A quest is never what you expect it to be. Elizabeth Madeline Martin spends her days in a retirement home in Cape Town, watching the pigeons and squirrels on the branches of a tree outside her window. Bedridden, her memory fading, she can recall her early childhood spent in a small wood-and-iron house in Blackridge on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg. Though she remembers the place in detail - dogs, a mango tree, a stream - she has no idea where exactly it is. 'My memory is full of blotches, ' she tells her daughter Julia, 'like ink left about and knocked over.' Julia resolves to find the Blackridge house: with her mother unsettled, lonely and confused, would this, perhaps, bring some measure of closure? So begins a journey that traverses family history, forgotten documents, old photographs, and the maps that stake out a country's troubled past. Kind strangers, willing to assist in the search, lead to unexpected discoveries of ancestors and wars and lullabies. Folded into this quest are the tender conversations between a daughter and a mother who does not have long to live. Taken as one, The Blackridge House is a meditation on belonging, on the stories we tell of home and family, on the precarious footprint of life.
CONTRIBUTORS: Julia Martin
EAN: 9781868429646
COUNTRY: South Africa
PAGES:
WEIGHT: 0 g
HEIGHT: 233 cm
PUBLISHED BY: Jonathan Ball Publishers SA
DATE PUBLISHED:
CITY:
GENRE: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs, FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Parenting / Grandparenting, FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Parenting / General, HEALTH & FITNESS / Diseases & Conditions / General, SELF-HELP / Death, Grief, Bereavement
WIDTH: 152 cm
SPINE:
Book Themes:
Memoirs, Alzheimer’s and dementia, Coping with / advice about illness and specific health conditions, Coping with / advice about death and bereavement, Intergenerational relationships: advice and issues
Book Partnerships
For the Fans