‘The shout on the front cover of ‘The Yearning’ has Zakes Mda waxing lyrical about Mohale Mashigo’s writing talent. All his descriptors are true,’ writes Kwanele Sosibofiled in her review.
In The Yearning, protagonist Marubini’s blissful, urbane life is upended by an insistent inconvenience. In the boardrooms of a wine farm in the Western Cape, and in her bedroom as she caresses her green-eyed French-Moroccan lover, Marubini’s peace is slowly coming undone.
Could it be “the calling?” Could it be an unresolved childhood issue, or could it be, as the doctors speculate, epilepsy?
Mohale Mashigo’s debut novel seeks to unravel these questions in a narrative that is concerned with the present, but only in so far as it is beholden to the past.
The story darts back and forth to resolve this entanglement.
Marubini has inherited a long-standing family tradition, something she has yet to reckon with as she tastes success in the corporate world. It is a world in which she is the capable black person, helping the company market its products to the once ignored but now lucrative black market.
Living in contemporary, post-apartheid South Africa (perhaps before 2005, as Polokwane is called Pietersburg), Marubini is the picture of contentment: a sea-facing flat and a small but dedicated support structure of friends, colleagues and a lover.
But Marubini’s seemingly perfect life is, unbeknown to her, a mask papering over a traumatic childhood and a family secret that involves the whereabouts of a missing father. The book is about how her past literally draws into herself, so that she may discover these truths and therefore become complete.
This “yearning”, which comes in the form of dreams and apparitions of singing schoolchildren, overcomes her physiologically, forcing her to move back home temporarily. She spends a large part of the story resisting these disturbances, until she can no longer maintain a public life.
Veering from the past to the present to elucidate these complexities, the story moves between Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pietersburg.
It kicks off at a friend’s birthday dinner in Cape Town where Marubini meets and quickly dates a French-speaking restaurateur. Pierre moves from fixing the service at his restaurant to waking up in Marubini’s bed. The quick introduction of this relationship also sets the tone for the briskly formulated characters and the uneven pacing.
For full review by Kwanele Sosibofiled of The Yearning, see Mail & Guardian
