This is a wonderful coming of age story, bringing together an incredible family history and a future that just keeps on coming. It is a magical story without any magic stuff. TJ and his father try to save the family business and to do that they have to save themselves. And all the while there is a woman that TJ is after. Once he finds her, she seems to promise a way out of the past that is holding the business back. All they have to do is sign on the dotted line. They do, and they are launched into the future like a rocket.
This is a wonderful coming of age story, bringing together an incredible family history and a future that just keeps on coming. It is a magical story without any magic stuff. TJ and his father try to save the family business and to do that they have to save themselves. And all the while there is a woman that TJ is after. Once he finds her, she seems to promise a way out of the past that is holding the business back. All they have to do is sign on the dotted line. They do, and they are launched into the future like a rocket.
Here’s the thing.
I love my old man with the same anguish as I loathe the family business. There it is, right there, love and loathe, the whole bloody squeeze. I feel it every day, like now, a few hours into the evening, after a long day of second-hand goods, Mother and the old man let the day wear off, and don’t really need me around. They have a need for silence, to let the pressure that the business generates flow from their minds and bodies. Father switches the volume on the television down, folds his arms and closes his eyes, Mother is already half asleep. The day is done.
Not for me, I am on my way out, off to a party at Mando’s place, where it’s best not to turn up too early. Not too late, either. Mando is my oldest friend, we have known each other for as long as I can remember, since I was six. He is from the other side of the high street, that’s where his mother lives. His father is not around, he left for South Africa and never came back. Long ago.
Mando’s party is a real one, with friends and women; old pals from school; from sports; the soccer team we both played in; colleagues from work; clients Mando gets along with. The difference between Mando and I, Mando has a job and I don’t. I work at The Yard, my father’s business, which is not a job but a responsibility. And Mando is half Joburg black, half John Player country white. This is another difference, although between us not as much as you might think. Growing up in this city, we are used to many shades. Sometimes it is an issue, probably more often than I am aware of, because he is Mando like I am TJ, and that isn’t the same thing. I know. We tell each other everything. Almost. We share secrets; dreams and fantasies; our anxieties and pleasures; have done so from the start. We talk about anything from girls to women and frustrations to success, though not always with all the details.
He fantasises about one woman in particular, a colleague, June, an accountant at the firm where he is a bookkeeper. Just the mention of her name turns his head to jelly. He invited her, and his boss, because he couldn’t invite June and not the boss. This shows you that things everywhere are connected, and sometimes that’s the beauty of things and the joy of life. Though not always.
The party is lots of music, loudness, movement, dancing, dope, dirty talk and dirty moves. And beer. I need all of it, to take my mind off things, to chill beyond the obvious, because the old man’s business haunts me, it does. The expectations, man, the expectations.
I am definitely not too early, things are well under way, the house is vibrating. Mando has crammed more than sixty people into his two-bedroom top floor flat. Circulating through the densely packed space, people are spilling out onto the landing and down the stairs. Music is pounding our ears, pounding the walls and the crowd is pounding the floor. To avoid conflict, Mando has invited his neighbours from downstairs; a young couple with earnest aspirations and manageable dreams. They seem a little lost between the clouds of smoke and colourful pills that are going around. The neighbour is Marvin and I hand him a beer. His girl is Wendy, and she looks as if she is going to faint from sheer astonishment. I grab her an alcohol-free lager and pop a 4-FA pill into the bottle before I offer it to her, pointing at the label.
‘No alcohol,’ I say.
Some people need a little help.
Mando is with a team from his office, four men and five women. I watch my friend dodge advances he doesn’t want, forcing him to retreat to where there is no space. June hasn’t come and he is being cornered by others, including his boss, who seems to want him. His disappointment is turning into controlled panic. The music is loud and light, bodies are moving, bopping, leaning into each other, sometimes following the beat of the music, sometimes following the beat of the crowd, always following the beat of the booze.
Let me switch up the tempo, switch it up. Let me switch up the tempo, switch it up.
Words are barely understandable, what remains is the bass line riding through our bloodstreams, the drums, the percussion is everywhere.
Let me switch it up.
I move around and sway with the bodies around me. Let myself be taken in by the heat, mind empties, senses open up. I am moving with two women, then one of them turns and disappears in the crowd. One woman left. She seems nice, nothing special, blond hair, moves well in big black boots, eyes closed. She probably doesn’t know I am here. No problem. She opens her eyes and looks at me. Hard look, on the edge of cruel. Turns me on.
‘I’m TJ,’ I say.
I make myself heard over the music. She registers, I can see that she does. I gesture, suggesting a drink.
She closes her eyes again and moves away, slips between two, three, four others, out of sight. When I try to follow, I am held back, can’t see her anywhere and then spot her leaving the room. She is on the landing, not looking back, going down the stairs and I lose her before I have found her. Feels like a sting, right in the chest. Why? She comes up the stairs again, looks straight at me, her eyes lock into mine like deadbolts, complete focus, on me, nobody else, until she turns away and ignores me. I try to make my way across the room, but by the time I get to the landing, she is nowhere to be seen. Scrambling down the stairs, drunk and stoned, stumbling over the people crowding the staircase, onto the street where I can no longer find her. She is gone. She did something to me and left.
Brilliant.
Back up the stairs, the crowd gyrating and turning. I find Mando who is under pressure, off balance, falling into the woman he does not want. Other music now.
