Life
Braais, birthdays, a wedding that goes gloriously wrong and houseguests who overstay: the ordinary, noisy business of living, told with real affection.
Out of Nowhere · A South African Story
The story
A life in Johannesburg, remembered from the other side of the world.
Where it begins
Gold Coast, 1999
The book opens on Australia’s Gold Coast. Claire and John have left South Africa behind, or so they think. A houseguest from Johannesburg arrives with the old chaos in his luggage, the nightmares Claire thought she had beaten return, and memory begins to pull her home.
From there, Out of Nowhere moves back and forth through the years: a childhood of frilly dresses and a lonely tennis wall, a first flat and a first job, the man she met on a hot, dusty sales call, and the house they made together, full of friends, animals and noise, in a city that was changing faster than anyone could bear.
Looking up at the cloudless blue sky, she thought, ‘It is going to be another perfect day.’
He wasn’t going to get them out of Johannesburg. He wasn’t going to get them out of Nowhere.
He had seen the ‘writing on the wall’ which Claire, being the eternal optimist, had imagined to be written in vanishing ink.
Claire’s perspective
Through Claire’s eyes
Claire is the book’s lens: sharp-tongued, soft-hearted, permanently short of sleep and incapable of resisting a joke.
She notices everything, the absurd and the unbearable, often in the same afternoon, and the book lets both stand side by side. That double vision is what makes the danger so vivid: these are not statistics, but clients, neighbours and friends.
It couldn’t be happening to her again, just when she had gotten over the insomnia and God-forsaken nightmares, having completed two courses of tranquilizers and one of sleeping pills!
Johannesburg
A city in rings
In typical South African fashion the Central Business District of Johannesburg was surrounded by a residential rim stretching roughly thirty kilometres in all four directions.
As Claire describes it, the city was laid out in rings (a business district, a residential rim, an industrial belt and townships on the outskirts), a pattern the book traces back to apartheid planning. Her life moves through all of them: selling door to door in the city centre, restoring furniture in the suburbs, visiting John at work in an industrial area, and searching for Lucy after a weekend in Tembisa.
- City centreSelling door to door in 1982
- HillbrowPavement bistros, then the decline
- FordsburgA stranger asks for her watch
- Gold Reef CityThe wedding
- SowetoSouth-west of the city
- MulbartonThe suburb next door to home
- AlrodeWhere Claire met John
- TembisaWhere Lucy went to help her sister move
Approximate positions of places named in the book.
Major thematic areas
Life. Fear. Relationships. Survival.
Fear
Gunshots in the night, a car park in broad daylight, a phone that rings too early. Fear arrives gradually, and then it is everywhere.
Relationships
Friendships that cross every line a divided society drew, and a marriage that keeps laughing through all of it.
Survival
Dogs that guard, friends who warn, a bluff shouted from a balcony and, in the end, the choice to leave.
Across every line
Friendships that held
In a book full of fear, some of its most memorable pages belong to the friendships that refused to be divided.
Claire had learnt a lot from Lucy, she had come to realise that close friendships could be struck up between people of different races, creeds, colour and beliefs.
There was still racism to be seen in various sectors of the community but also staunch friendships that crossed the colour bar.
Timeline
A journey through memory
Every marker comes from the book. Select one to step into that moment.
Frilly dresses and a tennis wall
A lonely practice wall, a mother with very firm opinions and a father who raced pigeons. Claire’s childhood is funnier than it has any right to be.
Chapter 17
A suitcase, packed in a hurry
A birthday party full of strangers, a date her mother disapproves of, and a decision made in a single evening: Claire leaves home.
Chapter 18
A city you could still walk
Selling door to door in the Johannesburg city centre, Claire can still wander the streets without fear. It will not last.
Chapter 20
The watch
Three years later, near Fordsburg, a well-dressed stranger blocks her path and asks for the watch on her wrist.
Chapter 20
“No hawkers”
Hot, dusty and out of luck on a sales call, Claire meets a man who refuses to buy anything, then invites her for a drink instead.
Chapter 14
Gold Reef City
A horse-drawn carriage, an uninvited confetti girl and a veil that catches fire. A wedding nobody would forget.
Chapter 23
The fortnight
In the space of two weeks the violence stops happening to strangers. That same year, a trip to Portugal offers a first glimpse of another life.
Chapters 3, 4 & 10
Elections
The country votes. Some South Africans leave before the elections and some come home afterwards. Claire and John stay, for now.
Chapter 2
Still searching
San Francisco, Grand Cayman, New Orleans: a long journey in search of somewhere they could permanently call home.
Chapters 11 & 12
The Exodus
A house sold at a loss, friends divided between envy and disapproval, and a goodbye at the gate.
Chapter 6: 1996
Gold Coast
Blue skies, a canal glittering at sunrise, and a houseguest from Johannesburg who brings the old chaos with him.
Chapter 1
Waiting
A decision from an immigration official in Brisbane is six months coming, while the news from home only gets harder to hear.
Chapters 22 & 25
Locations
Beyond Johannesburg
The search for somewhere else takes Claire and John a long way from home. These are the places named in the book.
Johannesburg
- Hillbrow
- Joubert Park
- Jeppe Street
- Fordsburg
- Gold Reef City
- Mulbarton
- Alrode
- Soweto
- Tembisa
- Johannesburg Station
Elsewhere in South Africa
- Cape Town
- Durban
- Sun City
- Knysna
- Underberg
- Kruger National Park
Zimbabwe
- Harare
- Kariba
- Nyanga
- Victoria Falls
- Bulawayo
- Mutare
Searching, 1993 & 1995
- Lisbon
- Estoril
- Sintra
- The Algarve
- Disney World
- San Francisco
- Grand Cayman
- New Orleans
Australia
- Gold Coast
- Sydney
- Brisbane
Some places never leave you. Even after you leave them.
A South African Story
By Adelia Cook
