Portraiture of mother-daughter bonds is one of the most universal ideas in literature. After all, the intricate and deep experience of having a mother can go in many ways. For example, she can become your best friend and confidant, an enemy and threat to your identity, or a mix of all predicaments. Each mother-daughter relationship is unique, so each experience should be explored in narrative. Motherhood is difficult, and so is daughter-hood. Many times, roles can and will get reversed: we might have to become mothers to our mothers for many reasons, such as old age or mental health conditions that become disabilities. It is indisputable that mothers are our source of life, conflict, and happiness. However contradictory, all these things can be true at once.
Below Luck Level by Barbara Erasmus beautifully explores the intricacies and eccentricities of this bond.
Hannah Cartwright is the daughter of the eccentric and acclaimed writer Chloe Cartwright. As Hannah grows up with a grief-stricken mother who is too busy writing novels, she finds stealing is her solution when the universe is unjust to her. Having grown up with minimal supervision, Hannah goes through the chaotic motions of life --and just when she’s getting a sense of stability in her life, Chloe Cartwright begins to display signs of Alzheimer’s, a condition that progressively deteriorates the brain. As such, the mother-daughter roles flip over drastically: Hannah is having trouble building a life of her own while maintaining her mother’s life.
Barbara is both an author and journalist based in Cape Town. She grew up in Zimbabwe and spent decades dedicated to her career in travel writing: in total, Barbara has written four novels.
Below Luck Level debuted on the North American stage this past June, and is available for purchase here and here!
Daniella Felix: You chose a fragment of the poem “Turtle” by Kay Ryan as the epigraph of your novel. Hannah, the main character of the novel, has an instant connection to that fragment. I wonder, what’s your connection with the poem?
Barbara Erasmus: The ember was almost identical to the one described in the opening pages of Below Luck Level. When browsing at random, Kay Ryan's poem caught my eye. Hannah Cartwright, the heroine in Below Luck Level, is a shop-lifter. Stealing is her handy solution, deployed when the universe seems unfair. If you want something, take it: this evolves into her mantra! I hope readers will be on Hannah's side as her spoils build up in a secret drawer. Ryan claims to live below luck level – exactly how I felt after joining the supermarket's slowest queue. And when Ryan mentions a lottery – the kernel of a plot! What if Hannah Cartwright won?
DF: Below Luck Level cleverly explores many ideas: from difficult family structures to feelings of deterioration and inadequacy. Most importantly, the main idea explored is Alzheimer’s disease. During the writing process, was that your initial focus? Or did the theme change throughout the story as you kept on writing?
BE: I adhere to a strict routine in each of my six novels – I write both the first and last chapters at the outset! I feel compelled to isolate the key characters and their fundamental dilemma in the opening sentence – and I always know how their stories end! I’m often completely clueless about how they will get there and who else may edge into the cast, but their destiny is always clear. Too many novels have disappointing endings.
“She was dead when I woke up beside her the next morning” is the opening line of [the novel]. Hannah Cartwright wants her off-beat mother Chloe to die like a dog - like a beloved, cherished dog, stroked, gentle-handed, by a loving owner, beside a qualified professional, armed with a measured dose to make the end arrive more quickly, more gently.
Fortunately for Hannah, it’s fiction. Authors of non-fiction books on the same topic risk arrest, their guilt determined by location. An author won’t be arrested if they live in Oregon in the USA. Or Switzerland. Or Holland. You’re safe in conservative Canada. Paradoxically, South Africa, boasting one of the most enlightened constitutions in the world, denies its citizens a right afforded to its dogs.
DF: Chloe Cartwright’s relationship with her daughter Hannah is cyclical and full of impatience. Hannah describes her own relationship with her mother to be the same, except she feels guilty and lacks remorse sometimes. Can we justify Hannah’s behavior? Should we take her character for who she is, or learn from her?
