01
Conditioning
How much can people get used to? The book watches danger become ordinary and asks what that does to everyone who has to live with it.
The book
Out of Nowhere
A South African Story
Adelia Cook
A Johannesburg life of friendship, fear and laughter, and the long road to the hardest decision of all.
First published February 2015 ISBN 978-0-9942478-0-3
Synopsis
A life worth staying for
Gold Coast, 1999. Claire sits bolt upright in bed at three in the morning, heart pounding, convinced the nightmares are back. They aren’t. Not exactly. The light under the door belongs to Cyber, a houseguest from Johannesburg who has brought the city’s chaos to her quiet canal-side home.
From there, memory pulls back across the Indian Ocean to Johannesburg: to Claire’s friendship with Lucy, whose sense of humour is matched only by her loyalty; to Dawn, the friend who never says “I told you so”; to John, the man who refused to buy anything from her and invited her for a drink instead; and to a household of dogs and cats with opinions of their own.
It is a life full of laughter. It is also a life lived behind burglar bars, in a city where gunshots at night have become background noise and the news, more and more often, is about someone you know.
Out of Nowhere is the story of how that happens, slowly and then all at once, and of what it costs to finally leave.
In the author’s words
Told the way she remembers it
In the book’s Prelude, Adelia Cook explains what she set out to write, and is candid about the limits of memory.
Although I have endeavoured to write this book as a series of non-fictional circumstances, I may have unintentionally presented certain bias in my interpretation of events.
What I am trying to demonstrate is the decline of civilisation, as we know it, when crime rules.
Inside the book
Where it begins
The book opens on the Gold Coast in 1999 and moves back and forth through the years, with chapters named for places and years, the way memory arrives.
The first line
She sat bolt upright in bed. Fear touched her very core, turning the rivulets of sweat into ice water as they poured off her body.
Key themes
What the book is about
02
Humour
The jokes never stop: at weddings and funerals, in the kitchen and at the gate. In Claire’s world, laughing is how you stay standing.
03
Friendship
Claire and Lucy. Dave and his foreman. Friendships that cross every line a divided society drew, and hold.
04
Home as fortress
Burglar bars, security gates, alarms and armed response: what becomes of a home when it has to become a fortress?
05
Animals
Muffin, Spike, Winston, Zingo and Zea: family members, comic relief and, more than once, the household’s fiercest guards.
06
Leaving
Leaving South Africa is the hardest decision in the book, and Africa, Claire discovers, is not so easily left behind.
Selected details
People, places, creatures
People
- Claire, the eternal optimist
- John, her husband and the forward-thinking one
- Lucy, friend and business partner
- Dawn, her dearest friend
Places
- Johannesburg
- Kariba, Nyanga and Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
- Lisbon and the Algarve
- San Francisco, Grand Cayman and New Orleans
- The Gold Coast, Australia
Creatures
- Muffin, a Maltese with delusions of grandeur
- Spike, a German Shepherd with a sense of humour
- Winston and Zingo, Rhodesian Ridgebacks
- Zea, a tabby cat with opinions
Reader note
Out of Nowhere contains strong language and depicts violent crime, domestic abuse, sexual violence and suicide.
Publication details
The edition
| Title | Out of Nowhere |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | A South African Story |
| Author | Adelia Cook |
| First published | February 2015 |
| Publisher | Adelia Cook |
| ISBN | 978-0-9942478-0-3To configureISBNPrinted in the 2015 manuscript. Confirm for this edition |
| Formats | To be confirmedTo configureFormatsAdd them in Admin → Book & sales |
| Language | English |
Purchase options
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To configureFormats & pricesNot supplied. Add them in Admin → Book & salesBuy the bookTo configureRetailer linksNot supplied. Add genuine retailer links (and Amazon, only if listed) in Admin
- ISBN
- 978-0-9942478-0-3
- First published
- February 2015
- Publisher
- Adelia Cook
Danger came out of nowhere. So did the courage to leave.
A South African Story
By Adelia Cook
