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Antigonish Review # 150
| Zoë Strachan
Fiction
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Miss Julie (Drew, Mississippi) 2007,
photograph by Thomas Sayers Ellis
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TARnations:
Introducing Zoë Wicomb
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When you read 'Boy in a Jute-Sack Hood', you'll notice a reference to "the Queen of Sheba leading her soft camels widdershins round the kirk-yaird". It's from a poem by Kathleen Jamie titled 'The Queen of Sheba', a poem which Zoë Wicomb presented to my seminar group while I was studying for an MLitt in Creative Writing at the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde.
I remember the glee with which Zoë recited Jamie's lines about the Queen dazzling a Scottish housing scheme with her silks and bells and hairy legs, but most of all with her confidence and knowledge. At the end of the poem, a parochial old git asks her who she thinks she is, the Queen of Sheba, to which of course she - and every other woman and girl present - shouts out a triumphant, "Yes!"
That glee is what I think of when I think of Zoë Wicomb. She's fantastically clever, wickedly witty and stupidly modest when it comes to her own achievements. But her enthusiasm for the achievements of other writers is loud, genuine and infectious. I'll never understand how she manages to combine a demanding lectureship with her own work and acting as a mentor to so many new writers. I've just wrestled her latest novel, Playing in the Light , from the hands of my partner Louise Welsh (an ex-tutee of Zoë's, and just one of her star protégés). I hear it's as good, if not better, than the previous two.
As is sometimes the case, I didn't want to read Zoë's own work while she was one of my teachers. When I graduated however, I reached out for her debut novel, You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town. That was eight years ago, and to this day when I imagine South Africa (where I've never been), I conjure up the atmosphere of that book. When you read this story, you'll appreciate just how meticulous Zoë is in her craft. She has that wonderful ability to construct a story which seems quiet on the page but resonates vividly in the reader's mind, one in which the beauty never quite obscures the ugliness that underpins it.
As Zoë and I met as encouraging teacher and shy student, I'm delighted that we now have occasional opportunities to socialise at ladies' evenings (or as some might say, covens). Our little band of sometime Glasgow writers consume quantities of food and wine amid much cackling and cursing. When Zoë hosts, she removes each dish from the oven whilst apologising for how utterly vile and inedible she expects it to be. Like her prose though, what she cooks is always perfectly prepared, subtly seasoned, and presented with aplomb.
As I write, I can almost hear Zoë laughing her head off at that last sentence. Rest assured, I would say the same thing of a male writer, if any male writers ever cooked for me! Regardless, the important thing is that I hope readers of The Antigonish Review will devour 'Boy in a Jute-Sack Hood' with as much satisfaction as I did.
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