Frankie and Stankie (Hardcover)

This is the story of Dinah, growing up in South Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. Living with liberal parents, she experiences apartheid with growing disgust, but nevertheless does not allow it to interfere with the importance of a first boyfriend, doing well in exams and finding best friends.

Frankie and Stankie is a marvellous book. Trapido's trademark light touch is wonderfully on display as characters, both average and extraordinary are brought to life beautifully. But underlying her usual vignettes is the history of South Africa. For those who know little about the country this is a fantastic introduction to exactly what the Boer War was, to the way in which the British and Afrikaans battled for supremacy, and the attempts to undermine the regime of apartheid.

Frankie and Stankie draws no simple conclusions, and does not lay all blame solely at one person's door. It attempts to document a past (albeit from a clear personal standpoint), and does so excellently.

This is a wonderful book, and I would heartily recommend it.

We thought that the title, the picture and descriptions on the cover were misleading, suggesting that the book was about Dinah and Lisa, whereas although Lisa figured strongly at the beginning, it was clearly Dinah's story. The way in which some characters fizzled out as the story progressed we found irritating too, as we wanted to know what happened to their lives too. But realised that this was in some ways realistic as seen from Dinah's point of view, and as we grow up the importance of different people in our lives - both family and friends -changes. The ending too was disappointing. We felt it would have ended better at the moment Dinah left South Africa, and that the 'Afterword' didn't sit comfortably with the rest of the book.

Even though few of us knew much detail of the history of events in South Africa, the story easily carried you along informing and explaining on the way. We felt the child's view of changes in South Africa created a wonderful understatement of big events, which was very effective in putting across the context of the story. It was an interesting account of living as a child and teenager in South Africa during the 50's and 60s, and some of us identified with the childhood experiences Barbara Trapido describes, which seemed to resonate with growing up in 50's England

This is fundamentally different from her earlier, lighter, novels I have now read. The politics of South Africa is so bizarre, she has no reason to rely on her usual juxtaposition of strange cause and effect, fatal coincidence and melodramatic characterisation. All she has to do, to create her well-practised sense of absurd but successful juggling, is to place the extreme politics of the time alongside the ordinary dramas of a girl growing up. People in custody are "suddenly beginning to manage fatal accidents... on the stairs, taking tumbles from upstairs windows". "Dinah's response ... is to join the madrigal group".

Reading this book helped me understand the recent history of South Africa better and what it felt like to live through a time when shocking events have become routine. The images are so strong it is almost as if there is a camera there. It all rings true, even though it benefits from hindsight. The character and her family are in that society but not quite of it. Her parents had dragged themselves out of Europe to escape all that, and their attitude towards Boers, she makes clear, is at first essentially snobbish. But for Barbara's generation, the only way was out - the trek to London is the inevitable end of this novel.