Clare Wald is an accomplished South African novelist who has been through many challenges in her lifetime and has made many mistakes which she regrets. Because of this she is tormented by grief, guilt and emotional pain and has a deep need for absolution from the people who she feels she has wronged. These people include her son, her sister, her daughter, and Sam and although she realizes she will not have the chance to ask them all directly for forgiveness we still see her persist in her attempts, this shows us how desperate she is. By confessing to what she has done wrong and showing deep remorse for her actions, Clare hopes that she can start to feel healed and mend her somewhat ‘haunted’ conscience. At the beginning of the novel she hires Sam to write her biography, this is later revealed to be because she seeks forgiveness from him because of her refusal to take him in when he was a child. At first she is extremely cold and withdrawn towards him. She hopes that he will forgive her for her past. However towards the end of the novel she opens up and she even helps him find peace in some way when she begins to …show more content…
One of the earliest things that filled her with guilt was the murder of her sister Nora and Stephan which has been on her mind for 40 long years. Since childhood Nora and Clare did not get along and we see the intensity of this fight when Clare describes Nora as “a truly evil child”. After Nora married Stephan she was alienated from her family, a while later things worsened after she came back. after her return Nora attempted to convince their parents that Clare was neglecting Mark. Clare talks about how she believed that Nora would stop at nothing to take Mark away from her. Due to this she despised Nora and then one day she gave information about the location of Nora and Stephan and they ended up getting assassinated. Her complicity in this perceived crime now haunts her in her old