My love affair with Carolyn Slaughter began in the 80s when I happened upon her novel The Banquet in a second-hand bookstore in Hamilton, Ontario. That book, which opens with the lines “I am waiting for them to come. I am not frightened at all”, was a sucker punch of a read and sent me on a treasure hunt for more of Ms. Slaughter’s books.

Slaughter was born in India in 1946, but the family moved soon after to the Kalahari Desert in what is now Botswana. She lived there until her family moved to London in 1961.

Every single book of Slaughter’s I have managed to find has felt like a stroke of luck because like Thomas H. Cook, you’re not picking up one of her books at the local big box book store. Sadly, everything I have read by Slaughter predates this blog with the exception of her memoir Before the Knife, which was published in 2002 and chronicles her childhood in Africa. It is the book she says she wrote to make sense of why she’d been driven to write about violence and murder up until that point. There’s a 12-year gap between The Widow and this memoir. Slaughter hasn’t published anything since 2007’s Dresden, Tennessee which, sadly I DNF. Although I suspect she may be retired, Slaughter became a psychotherapist in lives in (according to Wiki) New Jersey.

I have read and enjoyed several of her novels.

The Story of the Weasel (in North America it was called Relations), 1976

”This my third attempt to put my thoughts down on paper; in my mind they chafe mercilessly.”

This is the story of Christopher and Cathy, siblings in the late 1800s, whose relationship is, let’s just say, complicated. If you recall another set of siblings named Christopher and Cathy, you’ll have a clue as to why. This book floored me when I read it.

This was Slaughter’s debut and the second book I read. This is also the book that prompted me to write my first and only fan letter to an author and, miraculously, she responded!

Magdalene, 1978

”Today is my birthday, today I am thirty-seven. And look, here is my face floating in the polished silver mirror.”

This is the story of Mary Magdalene and her relationship with Christ. I remember this book as being as angsty as heck.

Dreams of the Kalahari, 1981

“The small girl sat on the sand under the thorn tree.”

An autobiographical novel of a young girl’s coming of age in the Kalahari.

The Banquet, 1983

This is the story of an architect called Harold who meets a young shopgirl called Blossom at a Marks & Spencer. She is the most beautiful woman Harold has ever seen and the two eventually fall in love. One of the most beautiful and horrifying books I have ever read.

A Perfect Woman, 1984

“A woman stood by her window looking out at the garden with the gaze of someone surveying the sea or a long sweep of hills and fields.”

The story of a love triangle.

The Innocents, 1986

“I’m being buried alive.”

A tale of South Africa during the Apartheid

My collection will be complete when I get my hands on Columba, 1977; Heart of the River, 1982; The Widow, 1989. I own, but have not yet read, A Black Englishman, 2004.