Karoo tale is a classic read

Title: Time, Gentlemen

Author: Evan Kaplan

Publisher: Osborne Porter Literary Services

Review: Garth Johnstone

There’s a fine line between warm, entertaining nostalgia and wistful sentimentality, the latter often tedious, the former a style that can make a book sing. Evan Kaplan understands this line very well and his writing falls solidly in the former camp, his book “Time, Gentlemen” a masterpiece recalling his childhood growing up in a family-run hotel in the Karoo town of Colesberg.

The land and its people clearly have a way of getting under the skin and becoming a part of a person’s very identity (as anyone who has spent any length of time in the Karoo will testify), yet Kaplan’s musings, anecdotes and recollections are never overly sentimental, but rather very amusing, often self deprecating and refreshingly to the point.

A family of European Jewish roots, a father who emigrated to South Africa from Lithuania and embarked on a bold career as an entrepreneur and trader before purchasing the Colesberg Hotel, slap bang in the middle of the Joburg/Cape Town route … Life was never dull living in the building that was also the vehicle for the family’s livelihood. Characters aplenty, colourful and varied staff members, clients, good and bad, travelling salesmen, all were observed and became a part of the lives of the kids growing up at the Colesberg Hotel.

Usefulness and sobriety

In the days when air travel was less dominant, the hotel was a strategic goldmine, and Evan’s father, Natie, was hard-pressed to keep it all together, going through an endless stream of barmen and staff members of varying degrees of usefulness and sobriety, while relying on a core of dedicated and competent stalwarts. At times Evan and the other kids were roped in to help pick up the slack and quickly learned the ropes.

Friendships with his big pals Ziems and Koerie, “Sex education” from chat picked up at the bar and from eavesdropping on the staff members’ conversation, endless tales of “cowboys and crooks”, trekking the local koppies for Anglo-Boer war era artefacts under blue skies, this was a childhood few would want to trade.

A rich read from a writer who has the ability to describe events in a seemingly lackadaisical and mellow manner, but who cuts sharply to the core of the matter … and most of all, has the priceless ability to make you laugh. – Garth Johnstone

Copies of Time, Gentlemen! are available direct from the publishers Osborne Porter Literary Services. Contact Ginny Porter on info@osborne-porter.com  or tel: (Bus.) 031 2602892 or (cell:) 082 7309384.