Author: Marita van der Vyver

Format: Medium Softcover

Condition: Very Good

Time Out by Marita van der Vyver

Time Out is set in a small town in France. Hester, her husband Andre, son Emile, and in a sense their daughter Mannon, are taking a year out to fix up a house they have bought in the small town of Lunel. It should be an idyllic time, but a tragedy in the family, the death of a child, has turned it into a time of dangerous undercurrents of emotion.

The house has been bought with a legacy that Andre has received and they have left their home in South Africa for a sabbatical in France.

Hester is the Francophile in the family, but even her love of France and the French language cannot lift her out of her mood of despair.

Hester is in denial about the tragedy that has befallen the hitherto happy family. She cannot connect with her husband or her son. Andre is struggling to get his wife back while dealing with her grief, and Emile is struggling to find his feet at school and not dealing with his part in the tragedy that has ripped the family apart.

Hester takes solace in talking to Mannon, but she cannot get excited about the project her husband has underway to rebuild the house. And the house and its rebuilding become an extended metaphor for the process that the family must undertake in order to emerge at the end of the year with some sort of resolution to what has happened to them.