Amazon Table Mountain Category:  Romance Publisher: Outskirts Press ISBN-10:  9781432775445 Pages: 339 Copyright: Sept 2011 Price: $15.50 (eBook) A historical romance set in apartheid South Africa.  A story I grew up with. A story about how a young girl, born into the Coloured  Community of South Africa and classified as a second class citizen decided that she could not live as such in a country she loved. She succeeds in jumping the racial barrier, and becomes a white living in Johannesburg.  The story is about Emma, and her daughter Marla. It is a story that must be read to understand a South Africa that few people knew. It is a beautiful Cinderella Love story. Excerpt A story about how Emily Kleintjies born into the Cape Coloured Community of South Africa, changes her name to Emma Kline, and becomes a white. The story is a beautiful romantic Cinderella story set in apartheid South Africa.

Ian Mathie
This is an intriguing book that starts in pre war South Africa with a young girl challenging the racial divide and bravely stepping across to live as a White, virtually abandoning her coloured family in the process. Emily becomes Emma and adopts English as her first language, dresses and styles herself to deny her origins. This is the beginning of her awakening to injustice and her reaction to the prevailing culture and political system of her country which denies her basic opportunities. Encounters with others who have survived and overcome similar prejudice in other countries encourage and help her to carve herself a new place for in South African society and to get and hold down a challenging job. At the same time political awareness begins to emerge and she faces a major dilemma when asked for her hand in marriage by a white man.
The way the story is told eases one into South Africa’s politics subtly whilst bringing Emma to life as a vivid and interesting character. As the reader, her dilemmas and fears become yours and the continual twists of the story produce an exciting sequence of colourful and interesting surprises,, much like the eponymous vase filled with many coloured marbles. The vase itself does not appear until well into the story, but from then on it keeps reappearing with a subtle underlying relevance all the way through to the end.
What begins as the story of a young girl crossing the racial divide soon becomes much more, giving intimate insights into different aspects of South African society. Each of these has its own pressures and strains, its own strengths and prejudices, all of which are brought into the spotlight through the situations Emma and her growing daughter encounter. Spanning two generations, this book is almost a family saga, but without the long winded tracts such books normally involve. The second section picks up the story of Marla, Emma’s daughter, following her emergence from schoolgirl to university student and onwards. Against the backdrop of South Africa’s most turbulent years, when apartheid was in the ascendancy, witnessing the Sharpville shootings and the emergence of new political organisations, we see a young woman awakening to injustice in her country and developing a political conscience of her own as she begins to discover herself as a person.
Marla’s subsequent trip to England produces a new and intriguing twist to the story with an interesting preamble about her lifelong friend Josh, who had preceded her to London and now acts as host and guide for Marla and her girlfriends. The story soon turns to a tale of love when Marla literally bumps into Bertie, who becomes instantly besotted with her. His subsequent pursuit when Marla returns to South Africa thinking he was not interested is neatly contrived and, like the rest of this book, full of interesting twists and side stories that add colour and complexity to the tale.
Inevitably the truth of Emma’s and Marla’s origins has to come out at some stage and this begins on the dockside where Emma is awaiting her daughter’s arrival. As unaware of recent events in Marla’s life as her daughter is of her mother’s past, Emily is horrified to encounter her brother Jonas. Having become somewhat estranged from her family, she has no knowledge that he works in the Cape Town docks. He tells her that their mother is dying and wants to see her. Slowly the truth emerges and, after a visit to see her dying mother, Emma confesses to Marla, terrified of how she might react.
Bertie, well bred gentleman that he is, takes it all in his stride and still besotted, carries things off with perfect equanimity, as do his upper crust family who come out for the wedding.
To write any story involving the inter racial conflicts of South Africa would be difficult territory, but Jacob Singer has managed to contrive a very believable and charming story and to tell it in a way that keeps the reader gripped throughout. Whilst expressing no overt political bias himself, he puts a clear spotlight on injustice whilst showing up the Macchiavellian workings of the state which fosters and exploits it. At the same time he reveals with subtlety the counter currents working below the surface to correct the injustice wherever opportunity arises.
An outsider with no knowledge of South African history or politics will find this book informative, disturbing and yet redemptive, whilst being entertained by a good story well told. Singer’s understanding of the racial problems and also of other forms of prejudice is deep and his compassion comes through clearly. The title, which seemed at the beginning to be rather irrelevant, becomes a beacon which endures to the end of the book. It symbolises so well the many facets, colours and contrasts of a nation actively evolving and struggling with the process as it does so.
The Vase With The Many Coloured Marbles is a very good book that deserves to be widely read.
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Blogcritics
Jacob Singer’s The Vase with the Many Coloured Marbles, set in South Africa, is a very emotional and rather disturbing book, yet I say this with great affection and respect. It deals with the realities of growing up in South Africa during apartheid, and the choices that people there were sometimes forced to make to succeed.

