Maar eerst een beetje biografische gegevens op basis van Wikipedia: "Barbara (Louise) Trapido, born 1941 as Barbara Schuddeboom, is a British novelist born in South Africa with German, Danish and Dutch ancestry. Born in Cape Town and growing up in Durban she studied at the University of Natal gaining a BA in 1963 before emigrating to London. After many years teaching, she became a full-time writer in 1970.
Trapido has published six novels (ondertussen zijn het er zeven), three of which have been nominated for the Whitbread Prize. Her semi-autobiographical Frankie & Stankie, one of those shortlisted, which deals with growing up white under apartheid, gained a great deal of critical attention, most of it favourable. It was also longlisted for the Booker prize.
En dan is het woord aan Sue Dickman, omdat die precies dezelfde ervaring doormaakte als ik: "Barbara Trapido's books are not exactly a traditional series. Still, four of her seven novels share a common set of characters and, if read in order, offer some of the pleasure of a series—chiefly, the chance to return to a well-loved fictional universe and revisit its characters over time.
Ik ga mijn vrouw dan ook aanraden om de boeken in de juiste volgorde te lezen (voor mij is dit nu helaas te laat), ook al omdat het thriller-schrijver Michael Dibdin is die Trapido heeft aangespoord de "serie" door te zetten (al moet je daaruit nu ook weer niet afleiden dat het om thrillers zou gaan).
"Trapido's work has been compared to any number of writers (Iris Murdoch, Ann Tyler, Flann O'Brien, to name just a few), but it is very distinctly her own," zo besluit Dickman terecht.