One Book, Two Takes: Mad Bad Love

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Written as a story of survival, with the aim of being someone’s story of hope, Sara-Jayne Makwala King shares her latest book Mad Bad Love (And How The Things We Love Can Nearly Kill Us.)

The memoir is a sequel to the bestselling Killing Karoline, which reveals she was the result of an affair between a white British woman and black South African man, illegal during apartheid. Karoline is classified as “white” but her true parentage soon emerges. 

At six weeks old, she is secretly taken out of South Africa, under the pretext of needing medical treatment in the United Kingdom. 

On returning, her biological mother says the newborn died while she was abroad. Karoline is adopted by a white British couple. Plagued by questions surrounding her identity, she returns “home” at the age of 26, to face her inner demons. 

In Mad Bad Love, Makwala King writes about her unborn child and how she was forced to save herself. She writes about being reunited with her biological father after nearly 40 years. She also talks about her journey as an adoptee, how she constantly felt there was something wrong with her.

“You can be our own comfort blanket even when you are in the gutter. You owe it to your children to heal.” 

At the beginning of the book, she details how shocking it is for her to accept becoming a mother with the “love of her life” Enver, a recovering heroin addict. She’s convinced she’s finally heading towards “happily ever after”. But six weeks after discovering she’s pregnant, Enver relapses and disappears.

“I didn’t want a second book. It was too painful to write. I already felt as if I had failed at motherhood and worried about trying to be a good mother. It broke me seeing expectant couples when I was on my own. All I ever wanted was my own family,” she says.

When Enver relapsed she felt alone and had to shop for baby clothes by herself. 

Her family and friends constantly questioned why she stayed with Enver, an active heroin addict. 

When Makwala King started writing Mad Bad Love in November, she had to relive the horrific memories of Enver stealing their daughter’s formula and clothes to sell for heroin. However, she says Enver was clean for most of the time when she was writing the book.

“I believed it was hard for him to read this book, especially because I was digging up all these memories while he was clean. Me reliving these experiences was him remembering them. On 15 August, Enver marked 17 years of being a recovered addict.”

Makwala King is a popular radio personality, known for her show on CapeTalk, an award-winning journalist as well as a bestselling author. 

She holds an honours degree in law and a masters of arts in journalism. In 2017, Killing Karoline was shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg’s Debut prize for South African writing.

Sonri Naidoo

In a much-awaited sequelbySara-Jayne Makwala King Mad, Bad, Love takes off from where Killing Karoline left off. Her debut looked at the story of her life as an abandoned young baby who returns to her birthplace and the follow-up looks at her new troubled relationships in the country.

Sara-Jayne is looking for a “happily ever after” with the sometimes-recovering addict love of her life, Enver. But the grand entrance of their baby-daughter changes their lives forever.

We root for Sara-Jane to have a better life after she is literally left for dead by her biological mother who cedes her to social workers, avoiding the “shame” back in segregated South Africa. Mad, Bad Love is also about her reconnection with her biological father; she goes to the extent of giving us his name in one chapter of the book. After the birth of Zora she tries to extend an olive branch to her erstwhile nemesis. 

For me though the book does not carry a running theme throughout. The writer has chosen the style of going back and forth in her storytelling. One moment she is back in the country of her birth and the next moment she is back to England. Of course, this is part of her story, and it works in some chapters where the reader gets a jarring sense of a roving and troubled soul trying to fix her own life. No one will fix your life except yourself, she seems to say.

The limitation of the writing style is that it sometimes feels like disparate stories are being told in the overall story arch, unconnected to the various dramatic turns. For instance, despite pronouncing many times that Enver is deceitful to her (and she gives him ultimatums several times), Sara always returns to him. One does not get a sense of resolution about the relationship even though Enver is introduced very early on in the book.

This is a pity, because in some parts of the book it feels like a warning tale on the perils of addiction and the refusal to seek professional help. The author even quotes American actress Jane Fonda, a recovering addict herself: “Emotionally healthy people don’t get into relationships with drug addicts”.  

Until the end, Enver lurks around in the story without the author having tied the loose ends of his recovery journey and the impact it has on her own life, even though she insists it is her journey, her story. However, kudos should be given to the publisher for always churning out these stories which broach taboo subjects in our communities.

Lehlohonolo Shale 

Mad, Bad, Love is published by Melinda Fergusson Books, an imprint of NB Publishers. It  is available at bookstores across the country. R320