Reviewed by Ruth Latta
A Life in Frames
by Leonora Ross
March 2025, Paperback, 326 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1069082800
Halfway through A Life in Frames, the central character, Lejf Busher, meets a man called Dr Ibrahim who shows him around his orchard in a village near Mount Sinai. The highly perceptive Dr Ibrahim notices Lejf’s reluctance to talk about his feelings, and suggests that he hides behind his camera lens to avoid confronting the thing he fears. When Lejf tells him about the two relationships causing him pain and regret, Dr Ibrahim says, “Suppose what you are giving them is not what they need from you. Maybe they need something else.”
A Life in Frames, Leonora Ross’s third novel, is the coming-of-age story of a gifted young artist and the journeys he embarks on in his quest for self-discovery and the pursuit of his dreams. The story opens with ten year old Lejf Busher lying on a blanket under the African night sky in his parents’ backyard in Otijwarongo, Namibia—exhausted, but eyes filled with dreams. Earlier that day, their father had taken Lejf and his brother Erik on their first hunt. Lejf recalls the “innocent brown eyes” of the springbok he had shot—how sick it had made him feel—and how disappointed his father had been when Lejf told him he was done with hunting.
Lejf is the second youngest of five boys. His eccentric Swedish mother, Signe, is a source of comfort and support, but Lejf feels that his father, Lawrie, doesn’t understand him. At fourteen, Lejf’s life changes when he meets eighteen year old Laia, and he falls in love with her. But Laia isn’t thinking about a relationship with the young boy she befriends; she longs for independence and an escape from her conservative upbringing. She leaves for Karlsruhe, Germany to study and she and Lejf see each other on her breaks from university. On the evening of her twenty-first birthday, she proposes that she be Lejf’s “first”, and he agrees. When she returns to Karlsruhe to continue her studies, she leaves behind a lovesick Lejf to agonize while he has to finish school.
The author keeps the reader well-oriented through timelines as the main characters mature and their dreams take shape. Yet, something always remains out of reach. Lejf wins awards and attains success, but it comes at a price. The dynamic of his relationship with Laia intensifies, but each respects the other’s independence, and they compromise. Laia sometimes travels with him, but the dangerous nature of some of his assignments aggravates the tension between him and his father, and he feels helpless that he can’t ease his parents’ fears.
On a desert project to document the impact of globalization and climate change on Indigenous desert cultures, Lejf feels inspired by these people’s spirit and their connection with the land. Witnessing their struggles, he feels distressed and finds himself in a desert of the heart. Laia swims around in his mind, and he resents the fact that his father doesn’t understand what he tries to achieve. These undisclosed feelings and misunderstandings send him on a downward path, from where it is a long way back to recovery.
Leonora Ross writes lucidly and presents her complex story chronologically. She excels at describing scenery and evoking emotion. Born in Africa, she studied law, later moving to Toronto, Canada where she studied art. She now lives in Alberta in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. An environmentalist, writer and photographer, she has written two earlier novels, Tess Has A Broken Heart, and Other Comedies Full of Errors, and The Suncatchers. Her love and respect for the people and places of Africa shine through in A Life in Frames.
About the reviewer: Ruth Latta lives in Ottawa, Canada and writes historical novels centring on Canadian women. Currently she is writing a “marriage plot” novel, with the working titles, Forty Mermaids, or Beaux, Arts.