Kris Van der Bijl

Spud: The Reunion by John Van de Ruit is the fifth novel of the Spud series. While the initial four detail Spud’s high school adventures, this latest novel picks up the story at his 10-year high school reunion. The novel revitalises Spud’s boyish charm. Like the previous four novels, it offers a fictionalised reflection of a young, out-of-place South African struggling to exist in a crazy, loving, and exceedingly loveable world.

Each book in the series takes the form and structure of a fictionalised diary written by the main character, John “Spud” Milton. The original four books follow Spud’s high school career. Each book in the series recounts a year in high school. (Admittedly, I never understood his private school’s four-year system; a carry-over, I assume, for a schooling system that has since passed).

Spud: The Reunion does not recount a full year in Spud’s life. While it is still written, like the other novels, in a diary form, its storyline is kept to the events leading up to and of the school’s 10th-year reunion.

Male teenager antics is an apt summary of the series as a whole. Spud’s friendship group, dubbed “the crazy eight”, are his dorm mates. The groups of them group up together and have their bonds cemented through experiencing their growth from teenager to adult together. Their camaraderie is further cemented through acts of rebellion against their school and its authoritarian figures, most notably their housemaster “Sparerib” and their principal “The Glock”.

It’s easy to question the strength of their friendship. This is because they would likely not have been friends had they never lived in the same dormitory. However, their antics create a bond of brotherhood commonly known to anyone who has slept in the same room with the same people for a continuous period. Indeed, when working together against common enemies – more often than not, the authoritative school masters and prefects – Spud finds himself most aligned with those around him.

How strong the Crazy Eight’s bond is is the central stake in Spud: The Reunion. Ten years have passed since Spud left high school and last spoke to anyone from his old friend group. As far as he is concerned, his high school days are over, and his friend group is all but a nightmarish memory of boyhood. Naturally, he has no genuine interest in rekindling these friendships when an invite to their 10th-year reunion arrives in the post.

There is also a degree of embarrassment that Spud feels about his current life, which he does not wish to share with his high school friends. He works as a promotional clown in a supermarket, lives with his parents in his childhood home, and faces what he calls “a suspected one-third life crisis”. His life has not materialised into the life he planned when he left high school, and he does not wish to show that he has not achieved much as yet.

His feelings of inferiority, especially towards the other members of the Crazy Eight, is a theme of the series. They are all richer, stronger, and more manly than him. Much of the series’ comedy comes from just how unmanly he is compared to his friends – his nickname “Spud” was given to him due to his tiny ball sack and his late onset of puberty.

The novel’s first part has Spud and his father go on a somewhat unsuccessful fishing trip on the Umzimvubu River in the Transkei. But mixed throughout this are questions from his parents and text messages from Crazy Eight members about whether he will be attending the reunion.

He keeps saying he won’t be, and while I get the need for building tension, I found this plot point dull. It is obvious from both the title and the general structure of the series that Spud would be returning to school to see his friends. His supposed indecision felt too much like page filling by Van de Ruit to make the printer happier.

This somewhat slow pace continues when Spud arrives at the school for his reunion. He is early and filled with anxiety as to whether the other will arrive when the agreed-upon time passes. Again, the plot becomes a strained wait for what I imagine the average reader really wants: the gang’s reunion. There’s building suspense, and there’s plot stuffing under the guise of suspense. Getting to what the reader actually came for would have been better.

Of course, eventually, much to Spud’s relief, the others do arrive, and the reunion gets underway. Their initial plan of attending the Old Boys’ dinner quickly derails as their old de facto leader, Rambo, convinces them to break into their old boarding house and drink bourbon.

So begins their raucous, alcohol-fueled night, familiar to anyone who reunites with old friends and plans to do little but drink. The rest of the weekend follows this trend. The tensions amongst each member flare at various plot points, but in the end, they leave reunited as friends.

I never wish to spoil the plot of a book in a review, so I’ll leave many of the events out. I’d instead explore aspects that could have been fleshed out more purely due to my tastes and expectations.

As a whole, the novel did not really develop the auxiliary characters – those outside of the Crazy Eight – at all. Spud’s English teacher, The Guv, was a significant part of the initial books. He appears but is driving past Spud and is not given more than a page. Similarly, Spud’s high school crush, The Mermaid, is only briefly mentioned.

This touches on a possible failing not so much of Spud: The Reunion, but rather as a novel that is somewhat of a prologue to a completed and detailed four-year story. Spud’s life would have drifted apart from his high school crush, so it makes sense that she is no more than a few sentences to him ten years later.

This change in attitude is a good way to express the time between eighteen-year-old Spud and twenty-eight-year-old Spud, but as a reader who wanted to re-enter his world, I would have liked more, mainly since she played a significant role in the initial four books.

Additionally, as mentioned earlier, the initial parts of the novel were slow. I would have preferred a conversation with The Mermaid over a description of working as a supermarket clown or of Spud feeling uncertain about returning to his reunion. 

None of this is to say that Spud: The Reunion is bad. I suspect anyone who enjoyed reading the books, especially those of my generation who were entering high school while the series was being published, would enjoy it as much as I did. As a prepubescent boy, I related to the feelings of anxiety about growing up that Spud seemed to represent. Now in my late twenties, reading about Spud’s insecurities about being in his late twenties, I still find myself in his story. This will remain the greatest strength of the series.

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