The Dubious Salvation Of Jack V. - Hardcover

Strauss, Jacques

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224091301 ISBN 13: 9780224091305

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2011

Synopsis

Even as an eleven year old I had a strong sense that the universe was setting up nasty traps for me, all sorts of really horrible ways to die in which (and this is the crucial point) I would in some way be complicit in my own demise (and this before I had done anything to warrant this particular anxiety). I have always been shit scared of the deranged universe and it's not really that stupid and irrational...it gets all of us eventually.

It's 1989, and in the dying years of the Apartheid regime, eleven-year-old Jack Viljee considers himself the centre of his world. The son of an Afrikaans father and an English mother, wedged between a strident older and favoured younger sister, Jack allies himself with the family's beloved maid, Susie. Plagued by portents of doom, Jack nevertheless has firm views on race (complex), politics (straightforward), poofdas (inoffensive), God (dangerous), sex (bewildering), sisters (disappointing), parents (unfailing), Zulus (frightening) and the KGB (cunning). His Afrikaans family are wanting in a number of respects: they have too many children, let the maid keep chickens in the backyard, buy tomato sauce in ten litre vats and cover their furniture in plastic. Still, there is no doubt they could wipe the floor with his soft English relatives. Either way, at his new school he knows that he is set on an inexorable path to Englishness. Life is simple.

But the comfortable domesticity of the Viljee household has been upset by the arrival of Percy, Susie's fifteen-year old son. Percy - young, bored and full of rage - makes everything awkward and embarrassing for Jack. After one particularly humiliating event, Jack betrays Susie and learns that even the most childish act can avalanche beyond his most outlandish imaginings. The world, it turns out, is not so simple.

About this title

Review:

Strauss writes with poise and comic timing. His prose is formal and correct; he establishes a tone of laconic regret yet sustains a striking lightness of touch particularly in passages of dialogue...it does no disservice to Strauss to say his highly enjoyable novel reads more as inspired memoir, so adroit is the telling... It is, above all, rich in symbols and subtexts (Eileen Battersby Irish Times)

His oblique treatment of the era's fraught politics is beautifully done (David Evans Independent on Sunday)

Book Description:

Smart, funny, touching and a little dangerous, The Dubious Salvation of Jack V. is a powerful debut from an original voice.

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0224091301
• ISBN 13: 9780224091305
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240