| Interview with Fiona Snyckers |
Janet van Eeden
Trinity Rising is a great, light-hearted read about Trinity Luhabe who is in her first year at Rhodes University. It's fun to read, especially for old Rhodians like me. I loved reading about my favourite places in Grahamstown. But Trinity isn't your average romantic hero. As you describe her in your synopsis: She's got looks. She's got brains (sort of). She's got ambition. Trinity is a girl with a plan. It's not a plan she'll share with just anyone, especially not her feminist, do-gooder mother. Trinity wants to get a university degree, and find a rich man to marry. Not necessarily in that order.
It's very refreshing that she's not a politically correct "New South African" and can't bear to hear about The Struggle even though her parents - a mixed-race couple - have serious Struggle credentials. She's also not a career woman and just wants to find a husband, as you said above. Now to the question at last! What made you decide on such a politically incorrect heroine? People who grew up under apartheid tend to tiptoe around the past as though it's an unexploded bomb, to be treated with great awe and sensitivity. The younger generation, on the other hand, blunder in where angels fear to tread. Young people have never had a huge respect for the history of their parents, which is probably healthy. They tend to look forward rather than back, and to take things as they find them. The future of our country belongs to them. Having said that, Trinity Rising is primarily a novel about personal growth, and Trinity certainly has a lot of growing up to do. How did the idea of writing about this young girl and her adventures at Rhodes come to you? I know you have shades of Pride andPrejudice in your novel and in fact spell out the similarities in the end. At first I was a bit sad you'd spelt it out, but then I thought that your target market, ie young girls, might not be familiar with Pride andPrejudice. What was your reason for using it as a model? In Pride and Prejudice, much of the tension in the novel centres on class differences - the social chasm between the Darcys and the Bennets. Austen asks whether a romantic attachment can be strong enough to bridge such a gap. In a university context, the biggest divide tends to fall between the intellectual elite and everyone else. I can clearly remember endorsing such snobberies myself and judging people on their perceived intellectual credentials. I thought it would be fun to write a novel from the point of view of someone with no intellectual pretensions at all, and to explore the ways in which she could challenge her "Mr Darcy" on his preconceived notions. "Trinity's father, Abel Luhabe, is a Struggle veteran turned billionaire entrepreneur. Trinity's mother, Sunet Luhabe, is a boeremeisie with an overdeveloped sense of social responsibility." Your synopsis explains Trinity's parents as above. Did you make a conscious decision to span our South African cultural spectrum by making Trinity's heritage from two opposite ends of the racial scale, and if so, why? Certainly. I wanted Trinity to be a crossover character with a broad-based appeal. But I also wanted her to defy categorisation and not to be seen an ambassador for any particular cultural group. I think many young people of her generation view themselves as South Africans first and members of a specific cultural affiliation second. But there’s an insecurity that comes from not having a clearly defined identity, and that’s why Farouk (who also comes from a racially mixed background) is the only person she meets at Rhodes who really understands her. Trinty attends the small campus of Rhodes and becomes very familiar with this small town and its landmarks. What made you decide to set your novel in Grahamstown? I spent four very happy years studying at Rhodes University. Grahamstown gets under your skin in a way that’s hard to describe. People who click with the town remain fiercely loyal to it for the rest of their lives. I couldn't imagine setting a campus novel anywhere else, even though I also did a degree at the University of the Witwatersrand. Grahamstown is an incredibly rewarding place in which to set a novel because it’s so full of stories and urban legends. There’s enough material there to keep a writer busy for years. You recently gave a talk about the label "Chick Lit". Personally, I don’t think of this as a pejorative term at all, as I spent many years when I was younger devouring tons of Chick Lit between more so-called "worthy" novels. Can you explain what the term means to you and how you feel about it? A number of writers seem to bristle in response to the term, but I'm happy to embrace it. Chick Lit as a genre has matured considerably since the early days of sex and shopping and bright pink book jackets. Modern Chick Lit writers are prepared to address serious issues, while retaining a general lightness of tone and overall promise of entertainment. Trinity Rising touches on various social problems such as eating disorders and sexual assault, but these never overwhelm the story. To me, Chick Lit simply refers to novels written by women, for women, and featuring women characters. They’re my favourite kind of books to read and I’m proud to associate myself with the genre. You have three young children. As a mother of three children myself I know how difficult it is to juggle career and family. How do you manage to find the time to write a novel with three children to care for? My youngest child recently started nursery school, so I now have a few clear hours every morning in which to write. It takes a lot of discipline to make those hours count, and I don't always get it right, but writing seems a lot more possible these days than it did when the children were tiny. It is very refreshing to read a South African novel which isn't beating a drum about issues. How has Trinity Rising been received so far? The feedback I’ve been getting is that local readers generally don’t expect to be entertained by local fiction. Instructed, moved and harrowed perhaps, but not entertained. So a lot of readers have expressed relief at coming across a novel that doesn’t preach to them about social issues. They have enjoyed the familiarity of the local setting without the angst that usually goes with it. So far the book has received very positive attention from critics and reviewers, but I’ve also had strangers coming up to tell me how much they enjoyed it. There’s a lot of enthusiasm among younger readers in particular. I was delighted to see recently that a learner from Pretoria Girls' High had started up a Facebook group for the book. But many older readers have also told me that they were hooked from the first page. Tell me about the sequel to Trinity Rising. What adventures does Trinity have waiting for her in the future? When is it due out? The sequel is set a few years after the first book. Trinity is living in Johannesburg and trying to break into journalism. She finally gets a job working for Talk Radio 702 on the traffic desk, but her real ambition is to become a news reporter. The problem is that no one will take her seriously enough to trust her with a news story. There are a lot of familiar faces from the first book. New characters include Ethan, the Perfect Boyfriend, who brings Trinity breakfast in bed and escorts her to craft markets every weekend. Then an old flame from her university days resurfaces and turns her comfortable life upside down. I would love the sequel to come out next year in time for the London Book Fair, at which South Africa will be the market focus country, but it’s certainly not my decision to make. Click here to purchase this book from kalahari.net.
Reageer: webvoet@litnet.co.za
| Respond: speakeasy@litnet.co.za
|
