Queen of the Free State, a memoir: an interview with Jennifer Friedman

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Queen of the Free State, a memoir
Jennifer Friedman

Publisher: Tafelberg
ISBN: 9780624081616

Jennifer Friedman answers Naomi Meyer's questions on Queen of the Free State

Why did you write Queen of the Free State? Is the book autobiographical?

The weather was bad the year I started writing Queen of the Free State. I wasn’t doing much flying, so I was looking for a challenge, and I found it when I came across an online course offered by Random House Struik, under the mentorship of the South African author Mike Nicol, on how to write a non-fiction story.

I wrote poetry, and I’d always written in Afrikaans. I’d just finished reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of maladies, and for some reason I suddenly thought, I am aiming high! Perhaps I should try my hand writing prose for a change – stories about everyday life in another time and place, about growing up in the South African Free State in the 50s and 60s. I wanted to write stories that would amuse and entertain, and capture the emotions and imaginations of readers; and if I managed to convey a message at the same time, well, then I’d be a real writer! I wanted the stories to appear deceptively simple at first sight, but on closer examination, to startle and surprise. I felt I’d only succeed if I distanced myself from each story as I wrote it; I didn’t want the slightest hint of sentiment or self-indulgence to intrude.

I’ve always loved the completeness of short stories, how an entire narrative can be captured and contained without seeming condensed in any way. I wanted to write stories. My natural inclination tended towards the descriptive, so I emailed Mike Nicol, asked him if I could write creative non-fiction, and started writing Queen of the Free State. The following year, I joined Mike Nicol and Claire Strombeck’s Writers’ Masterclass, where I completed the manuscript.

Queen of the Free State is autobiographical in that the core – the foundation – of each story is true and happened to me.

2 a) You grew up in the South African Free State and now live in Australia. Have you recently been to the Free State, and how does this region differ from the one in which you grew up?

The last time I was in the Free State was in January 2013, on my way back to Australia after a trip to Namibia.

Expats sigh; they nod their heads. They raise their forefingers in warning. “Don’t expect anything to be the same as it was,” they say. “You’ll see, everything’s changed. It’s not the country you left behind.”

Except, they don’t know the Free State.

I remember the first time I went back after emigrating to Australia: nothing had changed on the farms since I was a child. Lucerne still grew in the same camp. Shrubs of milkbush and sweetgrass grew in clumps, and steekgras stood prickly and white at the foot of the Grootberg. The red ditch where the dinosaur bones washed out after a particularly heavy flood – my cousins and I would search it ever after in the hope of finding more – still ran ragged across the veld. Even the elms, planted for shade for the stock by my grandfather and uncle behind the Grootberg, were still standing.

More than a decade later, the land still hadn’t changed. There were new faces in the village. My uncle had died tragically on the farm while I was away. My aunt’s cancer, in remission for decades, had re-emerged. My cousin and her husband had moved from Johannesburg some years earlier to care for them both. We were all older. In the village where my grandparents had lived for more than 60 years, the streets were still dusty. There was a new Pep Store at the bottom of the main road. My great-uncle John’s house had been lovingly painted. Ons Dien had aisles of supermarket–style shelves. The NG church still stood reassuringly white and stolid at the top of Voortrekker Road. I stood in the library in my grandparents’ Victorian house, donated to the town when my grandfather finally left Philippolis. The trees still stood in the cemetery. It was still hot as hell in the summer.

 2 b) Tell us about the Free State of your childhood, if you wish.

I was born and raised in the South African Free State, and it was strictly segregated. White people lived mostly in large brick houses with gardens front and back, in the towns and villages. Black people lived in townships, called locations, usually situated miles away from the towns where they worked. They lived in mud and brick or corrugated iron houses like the ones the farm labourers lived in on my grandfather’s and uncle’s farms in the southern Free State. As a child, I’d been inside those small, dark huts on the farms; I knew their smell of wood smoke, and of Vicks in winter. The hot smell of unwashed bodies, of heat pressing down from the corrugated iron roof in the summer. The bright pricks of sunlight through rusted holes, spattered on the mud floors. The complete absence of comfort left me feeling somehow bereft, and anxious to right something that seemed so desperately wrong.

