This week’s reviews include a memoir about living in France in Steve Hoffman’s “A Season for That” and a complex international family narrative in S. J. Naude’s “Fathers and Fugitives.”
Books & Culture is edited by Vanessa Sekinger
A SEASON FOR THAT
by Steve Hoffman
Published by Crown (July 9, 2024)
Hardcover $23.99
Audiobook $14.99
Reviewed by Penny A Parrish
Steve Hoffman is a tax preparer who lives in Minnesota with a wife and two children (Bored? Keep reading.) That job kept him busy only the first part of the year, so he decided the family would live in France for the other six months. He’d studied in Paris, was fluent in French, and his children had been in a French immersion school. Unfortunately, Paris was not affordable. So, they ended up in an arid village called Autignac in the Languedoc area. Thinking lavender fields in Provence? You’ve got the wrong image in mind.
Upon arrival the family sits at an outdoor café. Hoffman realizes he can’t translate the menu of non-Parisian dishes. When he asks the waiter about one, the guy grabs a plate from another customer and sticks it under Hoffman’s nose. Squid. He orders it while his wife and kids order cheeseburgers. And coke with ice (so American). He realizes then that efforts to involve his loved ones on this cultural trip will be a challenge.
But it is one he slowly warms to, and many of the residents warm to the entire Hoffman family as well. Hoffman’s wife, Mary Jo, is doing a daily blog called STILL, where she photographs flora and fauna for her daily post. Their daughter Eva is also a budding photographer, but as a teenager, being obtuse and ornery takes priority over trying to share that skill with mom. Nine-year-old Joe is fascinated by bugs and “found items” on the ground. Hoffman himself is intent on cooking meals his family will enjoy. They refuse to even taste most of them.
But this is mostly a memoir about friendship and belonging and marriage and parenting and family and love. We meet the villagers who have owned and tended vineyards for generations. We meet those who run the market and share recipes verbally (he forgets most of them by the time he gets home). We meet those who harvest the grapes, create the wine, pick fruit from their orchards, and share intimate knowledge of this ancient land. It’s enchanting.
Hoffman gets involved in his village. He helps to harvest the grapes and prune the vines. He spends time with a butcher to learn about the cuts of fresh meat. Very fresh. He spends weeks learning how wine is processed and put into casks. The man starts out inept but becomes quite good at his adopted tasks, much to the delight of his new friends.
Hoffman is still a tax preparer in Shoreview, Minnesota. He is also a food writer who has won many awards. This, however, is not a book of recipes, unless you are looking for a recipe for a good life and good friends. As a photographer, I was especially touched by this thought by Hoffman after a day spent at a winery: “No part of the day, converted to images, would manage to sell a single postcard.” Sometimes it is not the words or the images you treasure, but the experience of life itself.
Penny A Parrish is a long-time book reviewer and artist. Learn more about her by visiting her page at Brush Strokes Gallery, which is in downtown Fredericksburg.
FATHERS AND FUGITIVES
By S.J. Naude
Published by Europa Editions (September 10, 2024)
Hardcover $27.00
Audiobook $14.99
Reviewed by Ashley Riggleson
Although the blurb of S.J. Naude’s novel Father’s and Fugitives (which is beautifully translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns) quickly attracted my attention, I did not know what to expect from this novel. In fact, I suspect that many readers may be put off by the opening section–but let me tell you now—keep going! It is so worth it!
As the novel opens, readers are introduced to Daniel, a privileged and disillusioned gay journalist from South Africa who, for reasons initially unclear, is living in London. The story begins at an art exhibit where Daniel meets two Serbian immigrants living in what readers assume to be impoverished circumstances.
While many readers may expect Daniel’s exchange with these men to be a throwaway dialogue, Daniel instead becomes quite entangled with them, soon allowing them to stay in his apartment. Later, without a lot of reflection on his part, he follows them on an international trip.
The question as to why Daniel does these things filled my mind throughout this strange but oddly compelling opening chapter. I was constantly questioning Daniel’s believability as a character, and yet I could not stop reading. I was, surprisingly, utterly spellbound.
As we move forward, though, the novel takes a turn. In the ensuing sections, readers learn about Daniel’s family. His father suffers from dementia and needs around the clock care, while his largely absent sister lurks in the background. Daniel reluctantly returns to South Africa to care for his father, with whom he is not close.
Once there, he discovers a clause in his father’s will that states that he must spend time at his cousin’s farm in the Free State, or he will get only half of his inheritance. The rest of the novel hinges on the relationship, which began with financial motivations in mind, that Daniel builds with his cousin in the months and years to follow.
A plot description like this one suggests that Fathers and Fugitives is quite a strange and perhaps senseless novel. But it is, in fact, beautiful and devastating. Each of the novel’s sections work to build a unique, compelling, and poignant narrative. And as the novel unfolds Naude explores, with clarity and nuance, themes like belonging, queerness, fatherhood, family (the ones we are born with, the ones we find), legacy, grief, sickness, and trauma. And it becomes clear that although this novel seemed nonsensical at first, the choices Naude made about form and structure are those of a deliberate writer at the top of his game.
It is clear that this novelist has penned a stunner, and yet it is worth pointing out that the translation was done with equal beauty and precision. The sentence-by-sentence craft here is outstanding.
And while, as I said, I had questions in the beginning of this novel, they were, for me, all answered by the end. Yet, Naude does not spoon feed readers. Instead, I am still thinking about the characters and events of this novel weeks after having finished it. And it is safe to say I have never read a novel like this one. It is, in short, a singular reading experience not to be missed.
Ashley Riggleson is a free-lance book reviewer from Rappahannock County. When she is not reading or writing book reviews, she can usually be found playing with her pets, listening to podcasts, or watching television with friends and family.
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