Barbara Boswell
Jacana
Review: Karen Watkins
The Comrade’s Wife is set between 2016 and 2018 against the changing society landscape in South Africa’s 30 years of democracy.
The story is told through the eyes of Anita whose journey began in a shack in Bokmakierie, Athlone. Her mother was a domestic worker but managed to send her daughter to university where Anita worked hard and ascended to a high position in UCT, as one of the first generation in the family to attend university.
Now, Anita is divorced and feels ready to step into a new relationship. She turns to a dating app and meets politician and lawyer Neill. He is every woman’s dream — a good-looking, wealthy lawyer turned politician, charismatic and ambitious – but he is also devious, inconsistent, a narcissist and cruel. He is absent from their marital home much of the time. His excuse is that he must be with his constituency in his home town of Bloemfontein.
Anita berates him for being away so much. She cries a lot, battles within herself and asks who this person really is.
Meanwhile, she deals with power struggles in academia with its complicated dynamics and gender challenges.
To write more would provide spoilers. Anita's situation is predictable but it's the way she deals with the issue that makes the book unputdownable.
Muizenberg author Barbara Boswell captures the complexities of relationships — both intimate and political — through nuanced characterisations and layered storytelling. She deftly weaves together the personal struggles and emotional turmoil from Anita’s family and friends to her tumultuous marriage. The story touches on themes of abuse, morality and the convoluted road of ambition.
This book is beautifully written, emotionally rich, clever and full of intrigue with a gripping plot. It’s a thoroughly good read and I give it five stars.
Boswell’s previous works include Grace: A Novel (2017), which tackled gender-based violence, and the part literary history, part feminist historiography And Wrote My Story Anyway: Black South African Women's Novels as Feminism.