Differential Forms

Set in a girl's boarding school in the middle of the South African veld, this compelling short novel is an examination of nascent sexuality and the violence it can engender. When 12 members of the school swimming team meet for a reunion, they are forced to return to the horrific events of 40 years previously, when their fellow team member, Fiamma Coronna, mysteriously disappeared. Fiamma was always an outsider, an aloof italian princess, adored by the girls beloved swimming teacher, Miss G. Dangerous and egotistical, Miss G forms a passionate attachment to Fiamma, so igniting a fierce jealousy amongst the girls. As Miss G's obsession grows, her behaviour becomes increasingly irresponsible. Gathering the team in her room after dark, she offers wine and insults. The girls hang on her every word as she sadistically outlines their defects. Like Lord of the Flies, this novel precisely evokes the darkness that is the flipside of innocence. Kohler's language is heady and erotic and the world of the novel is almost stifling in its intensity. Kohler employs the device of a character that is her namesake, a team member called Sheila Kohler, a writer, settled in America, obsessed with mystery stories that end violently.This lends the narratrive an edge of spooky realism, as does the teenage-style poetry that prefaces many chapters. The novel is propelled by the desire to find out what happened to Fiamma and whilst we are aware from the outset that she has vanished, the circumstances of that vanishing are withheld until the last pages, when the ghastly and all-too-believable climax is finally played out in the memories of the middle-aged women. Review by JAQUI LOFTHOUSE (Kirkus UK)