A death in South Africa

A Novel

Anne Landsman

Soho: 282 pp., $23

‘The Rowing Lesson’

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KNOWING that death can be experienced in countless ways, I came to this book intrigued to learn what sorts of lessons Anne Landsman would present to readers in her novel “The Rowing Lesson.” Death, after all, when we choose to look at it, almost defies description. In the movies, it is neat and full of profound last words; in life, it is often physically taxing, emotionally messy and immeasurably difficult for most when they lose a loved one. Every family sees death differently, every culture has its ways of handling it and the modern medical world is out to cure it. Bearing these complexities in mind, Landsman presents the story of a daughter dealing with her father’s death in South Africa.

Though most people are probably familiar with the simple, intimate types of lessons taught in Mitch Albom’s “Tuesdays With Morrie,” I felt “The Rowing Lesson” might come closer to Margaret Edson’s play “Wit,” which is far more rigorous and intellectual. Given that these stories tackle such unknown terrain, some may not realize that death sometimes comes only after a body becomes uninhabitable. As bodies break down, so do families. Relationships become strained, memories are reexamined and closeness is often intertwined with separation and loss. All the while, families and loved ones try to hold themselves together while they look for a cure, even when a cure is no longer possible. Landsman takes on a massive challenge in describing this unfolding time of life.

We’re presented with the story of Harold Klein’s life, via his daughter Betsy, who recounts his life as she stays with him in a South African hospital, where he is dying. The story moves between his hospital room and scenes from his life, giving us glimpses of his childhood, his days in medical school and finally, in becoming a practicing physician, receiving the endearing title “Doctor God.”

The family relationships are presented like a number of different puzzles randomly mixed together. The introduction of characters sometimes occurs in a fragmented fashion. A reader might expect the author to resolve certain crises before his death, but Landsman doesn’t take us there. Instead she takes us on a ride with Harold’s daughter, who is perhaps feeling her father’s life more fully in the days leading up to his death than at any other time in her life. She reflects back, looking at her family and father’s life for the first time with adult eyes, but we are never allowed to see her growth or any revelations she may have gained along the way.

Part of the challenge posed by “The Rowing Lesson” is Landsman’s writing style. At times it is poetic and at other times dense and confusing. Scenes in her father’s hospital room are rich with family dynamics, and her descriptions of the dying process are unique and gritty, flavored with a mixture of South African, Hebrew and medical terms. But it is also difficult to follow Betsy as she reviews her father’s life. When Betsy, for instance, shifts from a poetic statement about dying -- “you’re driving inside the belly of eternity and there’s nothing but boiling terror in your veins” -- to the South African landscape -- “You’re at the river now, an offshoot of the Brede, and you drive slowly over the causeway. The tires are in the water. What was it that floated past the two-headed dog? The boat, the floating leaf, the little ship that goes straight into the endless end?” -- one is unsure if this is stream of consciousness or just an unusual freedom with words.

There are few hints along Harold Klein’s journey that help us to navigate whether this is his story, told to Betsy, or if this is his daughter’s imagining of what his life was. The South African way of life that readers glimpse in Harold’s life is revealed bit by bit and the reader must work hard for these glimpses, earn them -- just as the reader must also work hard to understand this complex writing style.

Landsman’s language is more closely related to poetry than to prose; and like poetry, it will have a more selective audience. If you want to witness Landsman’s amazing feats of language, you won’t find her words disappointing. Consider the harrowing image that begins the novel: “I can hear the dirty blood inside you, the way that old fish, the coelacanth, spins on its head and can hear the heartbeat of its prey.”

Yet I came away wishing she would give us a little more clarity to ground us so that we could truly enter the story and find richness in characters besides Harold and South Africa’s majestic topography. Though the geography is described richly by Landsman, one wishes we knew more about Betsy and the family.

On the subject of dying it would have been easy for Landsman to fall back on cliches, but instead she soars in the other direction. Betsy’s unique descriptions of her father dying are sometimes felt as if the process is being described from the inside-out. Yet the arc of his death is never fully developed or revealed. His death, like his life, is mixed with words stacked upon words that convey vivid pictures but don’t always connect well.

One comes away from “The Rowing Lesson” with less of a sharp portrait of a family in crisis than with the feeling that a profound journey has occurred though one can’t be entirely sure of its meaning. Landsman doesn’t provide enough firm ground to help the reader take in this sweeping story of a man’s unique life in South Africa, but for some this may be sufficient.

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David Kessler is the author of “The Needs of the Dying” and, with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, “Life Lessons” and “On Grief and Grieving.”