June: Notes On Falling
by Bronwyn Law-Viljoen

Review by Moon Mokgoro

Connection In The Variety

Notes on Falling by Law-Viljoen is a layered novel that moves between continents and across decades — from the experimental energy of 1970s New York to the fragmented landscape of 1990s South Africa. The novel follows the lives of three artists — Thalia, Paige, and Robert — whose stories connect through shared themes of dance, movement, photography, and memory. Law-Viljoen resists the certitudes of traditional storytelling; instead, she leans into ambiguity, and vagueness, blurring lines between past and present. She insists on evocation, inquiry and exploration. She builds a world through fragments and reflections and in it, her writing echoes the stillness of photography.

The Author And Her Variety

The novel shows Bronwyn Law-Viljoens wide portfolio; she is a writer, editor, and professor. Her work spans from photography and printmaking to writing and editorial projects that document key moments in South African history. She has worked writing related to the architecture and art of the South African Constitutional Court.

The Story In Its Variety

The book the story of Thalia, Paige and Robert. Thalia, a young art photographer living in a university town in 1990s South Africa, directionless in the wake of unanswered questions about her maternal past. Raised by her father, a newspaper editor, Thalia grows up in a world where truth is hidden in plain sight. Her journey to New York contains an underlying search for her mother, who left her when she was a little girl. Thalia’s story is one built on memory, one that trusts memory, and allows memory to guide it. Paige is a ballet dancer who left South Africa for New York to further her career in ballet. Her story is told obliquely, through recollection and archive – it's told in pieces. She is emotional, vulnerable yet ambitious and dedicated. Robert is a photographer active in the New York experimental and avant-garde art scene of the 1970s. He's an artist, a forgotten artist. His story intertwines with Thalia's through both their histories – Thalia through her mother, who was a dancer, and Robert through his photographs that capture dance.

The Structure And The Variety

The structure deliberately abandons linear chronology and narrative in favour of an archival structure. As in life, time does not unfold in a straight line; it breaks, fractures. This approach fits perfectly in her telling of a story that passes through time and geography in all three characters' lives.

What also emerges from this interwoven narrative is reflection on photography, dance, space, and storytelling. Law-Viljoen’s understanding of these disciplines informs not only the content but also enhances her ability to dive into each in ways that add to the beauty of this novel.

The Experience In Its Variety

Notes on Falling is not an easy novel. It is not a novel you read in passing when you have a moment. It demands your attention, time, commitment and dedication to losing yourself in a book. In one passage, Law-Viljoen writes, “Perhaps the problem was her claustrophobia, her inability to forget that she was standing under tons of earth trying to make photographs in half darkness.” – a piece of writing that I feel is an excellent metaphor for the reading experience itself.