Published by Bloomsbury and Penguin, 1990

Short-listed for the David Higham Prize

Set in South Africa in the late seventies, this novel describes the relationship between a white mother and her daughter, locked in a confined and self-absorbed world of domestic tension, until Annemarie starts work at a clinic for blacks.

 

A brilliant handling of an obsessional mother-daughter relationship … . Her descriptions are achingly acute.

—Financial Times

An astonishing debut … swift, deft … expertly told … With a mordant wit, she shows how discrimination can become as natural as breathing, and as unselfconscious.

—Penny Perrick, Sunday Times

Eloquently expressive.

—The Guardian

A beautifully authentic insight into a society turned in on itself in the face of black deprivation.

—Wendy Woods

Elegant, percipient writing.

—Zoe Heller, Observer