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Memory, body and landscape in Anne Landsman’s The rowing lesson

ABSTRACT “Death is fierce after all,” reflects Betsy Klein, narrator of Anne Landsman’s The rowing lesson (2007). Having watched her father, Harold Klein, slowly slip out of existence, Betsy’s closing statement in the novel encapsulates the premise of this article: understanding death, the process of mourning, and what effect loss can have on an individual. Linked with loss and mourning is Landsman’s use of nostalgia as a way in which Betsy conjures up her comatose father in order to say goodbye. Using Melanie Klein’s theory of the depressive position in childhood development, this article discusses Betsy’s mourning for her father as a process which involves an intricate reworking of the connections between interior and exterior surfaces of the human body, the use of landscape that shapes an individual, and the memories that bind these structures. Refiguring medical terminology as landscape, Landsman demonstrates the way in which the human body constitutes a habitat that binds place and memory, and questions how a South African identity is so closely woven into the fabric of the land. Finally, the article will compare the workings of nostalgia to the processes of mourning and melancholia, asking how the acts of reading and writing can function into healing.