Book Review
Title: Brutal Legacy
Publisher: MFBooks Joburg, a publisher of Jacana Media
Author: Tracy Going
I did not cry when reading The Brutal Legacy, however, the screams of both the author and her mother caused noise in my ears. I’ve heard these screams before. I can clearly identify with them. However, I won’t cry for Tracy. As Shakespeare once said, “To cry is to lessen the depth of pain.” I know the fear that comes from what is supposed to be a source of love and comfort. I know the apprehension that lingers in between while I wait for the next episode. The movie is familiar to me. The cast is different. I have acted in this movie as both a lead and a villain. Both roles continue to haunt me while I sleep.
The Brutal Legacy is a brutally honest account of abuse, loss of innocence, and reimagining oneself in an unforgiving patriarchal environment. It is a story of the devastation caused by gender violence. It is about disintegrating families; a powerful manuscript that offers a glimpse of that twilight zone between courage and fear. The story is told with ease and clarity without any attempt at illicit sympathy or bathed in nostalgia. The writer tells it as she remembers it. He writes beautifully as if he is reporting from the front. In fact, it is a sad book. One is not consoled by the fact that our protagonist survived not only the alcoholic father, abusive partner, but also the re-trauma by the justice system and the media. If there is any consolation, it is cold. Statistics on gender-based violence tell the story. It is an epidemic. It is a sad accusation against our nascent democracy that the drama unfolded before our eyes in the new South Africa.
Tracy is redrawing the contours of memoir writing, breaking new ground so to speak. While the story is extremely harrowing, its powerful narrative, lucid depiction of landscapes, and powerful use of ideophones lull you into thinking it’s a novel. This shows that it is the work of a mature author with a large vocabulary and a rich imagination enhanced by her unwavering memory of the miniature details of her life. His childhood memories are not the “predicament” of the book, but they provide some kind of context for the main theme, that of a brutal family legacy. In another publishing industry triumph, the two stories – childhood memories and adult abuse – sit comfortably side by side with the latter overlaid by the actual “situation” of the book. It’s done so expertly that you don’t linger over the backstory. In the end, both women (mother and daughter) survive the ordeal of abuse.
However, the words of the magistrate presiding over Tracy’s criminal trial will haunt me for the rest of my mortal self, “he deserves a second chance.” Nonetheless, Tracy proves that life is so beautiful, and for it to flow like the Nile River, we have to stand firm, fight, and live another day.