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On That Wave of Gulls
“The only thing that seagulls ever want is the fucking sea.”
From the bestselling author of The Search for the Rarest Bird in the World comes On That Wave of Gulls. An audacious novel, the tale is told by three characters – an architect, a Khoisan vagrant and a seagull, all of whom recount their lives in Cape Town.
Hieronymus Vos is an overweight, white architect who has fallen on hard times. He is married to a beautiful, black British-Caribbean woman. Although he hates the ocean, his practice has, until recently, been doing very well by designing glitzy, millionaires’ mansions on the Atlantic Seaboard. Pooi is a homeless man, recently arrived from the Kalahari, with a patchy grip on reality. He thinks he is the moon and wants to teach himself to swim so that he can reach Robben Island and fulfil a promise. The third narrator is Calypso, a female seagull who needs to find a mate and lay an egg to pass on her legacy and her identity.
By times heartbreaking and thrilling, this unforgettable novel propels the author into the lives of the novel’s three main characters, throwing light on living and being in Cape Town – a Cape Town that is part wilderness, part glamorous high-rise developments, part ocean. Their interactions are at times fleeting, at times profound, and behind them lies the joy, pain and tragedy of living at the southern tip of Africa.
On That Wave of Gulls is a shrewd and lyrical tour de force by a natural storyteller. The everlasting story of how men and women relate in the closed system of violence.
From the bestselling author of The Search for the Rarest Bird in the World comes On That Wave of Gulls. An audacious novel, the tale is told by three characters – an architect, a Khoisan vagrant and a seagull, all of whom recount their lives in Cape Town.
Hieronymus Vos is an overweight, white architect who has fallen on hard times. He is married to a beautiful, black British-Caribbean woman. Although he hates the ocean, his practice has, until recently, been doing very well by designing glitzy, millionaires’ mansions on the Atlantic Seaboard. Pooi is a homeless man, recently arrived from the Kalahari, with a patchy grip on reality. He thinks he is the moon and wants to teach himself to swim so that he can reach Robben Island and fulfil a promise. The third narrator is Calypso, a female seagull who needs to find a mate and lay an egg to pass on her legacy and her identity.
By times heartbreaking and thrilling, this unforgettable novel propels the author into the lives of the novel’s three main characters, throwing light on living and being in Cape Town – a Cape Town that is part wilderness, part glamorous high-rise developments, part ocean. Their interactions are at times fleeting, at times profound, and behind them lies the joy, pain and tragedy of living at the southern tip of Africa.
On That Wave of Gulls is a shrewd and lyrical tour de force by a natural storyteller. The everlasting story of how men and women relate in the closed system of violence.
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Published May 16, 2023
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 16, 2023
The story of three characters, and their struggles in Cape Town.
You've got the story of the architect on the out, a seagull who's looking for a mate and Pooi, a man who travelled from the Kalahari to Cape Town who wants to swim to Robben Island.
This book explores the complex internal struggles, touching upon big themes such as child trauma, class, race, freedom, control, possession/ownership, wilderness, colonisation and many more. Initially, you think it's a story of three separate tales, but the author, Vernon Head, is able to slowly drip feed connections between the unlikely characters and make you realise that although the problems on the outside seem completely different, they are all facing very similar struggles. For example, when describing Pooi, Hieronymus said "that he was a failure was obvious enough - Charlotte had said as much when I described him. Yet was his failure worse than mine? Mine was irretrievable, pathetic, a self-inflicted thing, a dick-thing. He lived his out there, taking it like a man. You can shape it to fit yourself. That's honesty; that's as far from shame as you can get." (247)
There is a big natural theme the permeates throughout. Vernon Head focuses chunks of nearly every chapter to fauna, flora, and meteorology that is native and distinct to Cape Town. For example, Hieronymus, recalls a past client of his "who'd required a vast flat garden front of his Camps Bay pad to be sea of pelargoniums, saying they were a celebration of a plant that grew wild only in the Cape, and that the Cape was just that: unique, wild and not like Europe..."(293) I also loved how the majority of the novel took place during winter/spring - the shoulder and off season of the tourists, when the weather ranges drastically, and mentions of storms and rain throughout - not what you would expect from picturesque, sunny, Cape Town.
Having recently visited the South Africa for the first time, it felt like this book really resonated with me. Mentions of places like Camps Bay, Kloof Street, Lions Head, and of course Table Mountain, just to name a few, and again the imagery of nature, made me reflect back on my time there, and picture those places, making me feel closer to the book.
I think what I enjoy the most about the book is it's subtleness. It's very much a character driven book, with little plot, but the characters are so complex and vivid, I couldn't put it down. It does get a touch repetitive at times, so best to read it in chunks, but there is lot to unpack there and lots of richness.
You've got the story of the architect on the out, a seagull who's looking for a mate and Pooi, a man who travelled from the Kalahari to Cape Town who wants to swim to Robben Island.
This book explores the complex internal struggles, touching upon big themes such as child trauma, class, race, freedom, control, possession/ownership, wilderness, colonisation and many more. Initially, you think it's a story of three separate tales, but the author, Vernon Head, is able to slowly drip feed connections between the unlikely characters and make you realise that although the problems on the outside seem completely different, they are all facing very similar struggles. For example, when describing Pooi, Hieronymus said "that he was a failure was obvious enough - Charlotte had said as much when I described him. Yet was his failure worse than mine? Mine was irretrievable, pathetic, a self-inflicted thing, a dick-thing. He lived his out there, taking it like a man. You can shape it to fit yourself. That's honesty; that's as far from shame as you can get." (247)
There is a big natural theme the permeates throughout. Vernon Head focuses chunks of nearly every chapter to fauna, flora, and meteorology that is native and distinct to Cape Town. For example, Hieronymus, recalls a past client of his "who'd required a vast flat garden front of his Camps Bay pad to be sea of pelargoniums, saying they were a celebration of a plant that grew wild only in the Cape, and that the Cape was just that: unique, wild and not like Europe..."(293) I also loved how the majority of the novel took place during winter/spring - the shoulder and off season of the tourists, when the weather ranges drastically, and mentions of storms and rain throughout - not what you would expect from picturesque, sunny, Cape Town.
Having recently visited the South Africa for the first time, it felt like this book really resonated with me. Mentions of places like Camps Bay, Kloof Street, Lions Head, and of course Table Mountain, just to name a few, and again the imagery of nature, made me reflect back on my time there, and picture those places, making me feel closer to the book.
I think what I enjoy the most about the book is it's subtleness. It's very much a character driven book, with little plot, but the characters are so complex and vivid, I couldn't put it down. It does get a touch repetitive at times, so best to read it in chunks, but there is lot to unpack there and lots of richness.
Displaying 1 of 1 review