When I was growing up in the Free State, some Afrikaners still believed the Jews were the Chosen Race – they brought good luck – so my parents were frequent wedding guests, and my younger sister and I were enormously proud bridesmaids at the wedding of the only daughter of the local high school Latin teacher and his wife. It was only years later that my mother told me why we’d been part of the retinue. “They asked you because they believed ’n Jood bring mos geluk,” she said. “You were their lucky charm.”

I grew up with people who had been working for my parents since before I was born, and, as far as I was concerned, they were part of our family. My parents were educated, enlightened, erudite people, and strict disciplinarians, and I was brought up to be polite to everyone, regardless of the colour of their skin. No one locked their doors at night, and until I started school at the age of five, life as I knew it was uncomplicated and free.

My maternal grandfather and his eldest son, my Uncle Leslie, farmed in the Philippolis district, and, as a child, I loved walking on my own all the way from my grandparents’ house in the village, to the farm seven miles away. I greeted the people I met along the way, and they greeted me. We all spoke Afrikaans and I felt perfectly safe. It’s where I’ve always been happiest, out in the veld. It’s where I belong on the ground.

3. Who is the queen of the Free State in your book? Would anybody have wished to be queen of the Free State, specifically?

My book takes its name from a story I wrote about a visit to the cemetery in the village of Philippolis, where my maternal grandparents lived. It was one of my favourite places, and as soon as I could after we arrived, I’d rush up the koppie at the back of their house, make sure it was still there, rush down again and hurry along the main road, past the old houses with their wooden verandahs and their steps leading down to the dusty verge. I’d turn right at the playground near the town hall, and walk along in the dust until I reached the wire gates of the old cemetery. White marble crosses marked the Anglo-Boer War graves that held the remains of British soldiers, and marble angels, doves and lambs perched or lay on the crumbling slabs, while wreaths of faded plastic flowers gathered dust under the cracked glass of their domes. It was a place where the cypress trees were high and old, a place of quiet where no one shouted or told me what to do.

South Africa at this time was still a British colony, and my mother, being an ardent admirer of Her Majesty, had instilled in me a sense of awe for all things royal. According to her, the Queen was all-powerful, and she reigned supreme. So, in the cemetery in Philippolis, I pretended I was the Queen, and all the people, the little children lying beneath the slabs and angels, the doves and little lambs, were all my loyal subjects. They loved me and obeyed me. I loved them and ordered them about. I was the Queen of the Free State.

4. In the 50s and 60s, during the time when your book takes place, there were secrets and lies, and a great divide between black and white. What about today? Please discuss some of the differences and similarities.

When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, the divide between black and white in the Free State was very clearly defined. The boundaries and limits were set, and as far as I was aware, they were recognised in no uncertain terms. No one I knew would have considered crossing that divide; in the Free State, the very idea would have been inconceivable, never mind intolerable. In secret, of course, my parents and many others would have been aware of children being born, whose fathers were white and whose mothers were maids – black servants who were powerless to protest. On the outside, in that world, in that time, and under the vigilant eye of an authoritarian government, everyone – black and white – at least pretended to know their place in society. There was to be no mixing, no contact between the races. Those were the laws of the land, and I’d already learned from an early age not to question authority.

I always had a highly developed sense of fairness, and I was acutely aware of the inequalities and injustices suffered by the black people around me. In a story about Marta, I wrote how, at the age of five, I went about subverting the law in order to demonstrate my affection for her. In my defence, though it’s really no excuse at all, all I can say is, I was a child of the time. It was how things were, and I didn’t know any better.

Seeing South Africa now from the perspective of an outsider, I think that great divide still exists between black and white; people don’t change. The distrust and dislike, the contempt they feel for each other are fundamental aspects of their personalities and psyches, absorbed from their surroundings along with their mothers’ milk. They may pretend to accept the status quo on the surface, but all those old resentments, the reservations and the fears are still there. People everywhere are inherently racist and bigoted. They don’t tolerate those who are different, who aren’t of the same race or religion or political ideology. People all over the world are afraid of strangers, and it’s no different in South Africa. Birds of a feather flock together, soort soek soort, and gleich und gleich gesellt sich gern; if you’ve read my book, you’ll know I’m speaking from some experience on the subject!

