suzy bell
cape town, South Africa Email: bellsuzy@gmail.com I am a weekly columnist with a daily newspaper based in Cape Town. I am a former arts editor and prior an arts writer for the Mail & Guardian for three years.
I have just completed my masters creative writing at UCT and my first novel, Paradise Valley of which an excerpt will be published in this month's New Contrast literary journal.
I am currently looking for a good, local literary agent.
Synopsis of Paradise Valley:
"What will you say about your father when he’s dead?
How much will you lie to protect?"
Mum, the sane one, looking swish in her TV gown, mint green heels and pearls, chided dad non-stop: “You live in a fool’s paradise. Your ship will never come in.”
Dad would respond with a gentle smile, singing his favourite ditty: “I’m fat and lazy and a little bit crazy and I don’t know what to do.”
Dad wasn’t fat.
So consuming was dad’s delusion it threatened to destroy our family, forcing us to live like grifters.
“Guga mzimba sala nhliziyo!” / “I’m fighting fit and raring to go,” insisted dad.
But he never moved.
The author, Suzy Bell, weaves a story of magic and sadness around a family’s brittle relationship with their father. Distinctly South African, Paradise Valley, explores the effects of divorce, death and self-delusion against a daughter’s quest for identity in a land where she sees the people “hardy like the oleander – the Selon’s roos growing wild in the garden of their graves.”
“Paradise Valley is good and strong and original, with unexpected and quirky changes of pace, angle and focus” writes André Brink.
ends
Interests: culture, history, literature
Published writer: No
Freelance: Yes |
