Liv’s Secrets

I chose to read and review Liv’s Secrets because, as an avid reader and author of historical fiction, this book is the first recently published novel I’ve come across that details the Jewish experience in South Africa. My goal was to learn about the country and the era. The book didn’t disappoint.

A current resident of Marco Island, the author, Janet Levine, was born in South Africa and is of Jewish descent. In Liv’s Secrets, she explores life under Apartheid (1948 to 1994), a time of severe racial segregation under an all-white government in a mostly Black country. 

I was particularly enamored with Levine’s attention to detail. While reading Liv’s Secrets, I felt like I was in South Africa, experiencing the sights, smells, and sounds of this beautiful land. 

The main characters in the novel dare to stand up for Black South Africans, risking their lives and their livelihoods. This is an intense novel that doesn’t hold back from depicting the horrific torture used to repress those who opposed the government, balancing this with an expansive family saga that explores the complexities of family history, identity, and sexuality. 

Although some readers might be put off by the portrayal of gay and incestuous relationships, I believe these elements are central to the book's themes of secrecy and identity.

My interview with the author of Liv’s Secrets, Janet Levine.

Q: Liv’s Secrets is set in interesting locations and time periods. What drew you to the geography and time frames for this novel?

Janet: The setting for this historical fiction is South Africa from the 1800s-1960. I’m a South African-born American author of Lithuanian-Jewish descent. Four generations ago, in the 1880s, in a general exodus of Jews from pogroms and persecution in Eastern Europe, many Jews fled the countries where they had lived for centuries. Most emigrated to the United States, but a stream from Lithuania washed up in South Africa, where some earlier Lithuanian Jewish settlers had built fortunes on the newly discovered diamond fields.

My antecedents, known as Litvaks (Jews from Lithuania), were part of that stream. As a child, tales of family elders whose parents had come from Riga and Memel were fascinating to me. I’ve always wanted to write their stories as there’s very little fiction written about the history and lives of South African Jewry.

The first part of the novel is fictionalized stories of my family’s arrival and settlement in South Africa. I intertwine that story with chapters set in the year 1960 and narrated by the family matriarch Liv Weisz. 1960 is a pivotal year in South Africa’s history and a pivotal year in Liv’s life. Liv is the enigmatic, invincible protagonist of Liv’s Secrets.

Q: How did you go about researching the era and the places for Liv’s Secrets?

Janet: Interesting question. Surprisingly, I did not have to do much research into the era and places in Liv’s Secrets because I grew up among an extended Jewish family and was inspired by their stories of our common past. I fictionalized much of my lived experiences in the novel and large parts of Liv’s life are purely imagined. Liv’s Secrets is not autobiographical; I am one generation removed from Liv and her life.

I love South Africa. During my life there, growing up and as an adult, I traveled extensively throughout the country. I know the land very well. I had twelve years of South African history at school. I was a published journalist from a young age, and so met many fascinating people and experienced a variety of situations. Among other courses, I studied South African literature and history at the postgraduate level at the University in South Africa. I was twice elected to the Johannesburg City Council. South Africa. The land, the people, the politics, and the history all run through my veins.

I researched short bios of the historical figures that also people the novel.

Q: Tell us what you can about Liv.

Janet: Liv is a composite of many remarkable and admirable women I knew growing up and in my early years in politics and journalism in South Africa. She is a complex character (as are we all) and brave. Daughter, wife, mother, lover, friend, activist; she epitomizes all women everywhere who strive to live lives that reflect their values and ideals.

Fundamentally, Liv’s Secrets is historical fiction about a multi-generational family, the Weisz family, and the often surprising loves and interactions of three powerful women in that family.

Q: What is the fascination with South African Jews, and why should we be interested?

Janet: The distinctive South African Jewish community remains remarkable. At its height in the 1960s, it numbered one hundred and twenty thousand, a tiny minority among four million Whites, all living amid thirty-four million Black people. And yet, South African Jews, embodied by the fictional Weisz family, have had a hugely disproportionate, positive impact on many aspects of South African life for well over one and a half centuries.

I want to enrich readers’ knowledge of history.

Q: What can we find you doing when you aren’t writing?

Janet: I read probably as much as I write. When I’m working on a writing project, I cannot fully engage with a book but gather daily information on our troubled world from many sources. When I read books, my taste is eclectic: Biography, philosophy, travel, history, prehistory, and a variety of fiction. Whatever appeals at that moment.

I visit my grandchildren as much as I can. I have a worldwide network of correspondents and spend (perhaps too much) time on emails and text messages.

I’m a nature lover and a birder. I love photography. I try to keep up a daily exercise routine. During “season,” I’m involved in discussion groups, book clubs, and other groups.

Q: What are you working on now?

Janet: Currently, I’m promoting Liv’s Secrets, but I’m itching to start writing creatively again. I want to write a short children’s book for my grandchildren, describing growing up in Johannesburg in the 1950s. I’m also marinating a psycho-spiritual novel that, hopefully, I can work on during the summer months.