Mark Behr (1963–2015)

Set in South Africa in the mid 1970s, and narrated by Marnus Erasmus, the eleven year old son of the well connected and politically influential Afrikaner General Erasmus and his now retired opera singer wife Leonora, the story gives real insight into how one’s background and upbringing facilitate firmly held ideals and beliefs.
The Erasmus family plays host to a Mr Smith, the alias given to a visiting undercover Chilean General who sympathises with the Afrikaners’ views. Through their show more interaction with Mr Smith, with their attitude toward their Coloured servants and their behaviour toward the Blacks, we get a very good impression of the Afrikaners’ proud belief in their own superiority; however shocking such views may seem today.
But the beauty of the story is in the telling through the eyes of the eleven year old Marnus. Behr convincingly conveys the activities, expressions and innocence of youth, despite the perverted indoctrinated beliefs. His friendship with is class mate Frikkie, something of a bully and problem child at school; and his spiteful relationship with his older sister Ilse are well portrayed. Particularly endearing is the relationship he enjoys with his parents and his undoubted love and respect for them; a love than can even overcome the horrifying discovery Manus makes towards the end involving his father.
Interspersed with the current narrative is an ongoing account from the twenty four year old lieutenant Manus as he serves on the war front.
A beautifully written and revealing account, Behr succeeds in presenting an appealing view of a year in a family’s life despite their horrifying attitudes and beliefs. show less

Told from the viewpoint of an Afrikaans boy growing up in Cape Town. The innocent voice exposes how simple it is to keep two separate sets of values bolstered by propriety, religion, and tradition.

The boy tells it all in his own simple terms. He conveys the "facts" of racial differences in the same way as he describes the history of whaling in False Bay. We see this strange world as he makes sense of it, and it is quite jarring. The book explores how harmful attitudes are shaped at a young show more age, and how difficult it is to swim against the prevailing current. Throughout the story we cannot help but feel the shadow of hidden conflict between different understandings of truth and humanity. We are also given a glimpse of the evil that lurks behind carefully constructed images of family life, order and principle. show less

I read this book for the portrait of South Africa, which was moving. I feel that it connected me to a time and a place in a believable way. I do not understand why the author decided to add random sexual trauma #3 to the end of the book. For me it did not connect in any way to anything else that was going on. Like the Kite Runner, it took a fascinating book and turned it into sensationalistic dreck. I absolutely believe that childhood sexual abuse occurs more frequently than we want to show more admit, and that it causes terrible harm, but I don't understand it as a literary conceit. show less

Embrace is an incredibly vivid and enthralling novel, for all that its subject matter sometimes makes it difficult to read. It follows Karl, a young boy in South Africa in the 1970s, as he slowly becomes aware of not just his own sexuality, but also of the racial tensions in the world around him. Tightly constructed, it builds to a very tense conclusion that left me breathless.