A Blade of Grass is a perplexing novel and first impressions are not favourable. It has no subtlety, with themes and symbols shamelessly flagged up as if Lewis Desoto expects his readership to be devoid of any sensitivity. He also has an over-fondness for sentences that are either rudely abrupt or so meandering as to provoke even the most diligent reader. Added to this are lurking doubts about the viability of the plot and characters.

Nonetheless, you do feel masochistically compelled to continue reading. Although their activities seem dubious, the two heroines are oddly addictive. Somehow they endure, as if in defiance of the banal, atonal dialogue and unlikely behaviour that they are forced to follow. Each episode in which they survive a threat to their life together reads like a challenge to the reader to marvel at their capacity to endure triumphantly the hardships thrown their way, including everything from a broken tractor to a plague of locusts.

Ostensibly, the novel is about apartheid, rights to land and the battle of wills between the natural world and the cultivating impulses of its human inhabitants, and initially, it seems that Desoto’s clumsy treatment of these issues is all there is to it. Persevere, though, and a more subtle exploration of the uncomfortable, grey areas that lie behind a system like apartheid is discernable. Desoto will sometimes dwell on the sexual competition and tensions that spring up between his characters, or the absurdities that permeate a divided society. A Blade of Grass is therefore in the unusual position of inciting ridicule whilst also stirring up some awkward questions.

The worst aspects of Desoto’s style are immediately apparent, as he spends too long introducing his few characters, giving himself time to indulge in some fervently declared observations on the nature and effects of apartheid. ‘They are not natural in her presence. Because of the differences. Because the colour of their skin is different from hers. Everything is based on that distinction. She brings discord into their lives. She is always a stranger. Colour is the marker - here on this farm, in this country, across this whole continent.’ His two heroines are of course similar but also different because of the colour bar.

Recently moved to the country with her husband to run a farm, Marit is an orphaned newlywed and feels palely listless. ‘She knows that her education has been stilted, that her thinking is conventional, that her life is unremarkable. She knows all these things, but the knowledge does not make it any easier to stand here under the weight of the silence. This is a wild country - perhaps it belongs only to the animals.’ Her doppelganger Tembi is a restless, questioning young girl who works on the farm and likes reading, thus lending her a noble edge over her contemporaries.

It is hard to understand why Desoto insists on setting up his characters with such shallow, oversimplified emotions. It is as if he has never read any previous literature on the subject. When has South Africa ever been written about with so little insight? Alan Paton found fame in the 1940s whilst Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing (1950) still has the power to shock.

A Blade of Grass is therefore let down by the first part that seems like a reckless practice run, as the rest of the novel follows a story of almost biblical simplicity. Marit and Tembi are eventually drawn together by tragedy and Marit invites Tembi to live with her and help run the farm. Because the farm lies near the border and is therefore vulnerable to guerrilla violence and the threat of civil war, the two women become increasingly isolated and their friendship suffers as various strange men arrive uninvited at the farm.

What is so bemusing and consequently quite fascinating about this plot is that it is impossible to resist questioning events. How, for example, are the two women able to fend for themselves for so long without realising the mayhem that lies beyond the farm? Is Marit suffering some kind of breakdown when she sheds her old respectable clothes and demands that Tembi become her equal? It would be more understandable if Marit were to show some liberal feelings or background, however slight. Yet Desoto emphasises that she has never thought deeply about the effects of apartheid and that she feels both alienated from and often afraid of black South Africans.

It is because Desoto exposes his central themes so relentlessly that it becomes difficult to accept the rest of the plot. As nothing is left unsaid, the scenario lacks any surreal or unsettling power. Rather than surprise, it is more likely to provoke scepticism. It is not a flattering conclusion, but given Desoto’s obvious desire to prompt the reader it is hard to believe that any subtle meaning is intentional. He does provide a dark humour as Marit and Tembi fight and Marit is forced to accept a reversal of roles and become maid to Tembi’s mistress, only to continue swapping roles when the farm is descended on first by Afrikaaner soldiers then by soldiers from beyond the border.

More confusing is the exploration of the sexual competition between Marit and Tembi and how it sullies their friendship. Just as Marit was anguished as a teenager by her attraction to a gardener, she is disturbed by her feelings for Khosa, a young chancer who arrives at the farm, but it is her competition with other women that causes the anguish. Although Desoto refers to the mindset of apartheid, Marit is consumed by jealousy, not her supposedly unnatural feelings for black men. Desoto insists that Marit dare not touch Khosa because ‘everything in her life forbids it’, but by that stage you assume that Marit has surely renounced her old belief system, and is only capable of the more basic emotions of jealousy, competition and self preservation.

Desoto left South Africa for Canada in the 1960s and you can’t help but wonder what he is trying to recapture with this novel. It is easier to read him as a Canadian novelist writing about South Africa. South African literature is now emerging from a transitional phase and this novel is an awkward, adolescent effort from a different era.