BE: Credibility is my major goal in writing – I want readers to believe in my characters, to understand choices forced upon them. As an author, I was a late starter – fortunately not quite as old as Biden - but for me, age delivered a rich tapestry to draw from when I changed direction from teaching to journalism at 50. Teaching’s a great background, each class offering a microcosm of society –rich, poor, clever, struggling, shy, outgoing. Even my mistakes were helpful - Hannah makes several after a low-profile start as a waitress, even her brother Karl specializes in pizza delivery! Career-guidance was never high on their mother’s agenda. Chloe Cartwright’s a prize-winning author, always immersed in the plot of one of her five published novels, more interested in movies than education! Her children dismiss her books as The Not-So-Famous Five - neither can face plowing through tales of star-crossed lovers in the fight against apartheid.
In their opinion, Chloe would have walked away with an Oscar, had there been a category for The Worst Mother – an empty fridge and a boycott of parent- teacher functions were trademarks of their childhood as they scrambled towards adulthood!
Credibility is my major goal in writing – I want readers to believe in my characters, to understand choices forced upon them.
DF: Reading Hannah’s research of her mother’s disease, I wonder: what research did you conduct for this book? Did you have a difficult time, just like Hannah?
BE: At my age, my greatest fear was that all I’d have to do was to look in the mirror! I’ve been unable to remember where I parked my car since I got my driving license at 16, but this familiar predicament assumes more sinister dimensions now! Sadly, it was all too easy to gather feedback from families struggling to manipulate the budget to include the cost of care, forced to witness those they love evolve into strangers. Below Luck Level was already published by the time my brother was diagnosed.
DF: Hannah’s self-comparison to her friend Julia and others led her to steal. What other roles do Hannah’s friends play in her character arc?
BE: The role of Hannah’s friends is two-fold – to flesh out Hannah’s character and to drop clues about the progression of Chloe’s illness. Julia, a ballet prodigy, highlights Hannah’s despair that her gene pool has left her better equipped to join Karl’s rugby team than Swan Lake! Julia’s the one who notices Chloe’s new tendency for repetition. Mattress Mary is only too eager to mix with rugby players – and Hannah’s no saint herself – she fears she might be known as Hannah the Humper! Chloe’s decline is emphasized when Mattress Mary arrives with a new baby whose vocabulary grows as quickly as Chloe starts to forget the words in hers. I hope readers will relate to Hannah’s evolving relationship with Daniel and her career as a sous chef, sharing her frustration as Chloe’s illness complicates her choices.
DF: The story could’ve been set anywhere: Cape Town was your choice. Your descriptions, both of Pepper Street and Rose Café, as well as a few European countries, are quite beautiful and alluring. As a writer, what drew you in about Cape Town that made you want to write about it?
BE: I’m intrinsically African -- although you wouldn’t assume that at first glance since I’m white, a complicated color laden with baggage in a South African context. My English accent makes me sound like an obscure cousin of the Royal family! Anyone white in my age bracket was enormously advantaged by apartheid, a crime against humanity, in what remains one of the most unequal societies in the world – until Mandela and Winnie walked out of prison, hand in hand! Suddenly, it became feasible to write a completely apolitical South African story to which readers anywhere in the world could relate.
It hasn’t been easy to break the traditional mold of a story set in our beloved, complicated country --but 2024 is the age of the internet, which has rewritten the world as a global village. People are living longer lives, allowing Alzheimer’s, with its plaques and tangles, to elbow its unwelcome way onto every stage.
DF: I must ask: as an author, do you have any characters that you’ve written based on people you know in real life?
BE: Unlike many authors, I never write about people who are important to me. However much I believe in the story I create, it is always fiction.
I tried to drop clues into the story - as if I was writing a krimi [crime novel] - to alert the reader’s attention as Alzheimer’s builds its trademark plaques and tangles... I need readers to share [Hannah's] despair at the absence of easy answers to help them understand Hannah’s final choice and how Chloe earned a release.
