Nature Lessons: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read! Paranoia, Reality and Delusion
Review: After the opening chapters, I could not put this book down.
Part mystery, part political thriller, part travelogue, it is fascinating in its description of South African society during and after apartheid. In human terms, it explores the strain in family and social relationships that may arise from paranoia rooted either in mental illness or an oppressive political regime. After 20 years in the United States, a woman returns home to search for her mother and the "truths" of their family history--and comes to understand how the past continues to damage the present. If you liked the movie "A Beautiful Mind" or the books "This Much I Know To Be True" and "Rescuing Patty Hearst," then make sure not to miss this one. Lynette Brasfield is in a league with Wally Lamb in showing how psychotic delusions often reflect the surrounding cultural reality, how the two may be confused, and how what is "real" and what is "paranoid" also may depend on a person's racial or class perspective. What makes the novel exceptional is its cross-cultural perspective: the very fact that it is set in South Africa allows sufficient distance for American readers to perhaps understand and accept more easily the painful roots of paranoia that exist in our own society. Keep Nature Lessons in mind the next time you pass a homeless person holding a sign that protests FBI and CIA surveillance, or read about African American complaints about police stops based on racial profiles. Remember it also in recalling your own family's oral history, especially any vague stories about "eccentric" relatives or upheavals followed by social withdrawal. Nature Lessons ultimately is about all of us. No one is immune.

Rating:
Summary: great
Review: Always compelling mother/daughter relationships are backdropped against South Africa and the horrors of apartheid. Very interesting reading and a good companion read to A TELLING TIME, by Glynnis Hayward, which also deals with the intricacies of parent/child relationships complicated by apartheid.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent novel - first, or otherwise
Review: Brasfield creates a fascinating mystery out of her protagonist's desire to understand a painful upbringing. She weaves together information about Kate Jensen's mother's mental illness, her country's political climate, and the oddly over-zealous attentions of her uncle, Oom Piet. Brasfield's management of a mentally ill character is particularly impressive; Kate's mother is neither simple nor predictable. If you enjoy reading about politics, South Africa, relationships between men and women, family interactions - or even if you just like a good mystery - read Nature Lessons.

Rating:
Summary: A great read
Review: First and foremost, Nature Lessons is a great read about a daughter's simultaneous love of and revulsion for a seriously debilitated mother. The novel alternates between the daughter's childhood perspective and the more mature yet still troubled view of the adult. This strategy heightens the story's poignancy, forcing the adult narrator to grapple with what the child could not: the inability to ignore the mother's humanity, despite her harrowing mental illness and its consequences. The South African setting mirrors the schizophrenic emotional environment. Brasfield's descriptions are lush, fantastic, and, especially under apartheid, downright ugly. Like the Truth and Reconciliation hearings occurring during the adult sections, Nature Lessons aims for honesty. At times this honesty made me squirm, but I always felt moved and touched by an authentic experience.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome book...
Review: I finished "Nature Lessons" over the weekend. It was an awesome, powerful book. I thought it really captured the complex, love-hate relationship with a family member whose behavior is totally unpredictable. It also gave a touching look at the scar that apartheid left behind. If you know anyone who is looking for a good read, say, "Lynette Brasfield, Nature Lessons."

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Summary: An exciting story about a young girl and her mother
Review: I was hooked on this from the first page. I couldn't stop reading. Lynette Brasfield took me from middle America and dropped me in South Africa of the 1960's and carefully brought me forward telling a wonderful story about a little girl and her mother using South Africa as a backdrop. I got a history lesson within a novel that examined the lives to a mother and daughter trapped in a crazy world. Brasfield kept me guessing every chapter and in the end I was satisfied that all the pieces of these shattered lives had been put back together so I could understand. I loved reading this book. Exquisite writing and delicate handling of the characters and their environment.

Rating:
Summary: A Haunting Journey
Review: Intriguing storyline and amazing use of description. Lynette is a first-class story teller and author. This is a book you won't want to put down.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing Details
Review: Intriguing storyline and amazing use of description. Lynette is a first-class story teller and author. This is a book you won't want to put down.

Rating:
Summary: A Haunting Journey
Review: It is not often that one finds the combination of beautiful writing and a compelling story. Nature Lessons is that and more. Set against the exotic yet turbulent atmosphere of South Africa during apartheid, we meet the young Kate Jensen, who recounts her life with a mentally ill mother. Woven in with the story of young Kate, is the journey of the older Kate who returns to South Africa to search for her mother. Their stories create a tapestry rich in the lasting effects of cultural, political, and psychological dynamics on a young girl. It grips the reader from the first page and takes one on a haunting journey.

Rating:
Summary: Literary page-turner
Review: Lynette Brasfield's Nature Lessons is a tremendous first novel, and a powerful reading experience on many levels. The author's use of rich imagery, colorful settings, and jump-out-at-you characters work exquisitely with the story's driving question-what happened to Kate Jensen's mother? As the tale unfolds, Brasfield takes us on a journey into one woman's inner world, and through the past and present of South Africa, her country of origin, peeling back layers of truths that are at once painful, heartbreaking, and ultimately freeing, as she exposes a fractured mother/daughter relationship. Brasfield writes in alternating chapters of Kate as a woman and a young girl, exploring questions of sanity and mental illness, and where the lines blur, all through the lens of culture. The author tackles race issues with a delicate touch as the narrator confronts the inhumanity of apartheid, focusing her lens on the fate of Winston, her family's gardener, and on her relationship with a young friend, Joshua. I have only one question: Ms. Brasfield, can you hurry and write another?