A Way Of Life

A Way Of Life by Theo Engela is set in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in the mid 1960s.

The story centres around Louis van Pletten, a successful, gifted writer who excelled in music, writing, art, philosophy, and in fact anything he set his mind to. He’d published his first two novels in his twenties, but then Fate delivered a cruel blow to Louis by way
of the tragic deaths of his wife and infant son. That’s really when Louis’ life first began to fall apart.

Now at 45, he lives off his dwindling fortune, distracting himself with philosophy, copious amounts of alcohol and spends much of his time working on his long-awaited third novel. He struggles to complete his third book, his Great Masterpiece, his magnum opus. Trouble is, at over 300 pages, it’s morbid, dark as hell and as full of utter misery and self-loathing as he is. He can barely stand to read it himself. He should burn it, but it’s taken him three years to write the damn thing … and he has no spark left to start over – and just enough money left to last him three more months.

He lies to himself all the time, he can stop drinking any time he wants to, it’s his business anyway … friendship doesn’t matter, even love and life don’t matter. His friends keep trying to intervene, trying to fix him up with dates and badgering him about his drinking – oh, why can’t people leave him be? Especially Bernice? The truth is, he really can’t live without alcohol … he’s tried. He lives from one sip to the next, and it’s become a way of life. And it’s killing him.

His close friends care deeply about Louis’ well‐being, especially Boris Lessing, an older man with a taste for adventure and a hunger for the truth. Years ago, Louis had toured the whole of Southern Africa with Boris in their search for the meaning of life. One day,
somewhere in the open spaces of South Africa – under a giant bluegum tree, they had a shared epiphany that was supposed to change their lives for the better. What lay behind this longing, this loneliness, this restlessness, what had been the secret of the Conference Tree – the secret that had saved Boris just as it had eluded him?

Boris had returned home to paint again, and became a popular and wealthy artist
almost overnight. Louis had had no such success. Instead, he became an alcoholic. Torn between the bottle and a possible future with the inviting, vibrant and lively young Bernice, the beleaguered Louis struggles with the bleakness of his future chained to the
bottle, and becomes increasingly distracted and wrapped up in internalized philosophical monologues about life, music and the cruelty of Fate.

Alcoholism is a creeping, crippling tragedy that effects the lives of millions. It’s irrevocably affected the lives of Louis van Pletten, Boris Lessing and Bernice Collet.