The Housemaid's Daughter
by Barbara Mutch
If your preferred genres are literary fiction and historical fiction, you’ll be very entertained by the heavy racial drama The Housemaid’s Daughter. It’s no surprise that the author, Barbara Mutch, can describe the weather, roads, vegetation, and occurrences of South Africa as if she’s lived there herself, because she has! The personal touch shows, and in the literary descriptions, you can almost feel the heat and smell the flowers. Mutch’s writing talent is easily the best element of this novel, and even if you don’t end up liking the book, you’ll still admit she’s a lovely writer.
I found the story itself a bit unrealistic. It’s set in the years before apartheid, but miraculously in the featured household, the white matriarch bonds very closely with one of her black maid’s daughter. She teaches her how to read, frequently touches and embraces her, and not only teaches her how to play the piano but lets her practice whenever she wants to. As a result of this treatment, the lead character feels like she doesn’t fit in with either race. She quickly realizes the white race will never accept her, since the master of the house treats her quite differently from the mistress, and when she finds herself in a terrible situation, she runs away to the mud huts where the black South Africans live. Once again, her choices once in this situation are unlikely, making her stupidity get in the way with enjoyment of the novel. Back in the time period, if something like that really happened, it would have been handled much differently.
Still, if you like well-written literary fiction with female protagonists who continually make mistakes that are cringe-worthy, you’ll probably like this book. My mom read it, and she liked it better than I did.
I found the story itself a bit unrealistic. It’s set in the years before apartheid, but miraculously in the featured household, the white matriarch bonds very closely with one of her black maid’s daughter. She teaches her how to read, frequently touches and embraces her, and not only teaches her how to play the piano but lets her practice whenever she wants to. As a result of this treatment, the lead character feels like she doesn’t fit in with either race. She quickly realizes the white race will never accept her, since the master of the house treats her quite differently from the mistress, and when she finds herself in a terrible situation, she runs away to the mud huts where the black South Africans live. Once again, her choices once in this situation are unlikely, making her stupidity get in the way with enjoyment of the novel. Back in the time period, if something like that really happened, it would have been handled much differently.
Still, if you like well-written literary fiction with female protagonists who continually make mistakes that are cringe-worthy, you’ll probably like this book. My mom read it, and she liked it better than I did.