THE WATER MAN’S DAUGHTER by Emma Ruby-Sachs (Emblem), 320 pages, $22.99 paper. Ruby-Sachs joins the Harbourfront Reading Series Wednesday (May 25). See listing. Rating: NNN
The debut novel by Toronto-born, New York City-based Emma Ruby-Sachs has many of the elements of a good novel. The story, set in post-apartheid South Africa, tears right along. The prose is good – sometimes powerful – and you want to root for the characters.
But the narrative has a fatal flaw.
Phiri Township’s residents are fighting back against the new water system, and the foreign company delivering it, which is more costly, ironically, than the one delivered under apartheid. The resisters are led by the charismatic young Nomsulwa and her unpredictable cousin Mira.
When a Canadian employee of the offending water company is murdered during his stay in the area, police chief Zembe Afrika tries to solve the murder using her long-time connection to Nomsulwa, whom she’s been secretly protecting.
In return, Afrika insists that Nomsulwa act as guide for the dead man’s daughter, Claire, who’s heading to South Africa to find out more about what happened to her father.
Ruby-Sachs obviously knows what she’s writing about, vividly evoking her location, and offers tons of detail – sometimes more than we need – about water systems. And both Nomsulwa and Afrika are great characters, Afrika coping with sexism and corporate corruption, Nomsulwa recovering from the loss of her own father and terrified that her movement will be compromised by her cousin’s ill-considered strategies.
But at a basic level, the relationship between Claire and Nomsulwa doesn’t make sense. The South African is drawn to the young Canadian yet can’t ignore the fact that she’s the privileged daughter of the Devil. That should create more conflict than the author offers.
And a late reveal makes everything that has happened between them impossible to believe. Strange that an editor wouldn’t have pressed Ruby-Sachs on this.
As it is, The Water Man’s Daughter has great energy and shows a ton of promise.
susanc@nowtoronto.com.
