Syringa Tree (Gien)

Book Reviews
Novels can be large, hardy vehicles, capable of surviving lackluster maintenance and neglected fine-tuning while still carrying readers to someplace worth visiting. This version of The Syringa Tree conveys, as pale fire, some of the brightness generated by Gien’s stage performances. Her original concept—to illustrate the breathtaking cruelty and lunacy of apartheid by detailing its effects on a small number of black and white characters—remains effective. A child’s bewildered response to the injustices inflicted on people she knows and loves seems entirely appropriate; only adults could have believed that apartheid made any practical or moral sense.
Paul Gray - New York Times Book Review

A spare, yet poetic account that steadily works its magic on the reader as both a portrait of individuals, and a country, in the tumultuous time of apartheid.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

A gorgeous, hopeful, heartrending novel.... This uncommonly moving, deeply humane novel nearly dances in a reader's hands with the rhythms and the colors, the complicatedness and the inimitability of southern Africa.
O, The Oprah Magazine

(Based on the one-woman stage production.) South African writer and actress Pamela Gien's new one-woman play, The Syringa Tree, is the tragic story of two South African families—one black, one white— and the complex love they share, even as race stands between them. While this isn't unexplored territory, what makes this production a standout is Gien's impressive performance in creating 28 fully realized characters on a sparsely decorated stage. Through her expressive movements and creative vocalizations— most startlingly in rapid-fire exchanges between six-year old Elizabeth and her redoubtable, deep-voiced South African caretaker—Gien single-handedly fills the stage with the people, music and verdant countryside of South Africa.

Gien's dazzling performance only enhances the simple emotional power of the tale. What we see through the eyes of six-year-old Elizabeth, her black caretaker and the others who populate this story is that apartheid was not only fought in the frontline political struggle broadcast around the world, but also in the closely knit circles of families, in the intimacies of individual relationships and in the quiet but fierce struggles of personal conscience.
Time Magazine

Six-year-old Lizzie Grace sits in the syringa tree in her South African backyard whenever she's troubled. From there, she watches her Afrikaner neighbors and the black workers her part-Jewish family employs. Although her parents an always-busy doctor father and a depressed mother have tried to insulate themselves and their staff, it is impossible to shield Lizzie from the racism that permeates daily life. Indeed, as the meaning of apartheid unfolds, Lizzie struggles to understand racial laws that force her nanny to carry work papers and hide from the police. Through her eyes, readers see South African townships and experience the indignities that provoked underground resistance movements. Although the protagonist is occasionally cloying, this is part of the book's charm. Nonetheless, there are spots where the child's perspective weakens the text and leaves the reader hungry for more. For example, Lizzie's grandfather is murdered by a Rhodesian rebel, but the reason for this political crime remains unclear. South African-born Gien, who created this novel from her Obie Award-winning play of the same name, here illuminates a shameful history of a country by highlighting the juxtaposition of race, anti-Semitism, and class privilege. Highly recommended. —Eleanor J. Bader, Brooklyn, NY.
Library Journal

(Adult/High School) Six-year-old Lizzy is present when her doctor father secretly delivers the baby of her nurse, Salamina, in a white suburb of South Africa in 1963. It becomes Lizzy's special responsibility to keep the infant hidden from the police as well as from the Afrikaner neighbors. As the irrepressible child grows, it becomes more and more difficult to keep Moliseng hidden, and she is sent to the slums of Soweto to live with her grandmother. At the age of 14, she is killed by police as she leads other children in a final defiant and heartrending gesture, proclaiming her freedom. The narrative is told from the point of view of Lizzy, who grapples with the conflicting social, political, and religious values of the times and with her mother's depression. She finds comfort, if not answers, in the distracted attention of her father, the unconditional love of her nurse, and her own Syringa tree with its sweet-smelling blossoms. Readers will be carried away by lyrical descriptions of the sensual beauty of the veld and will experience the heartache of the characters as their lives are torn apart by the violence of the period. The story is as compelling and enlightening as Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country, and the writing is evocative of that classic work. —Jackie Gropman, Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA
School Library Review