One of the most significant differences I’ve noticed in white South Africans since I left is that, now that they’ve been displaced politically – no longer baas, but, in many cases, more like Klaas – many whites, who always felt so secure and complacent, so sure those solid foundations they’d always taken for granted would be under their feet forever – those whites are living in fear, terrified they’re about to join – if they haven’t already – the class of the great dispossessed.

On the other hand, that passive acceptance of their fate that seemed to characterise the black people I knew when I was growing up has been replaced by a deep anger and resentment, especially towards a government they see as having failed to improve their lives. And as far as wealth and assets are concerned, nothing much has changed there either; just as it was when I was growing up, most of it is still in the hands of a small minority, the difference now being that a small number of blacks have joined their ranks. But the vast majority are still as poor, as deprived, and as frustrated as they were when I was growing up. Their numbers have increased to even greater proportions by the new class of whites caught up in the same desperate situation. What is different now is that the people are not afraid to show their displeasure.

I still hear whites referring to blacks in derogatory terms. On my visits back home, black men and boys still lounge on street corners, angry and frustrated and poor. In the cities, the affluent suburbs behind the high walls and razor wire are still beautiful. The shops are full of expensive, gorgeous goods, but the rand in the new South Africa is worthless. The country’s credit rating has been downgraded to “junk status”. In the new South Africa, a R50 note is worth no more than 50 fogololos.

The differences show in the schools, where black and white kids learn and play together. People are free to associate, to socialise, to love and to marry across the racial divide. The beaches are open to all. There are black mayors, and anyone can live anywhere. Security businesses are still thriving.

I read. I listen. I can only offer you my observations as a stranger in my own land. I was born here. South Africa will forever be my country, but I have forfeited my rights.

5. Tell us about the chapter in between the Free State and Australia, the time you lived in the Cape. Also, why did you move to Australia?

I’ll give you a brief outline, but I don’t want to go into too much detail because those chapters form part of the sequel I’m writing at the moment.

My book Queen of the Free State ends with my impending banishment to a girls-only boarding school in Cape Town, where I would spend the last two years of school. I was an innocent, inexperienced, educated-in-Afrikaans country bumpkin thrown into a mix of sophisticated, English-speaking girls who laughed at my accent and weren’t at all interested in befriending me.

During my first year as a boarder, and without any prior warning, my parents moved to Cape Town. They sold our home and my father’s chemist shop, and gave away my possessions, my model aeroplanes and my beloved dog. I was devastated. I never saw the people whom I had known and loved, and who had known and loved me, again.

In my matric year, a local newspaper organised a flying competition. The prize was to be a private pilot’s licence. I’d been obsessed with aeroplanes and flying since I was a child. An acquaintance of my father was one of the organisers of the competition, and he persuaded him to allow me to enter. The rest is a story in the sequel …

I never lived with my family again. After matriculating, I moved into Fuller Hall, a women’s residence on the campus of UCT, my mother’s alma mater. I loved the freedom and independence.

On a December day in 1972, while lying in the sun on Clifton Beach, I met Allan. I’d always sworn I’d never date a Joburg boy; they had a certain reputation in those days, and swaggered around the beaches showing off in their short shorts. “Never say you won’t marry a Poggenpoel,” my mother used to say. In her opinion, having a name like Poggenpoel was akin to carrying an albatross around one’s neck for life – she loathed the way it sounded. Her mother, my grandmother, proved a little easier to please, her only criterion being “as long as he’s better looking than a monkey”, which didn’t say much for my father. Luckily, I managed to please them both. I moved to Johannesburg and met Allan’s family. Oh yeah, many, many stories there.

