Time Out

A South African family, fractured by the sudden and violent death of a child, spends a year in France, restoring an old house in a small village. What was meant to have been a dream year becomes a year of grief, but also, eventually of healing. Marita van der Vyver writes warmly, wisely and beautifully about the tensions and challenges faced by each member of the family, and, as the seasons pass, of how the wife finds her way back into her own life, back to the husband and child she has withdrawn from. Moving and life-affirming, this novel shows Van der Vyver writing at her empathetic best.