Nicholas Shakespeare: Snowleg

Reviewed by VINCENT REID


Despite being known for his big-picture approach to context and narrative, this time Shakespeare questions the effect of political division on the individual. The person in question is Peter Hithersay. More English than the Queen, Peter grows up living in comfortable middle-England during the late 1970s: cricket, cups of tea, public-school life and cucumber sandwiches.

At his 16th birthday all this is turned on its head when it's revealed his father isn't Rodney the struggling artist. Peter is the product of his mother's trip to East Germany and the liaison that resulted from the brief harbouring of an escaped prisoner. Peter's mother doesn't even know his father's name.

The revelation precipitates a personal crisis. Is Peter English? Can Peter really be German? Does this explain why Peter hates the elitism of his school? A visit to West Germany confirms that he must live there to find out.

Fast-forward some years and Peter is now a medical student in Hamburg. The opportunity arises for him to cross the Iron Curtain with an acting company and he takes it, hoping to find his father.

Amid the brutal decay, enter Snowleg. Described in such detail as to be beautiful yet not otherworldly, her chipped teeth and limping gait are all symbols of her human fallibility — the antithesis of the wild goddess depicted on the cover.

A brief tryst follows, with exchanges of love that will endure beyond the bounds of cold-war politics. Reality predictably enters and separates the star-crossed lovers.

Shakespeare presents us with intimate portraits of a few people and shows how their lives have been turned upside down by forces beyond their control. Only through this close examination is it shown that each person's actions are the product of free will.


Peter's foolish promises to Snowleg weigh on him throughout his life. His quest to find his father is forgotten as the memory of her becomes all-encompassing. Slowly his life degenerates to loveless affair after affair. He loses contact with his English family. His emotions become suppressed, his reactions robotic.

Eventually the quest to find Snowleg becomes irrelevant as Peter must first find himself.

Shakespeare writes Romeo and Juliet — only this time the lovers do not die. They grow old, fail to cope with regrets, and end up leading empty, self-destructive lives. As a moral tale chronicling the effects of self-indulgent emotions, it is hard to beat.

* Harvill, $34.95

* Vincent Reid is a research fellow in psychology at the University of Auckland.