Lacuna by Fiona Snykers

Lacuna
Fiona Snyckers
Europa Editions
January 11, 2022
256 pgs

There have been a gazillion reviews on Coetzee's Man Book Prize awarded book, Disgrace, (academic and otherwise), and the meanings of what Lucy Lurie's rape means. I am not going to get into rehashing or putting my own take on Mr. Coetzee's book, as I see this book,  Lacuna (the gap in Lucy's reactions, her emotions — the things Mr. Coetzee didn't add) as the answer to all things that were again — missing in his book. I am glad Ms. Snycker wrote this fictional response to a book so lacking emotion.  Emotions are messy in the face of happiness, sadness, and trauma. What happens to emotions when you've been raped and then a book makes that rape world-famous though only part of the story is honest and true to what happened to you?

This is what Lacuna is all about. Lucy Lurie was raped at her father's farmhouse and author John Coetzee put her story (or the crux of her story) into his award-winning book, Disgrace. Lucy was already traumatized by 6 black men, did she really need another man to traumatize her more and then get a huge payoff from her trauma? In Lacuna, Lucy is a mess, I mean, when you think a person has hit rock bottom, Lucy has plunged to the depths of that canyon full of rocks, or so she thought she had fallen as far as she could. No one could imagine she could fall even further beneath the rocks until it happens. 

Lucy's friend Moira tries to help Lucy to move forward, it's been two years since her rape. Two years since Coetzee released that darn book of his, shouldn't she be able to reconcile her life against the fictional telling of a woman who became the symbol of getting rid of apartheid through the putting of a White woman in her place by her Black neighbor? Lucy doesn't think so. She compares her victimhood to other rape survivors, not calling it survivorship as the masses want her to. She doesn't feel as if she is surviving. 

Throughout the book, Ms. Snykers has Lucy going to a therapist and imagining things the therapist says to her. Things that help Lucy feel validated by her victimhood. This happens a lot throughout the book, scenes that a writer would place in her own book, scenes of success, rising above the victim mentality, becoming empowered by her strength, and coming face to face with author John Coetzee and having him apologize to her. We all daydream about different scenarios, don't we?

As someone who has never been raped, I am not sure that the "success" imaginings and then the inaction of Lucy's real life would help or hamper a rape victim if they read this book. I can only imagine that this is how a victim would really feel, but is it? I am curious to know... I don't want to assume anything when it comes to that kind of trauma.

There is a time in the story where Lucy contemplates, as a writer herself, whether a writer has the right to use reality in their fiction, she comes to the realization that without having the ability to use reality a writer would never be able to write any stories.

"It is part of the social contract that everything is fair game when it comes to fiction. If real life wheren't allowed to be the inspiration for fiction, we wouldn't have the works of Shakespeare, Austen, Adichie, Naipaul, or Didion. It is not just important for authors to be able to write without fear or favour: it is vital."

Then Lucy realizes that she has been so upset over the "Coetzee Overnight Success Story" that she has given her whole life over the last two years to this man and his fictional character. She has allowed him to be there for too long. She needed to take back her life, not let him have his story override what should be hers to mold into what she wants to become. This to me is when Lucy actually starts writing her success even in the midst of all her mess, that is until a bigger mess comes along and changes the whole narrative that Lucy believes is her life after the rape. 

I don't find much fault with the feminist answering to a famous novel written in the 70s especially when the author, John Coetzee gives no rational voice to the victim as he did his fictional Lucy. I know it is a metaphor for the future of South Africa, the babe that is the product of a violent fate that Blacks have lived only to have Whites find out how violent Black's lives really have been through Lucy's rape. However, the one thing I can't get around in this book is the need to point a finger at the familial and turn another man into yet again the twist of trauma in Lucy's life. Hasn't she been through enough? Do we really need to go from being raped by 6 men, to another man traumatizing Lucy through his novel to the most important man in her life becoming the most traumatizing person overall? I just don't get the twist at the end of the book. It seems just another feminist move to blame all men for everything during a time when there were enough men already to hold accountable. Metaphor or not, it didn't need to be.
If, and this is a big IF it is to address Mr. Coetzee's narrative of poor young Melanie being abused by Lucy's father, David Lurie while as a professor, then fine, however, this is never even addressed in Lacuna and so, I feel it shouldn't even be anywhere in Lucy's story. 

The fluctuation between imagery during Lucy's story and reality can sometimes be hard to handle. I would be reading along and then all of a sudden thinking, "there you go Lucy grab your life back" then wham — oh, sorry, that was just Lucy's musings again,
and back to the mess we go. 

Vegan Eugene. I would really love to hear some opinions on him from others. What do you think??? Do you love him, hate him, or wish he had never entered the story? Let me know in the comments.