DF: Do you have characters of your own that are your favorites? If so, which one? Mine’s Chloe!
BE: I believe in Hannah Cartwright! I hope readers will find her entertaining company, recognizing her close relationship with Chloe – such the hope and disappointment shared during their enterprising venture into speed dating! It’s important for Hannah to recognize the value of her relationship with Daniel with his African roots and his multi-lingual journey to Cape Town from the Congo - tune into Trump to learn about migration! I want the restaurant they develop together to succeed, sharing their excitement as they become mini-celebrities with the launch of the TV series Daniel and Hannah!
DF: Chloe encompasses the fragility of the mind and the quirks that go alongside the human experience. What was your vision when creating a character as powerful as Chloe Cartwright? What inspired you to make her?
BE: My goal is to create real people! It’s important to me that nothing jars about the behavior of even minor characters – to believe what might prompt a midnight call from Julia in London as Chloe’s symptoms emerge. I tried to drop clues into the story - as if I was writing a krimi [crime novel] - to alert the reader’s attention as Alzheimer’s builds its trademark plaques and tangles, to create an understanding of what prompts Hannah to use her lotto haul to finance a flight to the Dignitas Clinic in Zurich. I need readers to share her despair at the absence of easy answers to help them understand Hannah’s final choice and how Chloe earned a release.
DF: A quote in your book struck me the most: "Emigration is a fact of life for many families in South Africa." Family is a complex and relatable theme in literature, so what compelled you to write about family?
BE: Family is fundamental – the cornerstone that shapes the future. Hannah and Karl are the children of dreamers, and Thabo Mbeki, the only black student at Sussex University at the time, inspired their parents. Determined to contribute more than joining a protest march, they emigrate, setting up a law practice in the atmospheric Bo Kaap, buoyed by the warmth of a Muslim community fighting for justice. Tragedy strikes when Chloe’s husband dies in a car accident, and the children grow up with a devastated single mother, living precariously as a journalist. She hasn’t got time to supervise their homework! When Karl joins the exodus of people uncertain of South Africa’s political future, Hannah must handle Chloe’s illness alone – but Karl is waiting at Zurich Airport when she makes the flight to the Dignitas Clinic. Family is fundamental when the stakes are high.
DF: I adore Hannah Cartwright. You fleshed out her character, gave her an interesting arc, and not to mention, she was almost like Barbie in the sense that she juggled from being a waitress and assistant chef to running a business with her boyfriend Daniel to becoming a mother to her mother. Given the grandiosity of her arc, I got the impression that Hannah was the first character you came up with. Is that right?
BE: I did indeed build my story around Hannah, introducing other characters to the mix in the hope her interactions with them would make her as real to readers as she was to me. I aimed to create a credible human with three-dimensional strengths and flaws rather than a role model.
DF: I can only imagine the difficulty of writing and research. Speaking of which, what scene was the hardest for you to write and why?
BE: The story became increasingly difficult to write as Chloe’s illness progressed. My writing style is essentially light – I can churn out amusing anecdotes for the back page of women’s magazines, but Alzheimer’s is essentially a serious and heart-breaking topic. Both Chloe and Hannah were so real to me by then that I struggled to confront the growing tragedy of the situation facing them every day.
DF: I adore the ending! I love the clashing images of Hannah’s tumultuous, chaotic life and the open end of being in a stable and secure relationship with Daniel. It’s an open ending, yet charming and sweet. What was your inspiration for this ending?
BE: Endings are as crucial to me as opening sentences! Your reaction to the one I chose is a great morale booster because it describes exactly what I aimed to achieve! I didn’t want to tie up my story with a satin bow, but I hoped that it would be as crucial to the reader as it was to me that Hannah’s future held a credible chance of happiness after the trauma of Chloe’s death. The struggle of the past could never be erased, but it seemed essential to introduce the hope of healing.
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