Gardening at Night

Front Cover
Random House, Jun 30, 2011 - Fiction - 256 pages

Gardening at Night follows the unfolding of a young girl's life through a childhood filled with silences, through adolescence and young womanhood. It is about how much people are the total of their longings, how high drama can also be low comedy. It probes how much of the old century a girl should take with her into the new one, and examines the merging of families in the Eighties and their emerging into the florescence of the Nineties and beyond.

It is especially the story of a girl's escape from a ghost town. The South African mining town of Kimberley was created over a hundred years ago when men with buckets scraped out the insides of the earth like a thousand black dentists. Now it is a place where the only tales are those of leaving.

Winner of 2004 Commonwealth Best First Book Award.

 

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
3
Section 2
9
Section 3
12
Section 4
14
Section 5
19
Section 6
22
Section 7
24
Section 8
28
Section 25
125
Section 26
131
Section 27
135
Section 28
137
Section 29
151
Section 30
154
Section 31
161
Section 32
163

Section 9
41
Section 10
45
Section 11
47
Section 12
49
Section 13
53
Section 14
57
Section 15
63
Section 16
73
Section 17
75
Section 18
76
Section 19
81
Section 20
95
Section 21
100
Section 22
104
Section 23
114
Section 24
121
Section 33
171
Section 34
174
Section 35
177
Section 36
183
Section 37
185
Section 38
186
Section 39
187
Section 40
189
Section 41
191
Section 42
192
Section 43
199
Section 44
204
Section 45
217
Section 46
245
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Gardening at Night
Diane Awerbuck
Snippet view - 2003
Gardening at Night
Diane Awerbuck
No preview available - 2004

Common terms and phrases

Afrikaans Appletisers arms baby beer biltong blood blue body boys braai breath brother burning Cape Town Chris Isaak cold coloured comes condom Condorman damp dark Diamond Fields Advertiser Diamond Lil dogs Donald Duck door drink drive Enid Blyton everything eyes face father feel feet fingers floor garden girls Gordon Grahamstown grass hair hands happen hard hate head hurt inside Kimberley kiss knobkierie kwaito laughing leans legs lips live look Mick morning mother mouth move never night panties parents pink Postmasburg says Scalextric scrabbling shiny shirt shout skin sleep smell smile song sound stand stare stay stepfather Stephen King sticky stomach stop sweat teeth tell thick things tongue trying turn voice waiting walk wall watch wear Wielie Walie window women

About the author (2011)

Diane Awerbuck teaches high school English and History to Cape Town schoolgirls. She knows that someday she will have to go back to Kimberley. Gardening at Night won the 2004 Commonwealth Best First Book Award (Africa and the Caribbean), and was shortlisted for the International Dublin IMPAC Award. She is also author of a collection of short stories, Cabin Fever (2011), and the novel Home Remedies (2012).

Bibliographic information

TitleGardening at Night
AuthorDiane Awerbuck
Editionreprint
PublisherRandom House, 2011
ISBN144644886X, 9781446448861
Length256 pages
Subjects › 

Fiction / Coming of Age
Fiction / Cultural Heritage
Fiction / General
Fiction / Literary
Fiction / Small Town & Rural
Fiction / Women
  
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