the desire to confront Patricia. Years before, she had loved and raised him
as her own, but he left the farm under a cloud of hatred and he is about to tell
Patricia why. Looksmart’s revelations threaten to destroy the foundations of
Patricia’s life at Dwaleni, but is there any truth to his words?
Although Bheki and Beauty are less well developed as characters than the two
old horrors, Higginson has at least given us a realistically multiracial set of
characters, whereas some current novelists write as though other races do not
exist in South Africa.
2. THE SETTING OF THE NOVEL
The setting is a mist-shrouded valley in KwaZulu-Natal where a woman, Patricia,
waits out her last night on Dwaleni Farm, where she has spent her married life.
It has been sold to a property developer, who will create a housing estate on the
land. The future is rushing in, and Patricia can’t wait to leave, but the farmhouse
and her memories haunt her.
Her ruminations and thoughts of the past are threaded through a narrative that
is taut with thriller-like intensity and tension.
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