Listen to this book review by Beryl Eichenberger
The Fourth Boy by Robert Andrew Wilson is one of those books that digs deep into your soul.
This exquisitely crafted debut novel once again highlights the talent of local writers, stories that deserve to be heard and, through the medium of historical fiction, understanding events that have shaped our country. Pop into any of the museums in small towns around South Africa and you’ll discover untold stories that deserve the light of day.
In this novel Wilson takes us to the Little Karoo. To Oudtshoorn, where in 1943 five hundred Polish children were brought from Siberian internment camps. Orphaned and traumatised these refugees, many of them Jewish, were cared for and educated in a children’s home in the small town. Post war many were assimilated into South African society, contributing significantly to the economy. The CP Nel Museum in Oudtshoorn gives a record of these children and, when you sit in the recreated synagogue you will feel the history, that trauma and the inherent kindness that lies in this town.
1943: Imagine four small boys travelling on a ship to a new country – their short pasts having seen too much horror. Fast friendships forged; a future beckoning. 1986: South Africa is in turmoil: journalist Grant Asher is on his first real investigative assignment and what was loosely planned as a travelogue of the Little Karoo is about to turn into something more meaty. His dying single mother told him that his father, ‘the space that had loitered in our lives’, who left when he was one, was gay, Jewish, possibly in Oudtshoorn and his surname was Mazra. On a whim Grant sets off to find him.
What awaits him in the tranquil Karoo is anything but. A detective, struggling against his better judgement; three murders, connected by being refugees from the children’s home and having the tips of their little finger removed post mortem. One of them his father. Three friends; complicated relationships. There was a fourth – who is he and is he the perpetrator?
Wilson crafts a powerful narrative. His use of words felt like liquid flowing across a page as we are swept along in this dark, desirous and emotionally deep story. He builds his characters and their stories with precision, bringing the reader into their minds, their hearts. He recreates a complicated time in the country: fearful, when informers, banning and torture was on every corner, permeating every town and village. Amidst that, his plotting has surprise, betrayal, unexpected outcomes and a tight rein on revealing too much too soon. He has observed those things we hide, friendships that can never be undone. The story is so alive, with a pulse that ebbs and flows in the right places. A story that will stay with you.
About the author
Andrew Robert Wilson has a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Rhodes University and has been in the media and entertainment industry for nearly forty years, variously as actor, voice artist, TV presenter, writer, director and journalist. A theatre critic for the Mail and Guardian in the late 1990s he has also worked extensively in wildlife and conservation television. He was one of twenty authors published in the anthology Fluid. The Fourth Boy is his debut novel.
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