Review: In defiance of loss, we love

A world-wandering love finds itself in music, in the harmonics of pain, and in the deep fullness of time.

Jacqueline Nyathi

Bonnie and Mansour meet in mid-century New York. They have things in common: very messy childhoods, and time spent in France. But how they meet comes about through very unusual circumstances, perhaps destiny: Bonnie is adrift in the world, toiling away for now in the basement of a record company – where she comes across liner notes for Mansour’s debut album. Intrigued, she later creates album art for it and sneaks it into the pile going out for printing. After she’s caught – by her lover’s wife, no less – she finally meets Mansour. It’s something much deeper than love at first sight.

But there are many currents flowing below and between their lives; their love story is fraught and full of pain, as they leave New York after a tragic death, and move back to Europe. This is an achingly lyrical story, with fully realised, memorable Black characters.

Mansour is an orphan, a man with a crippling medical condition, and also a Black man living in 1960s and 70s France, United States, and Switzerland. He has the air of tragedy about him, but struggles forward always. His adoptive mother seems cold, until you learn about her own battles. Bonnie’s mother, too, is paying forward inherited, generational pain. But Bonnie and Mansour are bound by more than pain, and that gives the story hope.

Sennaar has created an evocative atmosphere in this rare and beautiful visualisation of Afro-diasporic life in midcentury Europe. With rhythms similar to Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Open Water, and equally lyrical, the story here goes deeper, and though there is a thread of fabulism woven through, Sennaar’s storymaking has us taking it all in our stride.

They Dream in Gold is a love letter to love itself, and to difficult families.