Who Killed Piet Barol?
This is the sequel to the author’s History of a Pleasure Seeker, published in 2010, which focused on the hedonistic life of Piet Barol in Amsterdam in the early years of the 20th century. It is now 1914, and Piet and his wife, Stacey, are struggling with a furniture business in Cape Town. Their creditors are closing in, and the Barols come up with an idea to save the business, which involves Piet making a trip with two black South Africans to find a source of mahogany in a distant forest, as Europe distantly collapses into war. The story then changes tack, and centres on the Bantu village where Piet is taken by one of his companions, Ntsina, in order to buy timber. Richard Mason writes of the (to us) superstitious, spirit-filled world of the villagers and attempts to show how they would view the world and arrival of the white man (one of the Strange Ones, as they are known). Their worlds come together when Piet starts to fell and then make furniture from the Bantus’ sacred trees in the forest.
It is a well-narrated and absorbing story, though the constant switch from the white Western mentality and the black Bantu state of mind is quite destabilizing—which is most probably precisely the author’s intention. Without giving anything away, the author’s choice of the title is a bit of an oddity as well!
