Fabulous reads – Award-winning novel packs a punch
Book review - Lacuna by Fiona Snyckers.
Lacuna, Fiona Snyckers, Pan Macmillan, ISBN: 9780770106406
LUCY Lurie experienced the one thing most women fear most – being gang raped.
For years she has been living in limbo, suffering from PTSD.
Her only drive in life has become her obsession with a senior professor at her old university, John Coetzee, who has used her tragedy – without her consent – and turned it into a best-selling literary novel.
Fiona Snyders’ book, Lucuna, based in a post-apartheid South Africa, explores various controversial topics such as privilege, sexism, grief, trauma and victim-hood.
Snyders guides us through Lucy’s messy and desperate attempts to confront John, which she is convinced will help her reclaim her agency and her life.
While it is quite easy to finish the novel in one sitting, it does pack quite a punch.
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You will often find yourself shocked and horrified only to discover that an entire chapter was Lucy’s poignant, happy or self-loathing fantasies.
You’ll be left wondering what is real and what isn’t. This is especially significant when a revaluation in the case is revealed in the end, which is just too horrific to comprehend.
I do have concerns that these chapters reinforce the idea that women are ‘unreliable’ and ‘untrustworthy’ – especially when it comes to sexual assault cases.
However, Lucuna is an emotional roller coaster which I believe gives readers some insight into the life and thought processes of rape survivors.
Those chapters also provide ‘alternative universes’ which show how different people respond to trauma – something that would not have been possible if Snyders stuck to Lucy’s true experiences and responses.
The book does share some graphic details, but provides some powerful insights and asks some difficult questions.
Lacuna won the Fiction – Best Novel category of the 2020 National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences Awards.
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