It is divided into two separate “books,” or stories. The first one deals with Emily, a “Coloured” girl, who decides to take opportunity of her fair coloring and jump the racial barrier. She reinvents herself as “Emma,” and does everything possible to fit in as a white woman. Although that seemingly makes her life easier, it also makes her perennially afraid of being discovered. That fear keeps her from forming a lasting relationship with a man, until she meets Eric, and in spite of the ever present fear of how her future children might look like, she gets pregnant. Without giving too much of the story away here, let me simply say that Marla, her daughter, looks completely white. She grows up and became a very vocal member of the anti-apartheid movement, and the matters escalate even further when her mother reveales the family history to her.

While it would be easy to judge some of the characters in this book harshly for their choices and decisions, the book brings to mind very similar stories I kept hearing in New Orleans, of the people who decided to “pass for white” simply because it ultimately meant better life for their children, and I kept being reminded of how bittersweet such decisions always turned out to be. As somebody who was brought up in a color-blind society of Central Europe, I find it so difficult to understand how anybody could discriminate against anybody else based solely on the basis of their skin color, and I was glad to see that Mr. Singer did not shy away from such painful and often very controversial issues.

I enjoyed the book a lot, but I found the writing somewhat basic and slow moving at times. As it is evident from the Acknowledgement section at the very end of the book, the author wove many personal memories and true personalities into this story, which might well be the reason for the narrative moving a bit sluggishly here and there. It must have been extraordinarily difficult to even deal with re-living of those events, yet alone deciding what to include and what to omit.

I would recommend The Vase with the Many Coloured Marbles to anybody who would like to try and understand the realities of apartheid in South Africa, and anybody who admires strong and resourceful female characters.

Maestra Amanda
"The vase is like South Africa, a country filled with people of many colours, a few who are truly uncut gems." (pg 322)

It has been a long time since I've read a "grown-up" book. When I received an email asking if I would read and review The Vase with the Many Coloured Marbles by Jacob Singer, I was intrigued and jumped at the opportunity.

The book itself is divided into two books, one about Emma (Emily) and the other focusing on her daughter, Marla. In reality, though, the storylines cross so much, that it just reads as one book, with each chapter focusing on a different character.

Born into a "Coloured" family in Distric 6 of Cape Town, Emily Kleintjies was so light-skinned that she could pass for white. Seeing the racism and disadvantages her life would face if she remained in Cape Town / District 6, she taught herself English mannerisms, way of dress and diction in order to move to Johannesburg and try to pass herself off as white. She moves to Johannesburg, changes her name to Emma Kline and finds work at a local department store as a lingerie buyer, and part-time model for a fashion designer. Eventually, she meets and falls in love with Eric, but he is sent to the front lines of WWII. Emma, who didn't tell Eric her secret, finds herself pregnant with his child, Marla. Eventually, with the help of friends, she gets papers forged to say she was born to a white, European family.

The many characters and stories are so intertwined, but tie together so nicely, that I feel like I can't talk about one without telling about everyone, how they are involved, and then that just tells the entire story!
From the Author