Excerpt from London – Cape Town – Joburg by Zukiswa Wanner: The Aftermath of a 13-year-old's Suicide
Aerodrome have shared an excerpt from Zukiswa Wanner‘s novel London – Cape Town – Joburg in which a mother grieves for her 13-year-old son who has committed suicide.
It’s a week after Germaine Spencer found her son lying in his bath with a suicide note addressed to his father on his bedside table: “he left the most hurtful message to me in his suicide note. Which was nothing. He said nothing to me.”
Germaine recalls how her son would come to her to cry when he was upset after his father had told him that boys don’t cry, and at all the little things she did for her son over the years and she wonders where she went wrong.
Read the excerpt:
Zuko Spencer-O’Malley is dead. Dead via suicide. At the tender age of thirteen.
My son is dead.
And I failed to notice he was troubled. For three days I was too self-absorbed, so intent on changing the world that I couldn’t see the pain my child was going through. What’s more, he left the most hurtful message to me in his suicide note. Which was nothing. He said nothing to me. A testament perhaps to how insignificant I had become in his life? The letter, left on his bedside table was addressed to Dear Papa. Papa. I hadn’t heard him call Martin that since he was four. Martin. His dad. My husband.
Book details
- London – Cape Town – Joburg by Zukiswa Wanner
EAN: 9780795706301
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
