Fault lines
Joanne Macgregor
Publisher: Protea Book House
ISBN: 9781485304227
Fault lines is the third and most recent title in Joanne Macgregor’s Eco-warriors series written for young adults. A counselling psychologist in private practice, as well as a prolific writer, Macgregor specifically includes a female readership in her dedication: “To every teenager who is struggling to find her way through the difficult years of high school. Life gets better.” The three eco-warriors, now fifteen, are all girls.
Samantha Steadman is the leader of the trio, and her voice is the first we hear – via an email, a contemporary touch. Her family has humble origins, but her intellectual abilities give her access to a prestigious private boarding school for girls in the Drakensberg region. There, Sam and her two best friends, her “besties” – Jessie Delaney (who is rich and paints) and politician’s daughter Nomusa Gule (who runs competitively) – fight against the neglect or destruction of natural resources, so earning their “eco-warriors” appellation. They are also beginning to experience romantic feelings for boys, while they do the emotional work necessary to deal with tensions in their friendships as well as difficulties with other members of the school community, whether pupils or teachers.
In this novel, they are confronted with “fault lines” that pose serious threats not only to their friendships, but also to the Karoo and its populace. An oil-greedy corporate, Premier PetroGas, has announced its intention to buy a Karoo farm near Nieu-Bethesda and start fracking. Sam and Nomusa, for the first time, fail to find common ground. When Sam tells her two friends that fracking will, “if it goes ahead … be an environmental catastrophe for the Karoo” (78), Nomusa tells Sam – who is “flabbergasted” – that she is not in favour of trying to halt the fracking. She explains that “we’re a poor country, Sam. We can’t afford not to do this” (85). Nomusa is a politician’s daughter, and yet previously “when Sam, Nomusa and Jessie had tackled environmental issues … they’d done so together, all three of them” (87). Especially worrying is the likelihood that fracking will pollute the underground water sources in this semi-desert region. Sam feels hurt, betrayed.
Meanwhile, Jessie is distancing herself from her friends. She has become enchanted by the glamour of a new girl, Anastasia, who is Russian and who claims to be a princess. Jessie goes on a drastic diet in an effort to emulate Anastasia’s thinness, and she knows her friends will disapprove. She also stops painting. Determined to restore their closeness to Jessie, Sam and Nomusa apply themselves to winning back their friend.
Sam strongly condemns Jessie’s choice: “The beauty myth – the idea that there’s only one way to be beautiful, that being pretty is more important than being clever or kind or powerful – it’s a lie” (90). Sam speaks passionately because she is missing Jessie and she cares about her friend. She knows how crucial it is to Jessie’s sense of self-worth that she continue to express herself through her painting. She and Nomusa realise they will have to moderate their criticism of Anastasia for fear of driving Jessie back to the Russian.
Macgregor seeds a fair amount of technological information throughout the novel. This locates the plot in substantial fact – the controversy around Karoo fracking has led to much publicity in the South African media – while Macgregor also presents these details in digestible pieces, mostly through Sam’s voice. The eco-warriors’ activism to prevent fracking could strike some readers as a weighty theme for a novel that is addressed mainly to 12- to 18-year-olds. But young adult fiction frequently takes the form of coming-of-age narratives, in which teenagers are preparing for life in adult society. The eco-warriors’ decisions as to whether or not to take part in public affairs (made by all three of them in individual ways that suit their temperaments) are bound up with their evolving identities as they learn to take responsibility for their actions and to become responsible citizens.
The female pronoun in the dedication to the implied reader and the choice of three female main characters signal the author’s feminism. Yet, neither the feminism nor the theme of resistance to fracking renders this book dull, over-earnest. Humour, teenage slang, and irony – some of it directed at the trio, like the chapter title, “Teens and other animals” – enliven the story. The delicate first adventures in heterosexual relationships will pique interest, while several minor characters have their lively moments, often through dialogue. In the later chapters, tension builds up as the author delays the conclusion of her story … which turns out not to be the conclusion, for there is an epilogue that contains two pieces of journalism, one from the Moscow Times Online, detailing the extradition from the Bahamas to Russia of Anastasia’s criminal father.
This novel features a materially comfortable, middle-class world in which crime intrudes hardly at all, but in the growing list of young adult titles written by South Africans, some characters inhabit less comfortable, more dangerous worlds, as in the excellent This book betrays my brother by Kagiso Lesego Molope (2012). A township teen who adores her brother must betray the fact that he is a rapist. The titles of township music and the addition of slang add authenticity to this tale. Young adult novels represent a rich source of entertainment for young South Africans, as well as offering them reflections of their lives in all their variety.
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