Nah, that’s not me. Not like a waste man, that’s not me.
‘I should rescue him,’ I think, as Mando bounces back, laughing much too loudly, hiding his discomfort, trying to turn and falling into the arms of his boss; a fifty-some-year-old woman who is enjoying every second of this party; until he loses the last bit of his balance and goes down. On her. His colleagues burst out in uncontrollable laughter; this party is now officially the best.
Beyond rescue.
Nah, that’s not me.
Much later, when everyone has left, we are at the small table in the kitchen. Just Mando and me, two chairs, two cans of beer. No women. Done talking, one more drink and one more smoke. It is my own weed, grown in pots in a corner of the courtyard at home. Mando brought the seeds back from a trip to Amsterdam a few years ago. Three female plants, they grow like crazy and the smoke has a kick like Andy Robertson.
All around us is the wreckage of a great party. Mando has the day off and I have to be back home in a few hours. I am needed at The Yard, not just yet. I savour the raw feeling the party has left inside me. Love that feeling.
Looking out the second-floor window, we watch a woman struggle with a compulsion that is stronger than her will. Mando lights a reefer, takes a long drag and passes it to me. The woman lives directly opposite, across the street, and she has difficulty leaving her house. From the front door to the gate is down three steps and five yards and it takes her forever to reach the pavement. She is out early.
‘Can’t help herself,’ I say.
It is fascinating, I can’t stop watching. She leaves the house, closes the door behind her and then checks if the door is well and truly closed by reaching back and pushing against it with her left hand. Having set her mind at ease, she takes one step down and stops, turns around, steps back up to the door to check again. One hand against the door. Push.
Yes, it is closed.
I can almost see the mental process going on inside her head. Push. Check. Closed. Right. She can go now. Takes two steps down and stops to repeat what she has just done. Back up to the door, left hand stretched, push, check, closed. Right. Go. Three steps down and it is as if she has forgotten that she already has all the verification she can possibly need. Stop, back up the steps, push, check, closed. Right. With every next step she takes, she repeats the procedure until she finally reaches the small front yard gate, opens it, steps out onto the street, closes the gate and she is on the pavement. The compulsion stops and she is free.
‘OCD. She goes back nine times,’ Mando says. ‘Always nine, not eight, never ten. Nine times. Three steps down and six to cross the front yard. Nine times, as if she is not aware of it. She does it every time she leaves. Nine times.’
It is bewildering, this woman seems completely at ease with her handicap, her fear that she may not have closed the door properly. The inability to overcome that fear is mesmerizing. I recognise it, The Yard does the same thing with me. With every step I take to set out on my own, I hurry back to see if everything is alright. It is a sensation the woman has made explicit and I watch her act out her impulse to go back and check. She doesn’t seem to mind; she doesn’t fight it or ignore it. She lets her insecurity be what it is, it doesn’t bother her, it doesn’t keep her from going out, it just delays her a little, but that delay has been calculated long ago. She has to leave a few minutes earlier, that’s all.
I watch in stoned concentration, the moment expanding to ever greater size, until Mando breaks the silence.
‘Why don’t you move in?’ he says ‘We could share this place, easy. It’s cheap. Be fun. Think about it.’
I will. The idea appeals to me, nothing seems more logical. ‘Maybe, I still need to be at The Yard, you know.’
‘Just think about it.’
I finish my beer, get up, drop the can in the bin.
‘Have to go.’
I don’t want to be late, not even after an all-night party. Responsibility.
‘Oh, listen, there was this woman,’ I say. ‘Sort of skinny, blond hair, big black boots.’
‘I’m sure there was. Good looking?’
‘Mwah, sort of. Not the way you think.’
‘What about her?’
What about her? Where to begin? This woman, I only saw her for a few minutes, she never said anything to me, yet her eyes drilled into me, they spoke of things I need to know. Not knowing her is impossible.
Mando looks at me.
‘I see,’ he says. ‘So, there is a woman out there.’
Is there ever. I must find her.
I don't often read coming of age stories, but TJ and the Ledgers of Life piqued my interest upon reading the synopsis. After opening to page one, I was immediately drawn to Carles Den Tex's beautiful writing. The tone and pace of the story flowed beautifully, and I immediately became attached to the characters. I have not read such beautiful writing in quite a while, and I cannot recommend this novel enough.
TJ and the Ledgers of Life follows TJ and his father as they try to save the family business. TJ becomes interested in a woman who promises a way to escape the past that is holding the family business back. The story follows TJ and his family as they allow this woman to take their business to the next level, all the while stepping into the future and escaping their past.
The author's ability to balance multiple characters and develop them so beautifully is a superpower in my opinion. He creates their past, present, and future with ease that makes it easy for the reader to follow. I found myself becoming attached to each character as the story went on, and in my opinion that makes for a fantastic story.
Coming of age novels can be hard to pull off if the author makes the characters or circumstances unrealistic. However, this was not the case with TJ and the Ledgers of Life. The plot kept me engaged as a reader, and I found that it was easy to follow along. The character development lent a lot of substance to the story, and I would not be surprised if this novel becomes a best-seller.
Overall, TJ and the Ledgers of Life is a gem of a coming of age novel that is sure to win over fans of the genre. This book is not one to miss, and I am sure you are going to fall in love with it. Trust me!