Surprisingly, The Girl From the Train is one of my favorite reads from 2015. Only surprisingly because it’s not a normal read for me. The story follows Gretl Schmidt from six-years-old jumping from a train bound Aushwitz until she’s a grown woman falling in love.
One of the most interesting things about this novel, is Joubert focuses on a war orphan set to South Africa. In all the WWII novels that I’ve read, I’ve never heard about the orphans being sent to families in South Africa—so most intriguing to learn about!
Irma Joubert has written a beautiful coming of age tale that I think any reader would enjoy.
Five Things You Need to Know:
1. The Girl From the Train was originally written in Afrikaans as Tussen Stasies and was published in South Africa in 2007. Afrikaans is one of the many languages spoken in South Africa. Other languages commonly spoken include Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, Tswana and Sotho. Some 50% of South Africans of European ancestry speak English, and some 50% speak Afrikaans.
Afrikaans is derived from 17th century Dutch, with strong influences from other languages, including Malay, German, French and indigenous African languages. Afrikaans is one of the youngest languages in the world.
The past century has seen a notable growth in Afrikaans literature.
2. South Africans of European origin who speak Afrikaans are called Afrikaners. During the 1940’s and 1950’s, Afrikaners were known as conservative people bound closely to their traditions and Christian values.
One of the Afrikaner traditions that people from Europe found strange was the practice of greeting someone with a kiss on the mouth. This was one of the first experiences that Gretl had to cope with on arrival in South Africa, and this custom is still popular among older Afrikaners.
3. South Africa consists of widely divergent geographical regions, including the Cape vineyards, KwaZulu-Natal’s subtropical climate, the Highveld, including Johannesburg and the gold fields, and finally, the verdant Lowveld, including Kruger National Park. This story plays out in the northernmost part of South Africa, the Bushveld. The Bushveld is a rugged, hot, dry area that was still quite underdeveloped during the middle part of the century. The Bushveld is populated with many game species, including predators such as leopards and jackals.
4. In South Africa a ranch is called a farm. During the first part of the twentieth century most Afrikaners were farmers (boere in Afrikaans). This is how Afrikaners came to be called Boeres and how the war between Britain and the Afrikaners received its name.
The Bushveld farms were large and extensive, mainly supporting cattle farming. In modern day South Africa, many game farms have replaced traditional Afrikaner cattle farms.
Electrical power was unknown on the Bushveld farms in the 1950’s. Settlers used lamps or candles for lighting and wood stoves for booking. To enjoy an early morning cup of coffee, you either had to have the wood stove burning or you needed to pump the primus stove and light it to boil a kettle of water. Bread-baking took place outside in a specially made mud oven.
5. The settings I used for the South African parts of the story are inspired by the places where I spent my own youth.
I was a child in the 1950’s on a Bushveld farm where my father raised cattle and pigs. The farm to which Gretl is sent in South Africa (Bernard and Kate’s farm), is based on the farm of my youth.
My Holloway grandparents lived in Johannesburg, and my grandfather and grandmother Moerdyk lived in Pretoria. In the story, Grandpa John’s character is loosely based on my grandfather Holloway, and the house with the ivy is based on the house of the Moerdyks in Pretoria.
The University of Pretoria, which Gretl attends as student, is my alma mater. Jakób’s flat in Sunnyside is similar to my husband’s flat where I got to know him as a young man.
About the author: International bestselling author Irma Joubert was a history teacher for 35 years before she began writing. Her stories are known for their deep insight into personal relationships and rich historical detail. She’s the author of eight novels and a regular fixture on bestseller lists in The Netherlands and in her native South Africa. The Girl From the Train is her first novel published in English. She is the winner of the 2010 ATKV Prize for Romance Novels.
We’re giving away a copy of The Girl From the Train to one lucky reader! Winner will be announced in the new year! Good luck!
Is this a YA novel?
It isn’t! Which is really surprising because lately that’s all I’ve been reading!!
The best book I read in 2015 was All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. It was beautiful but inspired also contemplation. Set in WWII its themes made me think about current news…ISIS, the people involved, those forced to participate…there is always more to a story than we can imagine.