Margie Orford offers a confrontational and disturbing read

20 September 2022 - 11:01 By Margaret von Klemperer
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now
'The Eye of the Beholder' mirrors contemporary society in a thought-provoking way.
'The Eye of the Beholder' mirrors contemporary society in a thought-provoking way.
Image: Supplied

The Eye of the Beholder
Margie Orford
Canongate Books

Margie Orford made her name as a crime writer with her series of novels featuring Cape Town-based police profiler  Clare Hart.

It has been a while since the last one, Water Music, was published in 2013, and Orford has branched out into a new direction as well as moving physically from SA to London.

The Eye of the Beholder is a stand alone novel falling broadly into the crime category, but offering Orford’s readers a change of venue and a subtle, confrontational and disturbing read.

The story opens in the bitterly cold, snow-covered and lonely wastes of Canada in winter. Cora Berger is running for her life from a nameless person and a nameless deed,  something she needs to risk her life in the frozen wilderness to escape, accompanied only by an injured dog following her. Cora is the main protagonist of the three in Orford’s novel, and we soon meet the next one: Angel Lamarr.

Angel is also in rural Canada and works at a wolf sanctuary where the dog ends up. She knows who the owner is, but when she goes to look for him, she cannot find him. Slowly, pieces of the two women’s stories are revealed, but, other than the landscape they are both in at the start, there are no obvious connections. The links will come later.

The third woman is Freya, Cora’s daughter, who lives in London and is being hounded by the media after an exhibition of her mother’s art stirs up a storm, the artist accused of pornography and of exploiting her daughter in a prurient way. Gradually we begin to understand some of the back story of all three.

Cora grew up in SA and Orford lovingly describes the landscape of what was initially a happy childhood. But there are reasons why Cora escaped as soon as she could, and has based herself in the grey, damp but also beautiful west of Scotland. Landscape is an important feature of the novel.

Orford cleverly draws the strings linking together icy Canada, damp Scotland and hot and dusty SA in what is often an angry book. Two of the women have suffered abuse. For Cora, the only way to articulate what she feels is through her art. For Angel, it is through anger and a need for revenge.

In a recent interview, Orford discussed the problems of dealing with abuse and pornography in literature without the book becoming voyeuristic, and she does it here with immense skill. Her take on the images that are all too well publicised as pornography and can be found in the nastier corners of the Internet is to explain that what should matter is not what they look like to the (usually male) viewer or the reaction they provoke, but what it feels like to be the subject of the images. The same applies to abuse: for the author the victim is central.

Writing about art in fiction is challenging. Pictures have to be described rather than seen, but Orford, although giving very little detail of the pornographic images that are important to one strand of the plot, gives compelling descriptions of Cora’s art and the violence it often depicts. She also shows the ability of art to heal both the artist and the observer as well as the way it can tell stories that cannot easily be articulated in words.

To readers looking for a fast-moving thriller with good and evil clearly defined, The Eye of the Beholder may not tick all the boxes, though as the story progresses the pace picks up and Cora in particular is a believable and sympathetic figure. But this book is more than just a dark drama. It raises questions that are very pertinent in today’s society and handles them with considerable skill and sensitivity. More than many of the crime novels being produced today, it does what crime fiction can do best: it mirrors contemporary society in a thought-provoking way.

The Eye of the Beholder is locally published by Jonathan Ball Publishers


subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now

Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.

Speech Bubbles

Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.