The crack

Janet is a sensitive woman who finds herself leaning on her husband, Hektor-Jan, as he starts a new post as a plain-clothes detective and skilled interrogator. He begins the job on New Year's Day, knowing that a violent crisis is close at hand. The pressure on Janet grows as her life seems to close in around her. Her children are her anchor, and she relies on Alice, the Black maid who works in the house, and Solomon, the loyal gardener. Janet is painfully aware of her own fragile nerves, and she watches her mother sink further into what the family calls 'Old Timers' disease. Next door, the secretive Doug is clearly up to something. As a crack spreads across the swimming pool, Janet must decide whether she can hold her household together.

The novel is set in apartheid South Africa, where the social order rests on racial division and the threat of brutality. Radmann uses the cracks in the pool, the household, and the family as a way of showing how a society built on such a rigid centre can begin to fail. The story moves through the perspective of one woman trying to protect the people closest to her.

The book is written with tenderness and an unsettling force, and it will suit readers who prefer character-driven literary fiction with a tense undercurrent over plot-heavy suspense.