Before we married, my Uncle Leslie insisted on meeting – and vetting – my future husband before he’d give us his blessing. The result was a memorable first visit to the Free State and the farms for Allan. We returned to Cape Town in November 1973, and were married in the Marais Road synagogue by the same rabbi who’d officiated at Allan’s bar mitzvah in Johannesburg. Allan was 25. I was 22, just about an old maid already, according to my parents, for whom the be-all and end-all of a woman’s existence was to be married, or at least engaged, before the age of 21.

There’s a story in my book about the party dresses my mother used to sew for me each year. She considered herself an excellent seamstress and knitter – she even knitted my socks from the time I started school – and each year, as I outgrew my party dress, she’d make me another. The fabric varied, but the pattern remained the same until I turned 12, when I was invited to my first dance party.

To my horror, my mother insisted on making my wedding dress herself. I was living and working in Johannesburg; she was in Cape Town, but, undeterred, she chose the fabric and she chose the pattern. She chose the colour scheme and she ordered the cake. And when I arrived and rushed upstairs to see what my wedding dress looked like … oh, yes, you got it, it was the identical pattern to all those party dresses: gathered waist, puffed sleeves, Peter Pan collar, and tied at the back with a big bow …

Our honeymoon at the newly opened Beacon Isle Hotel was equally fraught when we found his mother and her husband ensconced in a suite when we arrived. It rained every day. We bought a Scrabble set. On the way back to our new apartment in Benmore Gardens in Sandton, we stopped at the farm to say hello. My uncle had slaughtered a sheep for us to take back. After promising to keep it refrigerated when we got to our hotel in Bloemfontein, Allan decided he was too embarrassed to haul the bloodstained box through the hotel’s foyer, so it spent the night sweating and turning green in the boot of his Alfa Romeo.

In the sequel, there are hilarious stories of bribery and corruption, a first anniversary and a promise of an elephant calf, late husbands and missed communications and connections, the first in a long line of dogs, followed rapidly by the second, moving into our first house, the birth of our son, trips overseas. We moved to Illovo in Johannesburg, where our maid Helen’s slippery fingers led to her sudden decline until she was rescued by the intervention of [the very expensive] services of a sangoma.

In the middle of 1978, we left South Africa for what was originally meant to be a six-month stay in Israel, but which turned out to be for a difficult two and a half years. Allan’s grandfather was Louis Hendler, managing director and founder of the company Hendler & Hendler in Boksburg, and Allan’s uncles and his mother were directors of the company. Allan was his grandfather’s favourite, the eldest grandson and the only one of his grandchildren to work there at the time. It was a huge factory and manufactured enamelled steel pots and pans and baby baths, amongst hundreds of other items. It was extraordinarily difficult to export goods from SA at the time, so it was decided to build a factory in Israel from where they could export to Europe and the USA. As Allan was the only member of the family with a technical degree – he was a chemical engineer with a specialised knowledge in enamelling techniques – he was delegated to oversee the construction of this new factory, to order and purchase the necessary presses and equipment and to find trained personnel to work them. Consequently, he’d spent more than nine months flying to and from Europe during the first year of our son’s life.

There are stories in the sequel about our sojourn in Israel – amusing, confusing, thoughtful. There were losses and gains, births and deaths, pet mice and interesting finds on miniature tables, the mystery of the factory workers’ toilets, and the constant need to replace them …

Our daughter was born in Haifa in December 1980. Our son was about to start school, and we vacillated between returning to South Africa, remaining in Israel, or leaving for the USA. I wanted to go home. Allan remained in Israel for a couple of weeks to clear the decks, and early in 1981, six weeks after her birth, I returned to South Africa with our son and baby daughter. We bought a beautiful house built against a hill in Bedfordview. Our son started school. There was a slight hiccup when he and a little friend accidently set an old tree on fire, which quickly jumped its containment lines and resulted in the Jewish old age home next door having to be evacuated, but peace and calm were restored by a generous donation on our part. A larger one was called for not long after that when, having read a book at home called Gus the Mexican ghost, he insisted at school the next day that God, like ghosts, didn’t exist. Allan and I were summoned to an interview with the headmistress and a young Rabbi Schochet, who told us he’d had a most informative conversation on the subject of evolution with our five-year-old son, who’d refused to be swayed from his insistence that all mankind, the rabbi included, had evolved from apes. They’d agreed to disagree on the subject of the existence of God.

