Pregnant with her first child, Betsy Klein, an artist, is summoned from her home in New York to her father’s hospital bed in Cape Town. Harold (Harry) Klein was a doctor in a small country town in South Africa, but is now in a coma. This is Anne Landman's second book. The first was The Devil's Chimney, published in 1997. The Rowing Lesson is a memoir novel, part Anne's family history (she lives in New York and was unable to be at her father's deathbed in South Africa in 1997), part fiction. Harry was a skinny boy with a hot-tempered mother and a good-hearted father, Joseph a Jewish shopkeeper in a town a few hundred miles from Cape Town. In 1938 Harry goes to medical school and marries a woman from a socially superior Jewish family. They have two children, both of whom move to the USA. Harry has a life-long jealousy of his younger brother, who becomes a flashy, respected cardiologist. As Betsy sits by his hospital bed, she recalls her memories of growing up. Her father was not always likeable or kind, a product of his background and times. The Rowing Lesson novel looks at the dynamics between father and daughter, between children leaving the country of their birth and parents that stay behind.
Anne Landsman was born and raised in Worcester, near Cape Town. She attended the University of Cape Town and Columbia University. Her first novel, The Devil’s Chimney, was nominated for four awards including the M-Net Prize, and was set in Oudtshoorn. She has lived in New York City for 27 years, and is married with two children. When her father died in 1997, she wrote him a letter in the second person. It was read to him at his bedside and also at his funeral. It became the spark for this novel. He got sick, fell and broke his leg. Two weeks later he was dead, something went wrong in the surgery.
