Prayer for All Seasons

I was looking forward to this book as the premise seemed interesting and it had great reviews. Unfortunately, it was a huge disappointment for me. While the summary cajoled me in, the actual storytelling and prose left quite a lot wanting. A while after starting the book, I watched a virtual talk with the author in conversation, and got to hear him talk about his motives for writing the book as well as discussing some of the major themes. It was great to hear him talk about it, since it was clearly an important project for him.

However, as I continued to read the book, I found myself more frustrated than ever feeling connected with the author’s vision for this book. A lot of the prose is clunky, with random metaphors and vague language. Sometimes I had to read a sentence two or three times, and I still didn’t understand what it was trying to convey. There is importance in having literary books that aren’t straightforward prose, but your goal is ultimately to convey meaning; if your readers are lost or confused by what is happening, then it is not literary. Some examples of weird language: ‘Whose screams sound like whispers now—whispers that will be the last noise the universe will ever make.’ How does a universe make whispers? ‘…they could have access to some kind of sometime just by virtue of not being one of the excluded.’ What does this even mean. I have no clue.

Samuel and Isaiah, the protagonists, are the focus of the book, except you see them through what feels like dozens of different perspectives before getting to their own. It was an interesting attempt to show the inner mind of every character, and their take on the circumstances, but the result was that you hardly get any action on the page. Instead, you got pages upon pages of the characters’ inner thoughts. This can work in writing sometimes, but generally not with a character you have never met, whose motivations you don’t understand. Each character was fascinating and had great potential, but only got so much on-page time, so that I never felt like I understood any of them. The multiple perspectives bogged down the book and made it hard to connect with the characters, and the copious amounts of pondering and insertion of grand metaphors made it feel like nothing was happening.

Around 30-40% of the book, I wanted to call it quits, but I kept on going. By about 70%, there was finally some action in the book, but even then it felt drawn out and overly stuffed with metaphor and thoughts. I applaud the author for publishing a debut novel, which was clearly a passion project for him, but I had hoped its execution would have been more successful.

I first read this book when I was at school, some 60 or so years ago. I found it in the school library, and thought it was OK. My main memory of that reading was that it was there that I first learnt about the Augrabies Falls on the Orange River. I had never heard of the Augrabies Falls before, which, according to the book, were higher and had a greater volume of water than the Victoria Falls and the Niagara Falls, which weveryone in the school knew about. But no one else at the school had heard of the Aughrabies Falls either.

I thought that one day I would like to visit the Aughrabies Falls, and about 25 years ago I did. They were impressive. I still haven't visited the Victoria Falls or the Niagara Falls, and probably never will, but with the possibility that we may pay a second visit to the Aughrabies Falls later this year, I took this book out of the City of Tshwane municipal library and read it again.

The second reading was very different from the first. The first reader was a schoolboy who had never been to any of the places described, and could only imagine what they were like. I had to picture it like the land of Mordor in a work of fiction (which I only read abouot 10 years later, in 1966).

On the second reading I had visited several of the places described in the book, and so the second reading was a reminder of places I have known. The second reading was also after we had embarked on the study of family history, and [a:Lawrence G. Green|8389463|Lawrence G. Green|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] mentions relatives of mine or my wife's in this and several others of his books. His anecdotes are not always accurate, but they are nevertheless informative and entertaining.

How does one characterise [a:Lawrence G. Green|8389463|Lawrence G. Green|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s books? He is a journalist, travel writer, amateur historian, gossip and raconteur. He has a journalist's nose for the news, and so in his travels he makes notes of stories, not just current news, but old news, news of years ago, stories that are, as he puts it in the title of one of his books, [b:Almost forgotten never told].

I come to this book now with a more critical eye. Not only have I researched the family history (and so know that some of the details of his stories about our relatives are inaccurate), but I've also studied general history and historiography, and so am on my guard for evidence of racism or colonialist propaganda, which are evident in many books written by white people about history and travel in southern Africa in the first half o0f the 20th century. There is some, but less than I expected. In describing the wars of the German colonial rulers of Namibia with the Bondelswarts tribe, he notes several instances of the Bondelswarts chivalrous behaviour, trying to avoid civilian casualties, leaving a note of apology on the body of a military medical officer they had shot by mistake, as they had not noticed his medical badgges until it was too late, and saying they would not shoot unarmed doctors. The Germans, representatives of Western "civilization", on the other hand, were carrying out wars of extermination in that period (1904-1908).

Green begins his story a bit away from the river, at Union's End, the remote boundary marker where the borders of Botswana, Namibia and South Africa meet, now part of the Transfrontier Kalahari Park. I haven't been to Union's End, but I have travelled through the Kalahari Gemsbook National Park from Twee Rivieren to Mata Mata, up the dry and dusty valley of the Auob River, on my first visit to Namibia in 1969.

I did not know, having forgotten from the first reading, that there was a settlement of Basters there, different from those of Rehoboth, who once had a shortlived Republic of Mier.

Of course there is the description of the Aughrabies Falls, though when Green visited in the 1930s he had to swim streams to get to where he could see the falls, whereas when we went there in 1991 there were bridges.

He describes the history of Onseepkans, where we crossed into Namibia in 1991, a year after it became independent, when the border officials were still housed in prefabs and tents. I took the name to indicate that some travellers who had crossed the hot and dry plains of Bushmanland, south of the river (which Green also describes) had taken the opportunity to wash their hair in the river, and washed the soap out too. But apparently the name is derived from a Hottentot word, meaning the drinking place for cattle.

Green tells some of the history of the mission station at Pella, which we have not visited, but may visit later this year, where Roman Catholic missionaries, with no knowledge of building at all, constructed a large cathedral.

So the second read was much more interesting than the first, partly because I have been to some of the places mention in the book, and we hope to see some of those he mentions that we have never seen before.

So I recommend this book to anyone who has travelled in the Northern Cape or southern Namibia, or who is planning to. Others might find it interesting too, as I did when I read it the first time.

A somewhat fuller account, with pictures, can be seen on my blog at To the river’s end | Hayes & Greene family history.