In the mean time, Allan’s mother decided to join her brothers in Australia. My parents had left for Sydney some years earlier to be with their younger daughter and her family, who had been living there since the early 70s. We sold our house in Bedfordview, bought Allan’s mother’s house in Morningside and moved back to Sandton. Both kids attended Redhill Preparatory, a selective, multi-racial school in the road behind our house, and both attended lectures at the Schmerenbeck Institute at Wits University. We had a beautiful house, a spectacularly beautiful garden and wonderful staff. Allan had started up a new factory, Republic Enamels, in Boksburg on the East Rand a few years after we returned from Israel – he was accustomed to the commute; Hendlers, which he’d ended up running as managing director on our return to South Africa, was situated in Boksburg. It was where he’d spent almost his entire working life. Allan was an exceptionally intelligent, intuitive and talented businessman who was widely respected and liked. He was nominated for a Business Award. Everything was going great guns.

But the political situation was unravelling. People were leaving the country in droves. I assumed the ostrich stance and buried my head in the sand, and, unlike Allan, I refused even to contemplate the possibility of being uprooted again. I was writing, preparing a collection of poetry and corresponding with Petra Grutter, an editor at Tafelberg Publishers. I’d made friends. We had a menagerie of animals. I was living “A Jo’Burg Life”.

Despite the unrest around us, Allan refused to keep a firearm in the house, insisting that when the day came when we really needed to arm ourselves, it would be time for us to pack up and leave. That time came early one morning in the driveway of a home in the next street, when a mother, on her way to a nursery school nearby, her car full of three-year-old children, was held up by a gang of men who shot and killed her. They threw the traumatised children out of the car and drove away. It was too close to home, and it proved to be the final straw that broke the camel’s back.

I cried. I begged. I sulked and I pleaded. He could go, but if he did, it would be without me. I didn’t want to leave. I couldn’t live anywhere else and be happy. Allan was obdurate. His mind was made up. He was the breadwinner, he told me, not for the first time, and that gave him the right to make the decisions. It would be fine, he promised. We’d make a new life in a new country. We’d be happy. Our kids would be safe. We’d grow old together in peace and good health.

We moved to Australia.

6. In the press release, I read about a terrible tragedy. Do you want to share the story and how this made you feel or how this influenced your life?

The tragedy that befell us forms an important part of the sequel I’m writing, so I’ll only give you the outline of what happened.

We left South Africa in December 1992, flew to Mauritius to recover from the stress of packing for Sydney (instead of Perth, as the removalist’s advert read at the time) and arrived in Australia in January 1993. We’d made several trips there on holidays and to see family before we finally emigrated, and on a previous trip we’d bought a lovely old house on Sydney’s North Shore. It had a huge, overgrown garden, enormous trees and a creek running along one side.

Allan bought a factory in Alexandria on the other side of the Harbour Bridge, and commuted to and from work as he’d always done. He’d persuaded a cousin who was working for him at the time, to emigrate with his wife and sons and join him in his new venture. Allan would put up the money, and the cousin would pay him back as the company prospered and grew.

Our kids started at their new schools. Our daughter was 11, our son 15. Allan was occupied with bringing the new factory up to speed. We bought a bulldog puppy to replace Tootsie, whom we’d had to leave behind. I couldn’t say the word “home” without wanting to cry.

A couple of years after we arrived, Allan gave me a birthday present that was the answer to every dream and wish I’d ever had. He didn’t enjoy flying, and he refused to ever go up in a small aeroplane, but he had arranged for flying lessons for me so that I could get an Australian pilot’s licence and fly again. “I know how important it’s always been to you,” he said. “I know how much you’ve longed and wished for this.” I was so happy I couldn’t speak. “And you do know,” he continued, “if anything should happen to you, at least the kids are old enough now to cope …”

Don’t ever tempt fate.

