Joan Zawatzky

The idea behind Joan Zawatzky’s The Scent of Oranges is good. A South African expatriate returns home from Australia for her father’s funeral after many years’ absence. She is given a letter with her father’s last wishes: to look into the childhood murder of her brother. Three black South Africans had been convicted of the crime more than twenty years earlier. Her father knew that the conviction was based on race rather than evidence, and despite his own racism, in his old age he started to have misgivings about the way justice was served. I love the idea of the South African setting, especially from the point of view of a white woman who grew up there during Apartheid and was returning to her homeland with fresh eyes in the early twenty-first century. The opposing opinions concerning race held by her relatives that remained behind in South Africa add to the complexity and drama of the story.

Unfortunately, the writing style of the book leaves much to be desired. It is immature, filled with unnatural and stilted dialogue. The characters are also flat and underdeveloped. Despite the interesting premise for the plot, I found this novel a chore to read and eventually stopped before completing the book.… (more)

When a young woman named Linda returns to South Africa for the funeral of her father, she is drawn back in time to her childhood growing up on their farm amid the orange groves. Although it was she who discovered her murdered brother’s body, she has no recollection of the crime. But when she is given a letter from her father asking her to re-investigate the details of the murder, Linda finds herself once again embroiled in the mystery of her brother’s death which includes dark, family secrets.

Joan Zawatzky’s novel The Scent of Oranges is part mystery, part historical fiction. Zawatzky paints an unflattering picture of post-apartheid South Africa - a country of poverty, violence and inadequate medical care where TB and AIDS take their toll. Despite this bleak portrayal, Zawatzky also reveals the beauty of the countryside where belief in ancestral spirits are interwoven with ghosts of the past.

The book is narrated through Linda’s point of view and its strengths are the descriptions of South Africa and its people. I did not find the mystery itself that compelling - perhaps because the pace of the story is slow and early in the book Linda is often met with silence to her inquiries about the murder. Zawatzky takes a long time to build tension and resolve the conflicts which are introduced between the characters. This meandering pace is frustrating at times. I also found the dialogue to be the weakest element of the novel - stilted and unconvincing, all the characters began to sound the same to me after awhile. Because of this, I found myself feeling distanced from the characters as though I was observing their story, but not part of it.

Despite these flaws, Zawatzky does an adequate job in revealing the cultural divide between the native people and the western, often affluent population of South Africa. The magical elements of the book - visits from spirits and the belief in voodoo - were well written and compelling.

The Scent of Oranges is not a dynamic read, but readers who wish to learn more about the culture of post-Apartheid South Africa will find this novel enlightening.… (more)