The One That Got Away: Short Stories
South African–born Wicomb's second collection subtly portrays the shifting relations among family, friends and servants in a transformed South Africa. Friends and Goffels renders the disruption in the friendship of Dot and Julie, who were once united by their dark skin color but who have been separated by Julie's years abroad and marriage to a white Scotsman. In Mrs Pringle's Bed, Polly Pringle confines herself to the bed that once belonged to her daughter and, with the aid of her uncomprehending housekeeper, manipulates her bewildered husband. In these and other stories, changes in perspective open up what could be very claustrophobic narratives. Wicomb also sets many stories in Glasgow—both the title story and There's the Birth That Never Flew follow a newlywed South African couple on their honeymoon there; in In the Botanic Gardens, Dorothy Brink makes the long journey from South Africa to Glasgow to find her son, who has gone missing. Encompassing a range of voices and attitudes, Wicomb's work impresses, though some of the diction—South African and Glaswegian—and nuances of class and race may elude an American audience.(June)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.