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Go to the Beginning Black Notebook (which concerns Anna's novel Frontiers of War) (Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) A few years back, Anna published a best-selling novel Frontiers of War about a dashing R.A.F. pilot stationed in Rhodesia during the Second World War who has a disastrous affair with a black African woman who is married to a cook/activist. Now there is talk of turning her novel into a movie. Anna lives off the revenue from Frontiers of War, but she has come to despise her novel as sentimental and inaccurate. The Black notebook contains the real story of Anna's experience in Rhodesia during the Second World War, which she exploited for her novel. Apparently, 23 year-old Anna ends up in Rhodesia just before the war as the wife of a tobacco farmer whom she met and married in England. She leaves him, gets a job as a secretary in the city, and falls in with a group of twenty year-olds who fancy themselves Communists even though the black nationalists distrust them far too much to let them get involved in planning any forthcoming revolution. Anna hooks up with the group's leader, Willi, a creepy expatriate German who fled to Rhodesia just ahead of the draft into Hitler's army. The other comrades are Paul, a snotty and manipulative Englishman of the upper-classes; Jimmy, an alcoholic gay Scot; Ted, a compassionate socialist; Maryrose, a beautiful girl born in the colony; and George, a 40 year-old who is the most interesting character. George is a colony man who drives a truck for a living. Paul, Jimmy, and Ted all fly bombers for the Royal Air Force. George and his wife struggle to support themselves, three children, and two sets of aged parents; they all live together with no privacy. George is caring and deeply responsible but his enormous sex drive leads him to deal with the stresses in his life by having affairs – most notably with the black African wife of a cook named Jackson who works at the Mashopi hotel where the comrades like to relax. The woman has borne George's son whom Jackson accepts into his family. Nobody has connected George with the boy, and George would lose his job and condemn his family to financial ruin if he attempted to acknowledge his son and save him from a marginal life as an African half-caste. George is tormented by his inability to save both his son and the rest of his family. The other comrades have their own guilty secrets. Jimmy loves Paul who knows it and manipulates him. Maryrose has never gotten over being in love with her brother with whom she had an incestuous affair before he got killed in action in north Africa. Nobody knows that Anna and Willi, supposedly a happy couple, dislike each other and seldom have sex. Anyway, the comrades like to stay at the Mashopi, a hotel in the countryside run by a conservative British couple, the Boothbys. Mrs. Boothby gets a crush on Paul. Paul deliberately hurts her by preferring the company of her black cook Jackson whom he pretends to educate about Communism. Mrs. Boothby finds herself jealous of her own cook. Tensions mount until one weekend when the Mashopi hosts a big dance. Jimmy, whom Mrs. Boothby despises for being gay, passes out drunk in the kitchen. Mrs. Boothby loses her temper and ends up firing Jackson on the spot even though he has been a perfect employee for the past 15 years. This is a disaster for the Jackson family because jobs are scarce for black Africans. Mr. Jackson will have to look for a menial job in a harsh environment like the mines in which he will need to separate from his family in order to support them. George tries in vain to speak up on his behalf to Mrs. Boothby. Anna is so overcome by emotion that she runs off with Paul into the countryside and has sex with him. They return and Willi is furious with Anna because he and Anna are supposed to be a couple. He wants to have sex with her at that point, and she goes along with it. The group breaks up right after that: they never again return to the Mashopi hotel. A few days later, Paul gets killed in a drunken accident. (Much later George finds out that Mr. Jackson managed to find another good job as a cook and did fine by his family.) The first section of the Black notebook concludes with Anna's critical evaluation that the real story behind Frontiers of War is still too nostalgic in tone and therefore inaccurate. |
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