A year later, three years after we arrived, Allan was diagnosed with cancer. I heard the oncologist speak words that fell like stones from a great height. A hospital counsellor took me to a small room where I sat on a couch. “I don’t know what to do,” I said. “What can I do?” “The only thing you need to do,” she told me, “is to care for your husband. Make sure he’s comfortable, that no one upsets him. That’s all you need to do; make his life as happy, peaceful and calm as you can.”

Allan endured one operation after another. He had radiation, chemotherapy. He never complained. I nursed him. My parents were devastated and unable to cope. His mother was in Melbourne. Our daughter was on a school trip in Israel, and he refused to allow me to tell her about his illness, or to have her come home. Our son was in his first year of an engineering degree, and living away from home in a university residence at the University of New South Wales. Allan didn’t want anyone to know. So we kept it a secret for as long as we could. The cousin whom he had considered his best friend, and whom he had supported emotionally and financially, sat in our family room and shouted at Allan that he didn’t care what happened to his children or to me; all he could see was himself – and what was he supposed to do now? I had a hammer in my hand. I went outside and I scratched the length of his car.

Allan was a fighter, and so was I. I was determined, so sure I could save him. The cancer metastasised from the soft tissue in his mouth and neck and spread to his bones. His pain was excruciating. Neither of us slept. I fed him Sustagen. The morphine made him hallucinate. He had a stroke one morning. I held his hand in the ambulance to the hospital, and I stayed there with him for the last ten days of his life.

I responded to Allan’s illness – and his death – in the only way I knew how: I remained positive, and I refused to lose my sense of humour. We were grateful for the time we had to take our leave of one another. Allan had always led by example, and he continued to do so right to the end of his life. He was the glue that held the members of our respective families together, and after he died, my relationships with many of them suffered irrevocable damage, and bonds were severed forever.

There was never any alternative other than to get through the horror and the shock, and to survive our loss with as much dignity as we could muster. I refused to feel sorry for myself. It was important to me that my son and daughter felt the same way – that they were strong enough to look to a positive future, and never to think of themselves as victims – not only of this tragedy that had befallen us, but always.

Regardless, we were inevitably all profoundly broken somewhere inside, and our lives would never be the same again.

7. Now that the book is published, does this feel like fact or fiction?

The events in each story in my book really happened. Those are the facts. And holding the book in my hand is a dream come true. It feels real – fact, not fiction.

8. How do you experience South Africa in general today? And Australia? What kind of a country is this to live in?

I haven’t spent enough time back in South Africa to feel comfortable commenting on it, but on my visits home, I’ve noticed many changes. South Africa’s become even more vibrant and exciting – the art, the music, the literature, the colours and the smells! It’s become more African than it ever was when I lived there. The stoicism I’ve always associated with the black people has been replaced by a growing anger and tension, which I’ve heard and seen being openly expressed. There’s a feeling of bravado and brashness in the people that never used to be there. It makes them tense and brittle, as if they’re about to explode. There’s a current of violence wound tight inside them, and it simmers just under the surface in their conversations and interactions. I can see it in their body language.

And those attitudes are not restricted just to South Africa; there are places in Outback Australia where the shop fronts and doors are barred, too, where the towns have such appalling reputations for violence and assaults that tourists are advised to avoid them.

Australia likes to boast about being a multicultural society, that everyone’s welcome. But, in actual fact, the white population that lives mostly in the cities distrusts – and many actively dislike and avoid – anyone who isn’t white and Christian and who doesn’t conform. Australia’s governor-general believes that “people have the right to be bigots”. The leader of the far-right party, One Nation, has advised Australians this Easter to boycott brands offering halaal-certified Easter eggs. The Australian government appears to despise the poor, the handicapped, the elderly, the downtrodden and the dispossessed. In Australia, refugees are refused asylum, and they die of neglect, or commit suicide in prison camps on islands where no one wants them. Every Muslim is suspected of being a terrorist, and owning one’s own home has become an unaffordable dream.

