The Killing Bottle, by Jane Fox (used)

Near an isolated house on the escarpment of the Eastern Transvaal stands a shed in which moulders the forgotten legacy of a famous lepidopterist – a major collection of moths and butterflies, its hundreds of specimens stilled by a whiff of ether in a 'killing bottle'. The inheritor and dutiful caretaker of this collection is the scientist's brow-beaten son, William, now in his seventies, whose solitary life is scarcely alleviated by the presence on his property of another old man. This is Mapunye, a black retainer, hideously scarred in an accident which also robbed him of his powers of speech.

Into the monotonous lives of these derelict old men, wild weather one night blows two young people. Meg and Ash have come to the mountains for a camping holiday, but are forced to seek shelter from the deluge and accept William's bumbling hospitality. As lovers, they are wrestling with a problem of their own to which the symbol of the killing bottle is applicable, and which rises to its crisis in these strange circumstances. Their visitation pushes tensions between William and Mapunye to crisis point, producing a deeply affecting transformative dénouement.

The author is beautifully at home with narrative language – humorous, poignant or matter-of-fact, whether the task is to bring her characters to vivid life, or present the world they move in as magnificent, intimate, or menacingly violent.

Condition: very good