Camille Pascal, a young, unmarried French nurse comes to South Africa with her father and her small daughter, Zara, during the closing years of the apartheid regime. The family settles amongst a wine-growing community where they become involved in the lives of victims of the System. Interwoven with Camille’s story, is that of Jake Coleman, a painter with an international reputation, a deep-seated fear of failure, and a complicated private life. It is in the exclusive Jake Coleman School of Art that Zara, now a talented artist in her late teens, decides to enrol. She is a feral, troubled girl, obsessed with scenes of violence, and quite unlike anything Jake has encountered before.
‘Behind its intricate play of light and darkness lies an affirmation that ultimately life is worth living. First novels rarely come better’ – André Brink
When Ana returns to the ramshackle cottage of her youth near Cape Town, she simply intends to sort out her father’s affairs. But it soon becomes clear that her stay will be more complicated… After a decade in London, where she has failed to find work as a musician, her return to South Africa puts further distance into an already strained marriage and forces her to confront her father’s death. Against a tangle of childhood memories, scarred histories and renewed hope, Quarter Tones is a beautifully written and lyrical examination of a woman coming to terms with her own questions of guilt and belonging.
‘ Old sensibilities are laid to rest and unexpected new ones rise to the surface in this delicately crafted novel. One reads it, hardly daring to breathe’ – Antjie Krog
‘A beautifully crafted novel’ – Big Issue, London