A Kind of Cousin is a daring collection of short stories by Suenel Bruwer-Holloway that whisks readers on a journey through the raw and unapologetic facets of human experience. Like a fresh breeze, blowing irreverently through old taboos, sweeping away the cobwebs of political correctness, Holloway shatters the confines of political correctness, delving into the resilient and complex spirit that pulses through her homeland, a place of beauty, sorrow, and resilience.From the wily old woman in ‘The Statistic’, cleverly hoarding her exit from this world, to the candid wisdom of a child in the titular ‘A Kind of Cousin’, and the unflinching gaze cast upon society’s underbelly in ‘The Healer’, these stories are as provocative as they are enlightening. ‘The Right Therapist’ delivers a satirical jab at the mental health profession, while ‘Horseflesh’ pays homage to the enduring spirit of an old donkey, a symbol of unyielding courage in the face of adversity.Strap in and prepare to be swept off your feet as Bruwer-Holloway tackles subjects often muffled by societal discomfort—farm murders, religious zealotry, the deep-rooted connections of the Afrikaner people to their land, and the poignant realities of aging and death. A Kind of Cousin promises a literary escapade that’s as thought-provoking as it is entertaining.
Suenel Bruwer-Holloway has published dramas for youthand audition pieces for theatre schools; some plays wereperformed at national arts festivals and abroad. Her poemshave won awards and appear in several anthologies.Her children’s verses were put to music for the NationalParks Braille Trail. She is involved in the annual poetryfestival in McGregor. She works as a textbook writer andacademic editor.Her wonderful children and grandchildren keep her on hertoes. Suenel lives in a small village in the Cape Winelandsof South Africa.
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Suenel Brewer-Holloway’s collection of short stories, recently published by Austin Macaulay, is a kaleidoscopic picture of South African culture, particularly the wine culture of the Cape. Captured with what feels like a dolly from a film set, the author shows the relentless and relentlessly destructive hand of wine across a group of people brought together by the production of one of the world’s most seductive products. For those who have lived within the vicinity of this strange and seductive dominance or known its history and the desperation of its hidden victims (babies born with Alcohol Dependence Syndrome of drinking mothers, for instance) there are still surprises shown through the careful telling of so many and so widely varied truths.
Bruwer-Holloway often makes the re-reading of sentences a necessity, her style disarmingly matter-of-fact about some of the most terrible discrepancies of human history. I like this author’s style - it is perfect for its subject – the grasping of an inchoate miasma of despair hiding in its echo field – one couched in and surrounded by the glamour of a product delightful in measure and desperate in the often-tragic consequences of its over-partaking.
It is not simply that some people get drunk when they drink, but rather that workers in the vineyards were partly paid – and are still so paid today – in wine. Thus, a social and pleasant beverage became, historically, an easy and destructive means to suffering, even and especially death. The perpetuation of these horrors can be seen in these stories through the grim effects on the children whose impoverished parents have become almost accidentally involved with the liberality of its consumption. No one who lives outside the winelands can know the complexity of the clouds.
Bruwer-Holloway calls out the complexities of a culture whose own language is itself one of the newest in the world. Euphemistically termed kitchen Dutch, Afrikaans (now become a noun to replace the word Afrikaner) provides a richly fecund container to identity, and the book, like a stretched-out documentary filmed from the wings of its subjects’ lives, paints the huge and hugely hidden wounds of a hidden society as if they were grazes.
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