📚Cultural Fiction. Frank Reviews A Life In Frame by @LeonoraAuthor for Rosie’s #BookReview Team #RBRT #TuesdayBookBlog #BookTwitter #booktwt
Today’s team review is from Frank.
Franks has been reading A Life In Frames by Leonora Ross
This novel has many of the things I like in a book. Well-rounded characters; complex relationships, including parent child conflict; and a thorough examination of an important aspect of geopolitics.
Lejf is one of five brothers born to a Swedish mother and Namibian father. They reside in a small town on the edge of the Namib, a desert region close to the west coast of Southern Africa. A Life in Frames is Lejf’s story, told in third person, mostly through his eyes, from the age of ten in 1995 to the present day.
Lejf has three obsessions. He is passionate about photography, nature and the older of two sisters who are childhood neighbours. He pursues a career as a photojournalist, documenting the lives of indigenous people in numerous parts of the world where they have survived the disruption to their culture and environment wrought by civilisation, especially the activities of mining companies.
This part of the book, the core element, is so well researched and presented that it is impossible not to believe that Ross has visited these places and spoken to individuals like the fictional men and women that Lejf photographs and interviews.
The places and people are rendered with such verisimilitude that this is plainly not knowledge acquired by watching countless Michael Palin travelogues – although Palin is always careful to present the case for preserving ancient cultures and languages.
Mixed in with Lejf’s travels on assignments to places as far apart as Canada and Australia, Africa and Mongolia, is his yearning for his childhood friend and adolescent lover. She moves to Germany to study, remaining there to pursue her own career. From time to time they are able to spend time together, especially when she joins him on some of his projects. These are periods that Lejf treasures.
Always supportive, she nevertheless follows her own path. It is a lonely one which leads her into marriage with an older man. Lejf, devastated by the news and deeply troubled by the stories he is uncovering . . . If I say more it will spoil the story for you. Suffice to say that the crisis, when it arrives, is shocking, yet so subtly foreshadowed that it is not a complete surprise. Another example of Ross’s skill as a writer.
It is a book that demands to be read. The familial relationships come across as totally believable, especially the father’s misunderstood concern for his son’s choice of such a high risk career. This is a family one can easily believe in. The passion with which landscapes and cultures are described bring to vibrant life the subjects of Lejf’s photography.
In view of all that, you might wonder why I am prepared to give it only four, rather than five, stars. My fear is that Ross, by including so many different locations, each of which faces similar problems, may put some readers off. The discussions of these problems are in danger of seeming repetitive. I hope I am wrong about that. I urge you to read the book to prove it so.
4 stars
Book Description:
A photojournalist consumed by his passion for telling stories through his camera lens, a father and son at a war of wills, and lovers struggling to find a way to each other through the distance between them.
Lejf Busher grows up in a family of boys in the small town of Otjiwarongo, Namibia. He’s intense and complex, with his head in the clouds. As he navigates his way through self-discovery, two women are central to life: his mother and the woman he falls in love with. Lejf’s increasing sense of destiny clashes with his father’s hopes and is aggravated by his own idealistic expectations.
Contrary to his acclaim as a photojournalist, his personal life is far from successful. He expresses his feelings through pictures but must learn about balance and compromise.
A Life in Frames is about the push and pull between the ties that bind us and the desires that motivate us. It is also about coming to grips with the consequences of unspoken and misinterpreted words.