On the plus side – and it’s a big plus – as a woman, I can walk freely in the streets, and drive wherever I like. I can fly my aeroplane and land in small towns where the people are friendly, and still greet strangers in the street. In many respects, this is a grand place to be. It may not be paradise, but it’s spectacularly beautiful. The Queen still reigns over Australia fair, and I’m grateful for my freedom and my safety. My GP hails from Johannesburg, and so do my neighbours and dentist. If I don’t feel like making my own, I can buy the best biltong from the Springbok Butchery down in Sydney, as well as Wilson toffees and marshmallow fish, stampmielies and Five Roses tea. The supermarket sells tins of Koo guavas and boxes of Ouma’s rusks, packets of Baker’s lemon creams. Almost there, but, Amper is nog nie stamper nie, and a miss is as good as a mile.

It can be a hard row to hoe, being a stranger in a foreign land.

9. What do you read? Or any other hobbies?

I read voraciously, from one book to the next. I read myself to sleep. Mostly, I read for pleasure – creative, original, literary fiction – well written. I’m far too pedantic to put up with clichés and poor spelling or grammar. Short stories, novels, thrillers and crime fiction, murder mysteries – always only one book at a time, from the beginning to the end. I fly my Grumman Tiger. I hike and bush walk. I ride my mountain bike and paddle my kayak along creeks and rivers. I like to be out in the bush. I cook and I bake, I garden and arrange flowers, I make a cherry jam that’d knock the socks off you. I like to travel, and meet up every year or so with my daughter who lives and works in New York, and we travel to strange places, explore exciting countries.

10. Are you busy writing anything else?

I’m in the process of writing a sequel to follow on from where Queen of the Free State left off, and the odd poem or two.

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Kommentaar

  • Christa Breed (Appelcryn)

    Wonderlike herinneringe teruggebring van my kinderdae saam met Jennifer in dieselfde skool, maats en mense op dieselfde dorp in die Vrystaat.

  • I am thoroughly enjoying your book which takes me back to my childhood days in Kareedouw where my ouma and oupa lived. Wonderful amusing tales and I find myself guffawing at your witty comments. Definitely a book to pass on to my friends who like autobiographies. Looking forward to your sequel.

  • Madeleine Moll

    I loved this book. I am a child of the 40s and 50s and could relate to the small town life.
    I lived in the OFS from age 10 to 18. Because of this my husband bought me the book for my birthday little knowing what a gem it is.

  • Stephanie Slabbert

    Jennifer, you have captured life in the OFS perfectly. Your stories about that place and time have touched me deeply. I can hear those tortelduiwe and smell the blomkombome again.

  • Charlette Barron

    Jennifer you have captured the era perfectly. Evocative of my growing up on a farm and small town in the Transvaal in the 50s and 60s. I even had my own "Sandy" and have always had a great love for dogs and Cocker Spaniels in particular. So look forward to the sequel.

  • Laura-Jane Colepeper

    What a treasure to have come across in the local library. I think I like you, Jennifer. Thank you for an unsentimental, beautiful, descriptive, intuitive ... etc, etc, etc description. Can't wait to read the sequel. I identify with so many aspects of your life, although my experiences were cobbled together in a different form. I only wish I could have expressed myself as you have ... on paper and in what you are doing with your time on earth. Perhaps I still have time. My Afrikaans roots have never wavered, but I have been enveloped in all else as well.

  • David Shapiro

    I haven’t yet read this book “Queen of the Free State” nor Jennifer Friedman’s sequel, don’t know its title. I heard part of an interview that she gave on Cape Talk Radio with presenter John Maytham. Trying to search for this book and author I e-mailed John Maytham, but he could not tell me which interview it was. I Googled “ex South African Friedman now living in Australia” and came across this interview. Now to try finding both books at my local library after the lockdown.

  • Dirkie Herholt

    Would love to get hold of this book. I was born in Philippolis my parents Dirk and Annie van Rensburg had the Dewdrop Cafe. Went to school there from 1952 till 1954. At school was a miss van der Spuy who beat me so much with a rod that my parents eventually took sent me to school in Queenstown.

  • Reageer

    Jou e-posadres sal nie gepubliseer word nie. Kommentaar is onderhewig aan moderering.


     

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