Frankie and Stankie

Frankie and Stankie is quite different from Trapido’s other novels. While there is a dazzling kaleidoscope of incidents and impressions, this partly autobiographical novel is a much darker book than its predecessors and also quite differently structured. There is no overarching ‘plot’ and none of Trapido’s usual breathtaking weaving and turning, but instead a rapid-fire, linear build-up of scene upon scene - vignettes from domestic, school and college life in chronological sequence. If Trapido’s earlier novels were feature films, this one feels more like a documentary, but one of epic proportions.

Dinah and her elder sister, Lisa, are growing up in 1950s/early 1960s South Africa, in a liberal white family. The political tensions and increasingly repressive racial laws form a constantly unfolding backdrop, the deepening horrors thrown into stark relief by the routine, institutionalised prejudice displayed by Dinah’s teachers, schoolmates and neighbours. Everyone else’s casual acceptance of racial prejudice is met with increasing bewilderment by Dinah, whose family, with its mixed European heritage, is set apart from both the British colonialist whites and the increasingly prominent Afrikaners.

As she moves from girlhood to adolescence, Dinah falls in love with both English literature and fashion – and her relationships with books, clothes and friends are minutely and engagingly explored. Trapido set out along a very dangerous path when she chose to counterpoint the horrors of Apartheid with the frothy trivia of a teenage girl’s daily preoccupations. In less sure hands such a risky undertaking could seem distasteful, but thankfully Trapido carries it off brilliantly. Her wry humour is so clearly informed by a deep, clear-eyed understanding of the political realities of the time that she never loses her footing:

‘Jenny and Dinah have decided on the look . . . They’ll have pale make-up and pale lipstick and pale crisp lawn and pale sheer stockings the colour of buttermilk. They’ll be visions as pale as desert stand . . . And then, that month, just as they set foot on the campus, the police turn their guns on an unarmed and peaceful crowd . . . They shoot and shoot until there’s no one left in the square – that is, no one who isn’t already a corpse.’

By the end of the novel, Dinah’s dissenting views have matured to the point where she has no choice but to leave South Africa – the alternative is arrest – and she embarks upon a new life in London:

‘So Dinah’s four years at university coincide with a dramatic downturn in the texture of national life. It leaves her with ongoing feelings of moral discomfort and unease. Dinah is feeling out of tune, because the mass of the white student body is clearly hell-bent on having a good time. And it’s only if you’re a weirdo that you don’t feel up for it. Dinah is always feeling that she’s got no right to a good time. Because how can she claim any right to such a thing, when all around her most people have got not rights at all? And everything that’s on offer for her is set up at their expense? Plus, right now, you can’t get into the lecture halls for the Saracen armoured vehicles which are lining the university main access. Soldier boys in heavy boots are tramping up the library stairs.’

For me, Frankie and Stankie educated as much as it entertained, amused as much as it horrified, yet I never sensed the balance faltering once. I loved it. How could one not love a book which describes the revelation of discovering Jane Austen thus:

‘At the end of every day Miss Barnes chooses a book and reads it aloud . . . one day the book is Pride and Prejudice and it’s like nothing she’s ever come across before. The language is like watching a flying kite. It’s like being lifted off the ground . . . Not one of the [other] books quite throws at Dinah, as Pride and Prejudice does, how dialogue can lift and dance on points, how sentences can shine and crackle with a concentrated energy and a sharp crystal intelligence. So listening to Miss Barnes read it is like falling in love. It’s like walking on air. It fills Dinah’s mind with a new kind of music. Language is all the music she’s never learned to play. Language is all the ballet steps she’s never learned to dance. And maybe what she loves best of all is the book’s disregard for any "description". "Description" isn’t there. It’s expendable. It’s burned away. All that’s left is dexterity and concentration. Pride and Prejudice is real life, but all transfigured, and dancing in a box.’

'Real life, transfigured and dancing in a box' - not a bad description of Trapido's own writing, if you ask me.