Johnny Golightly Comes Home: A Portrait of Eccentricity by Pat Hopkins

ISBN: 9780143025542

Penguin, 2009

Paperback, 234 pages

For years I'd been struggling with an identity crisis", says the slight, immaculately dressed Boerma as he plunges a fork into a slice of carrot cake topped with a blob of cream and a pink bougainvillaea petal. "My mother was English, my father Dutch; I was gay, while the Nelspruit community I grew up in was macho; I had fabulous visions of Parisian glamour, but I lived in Hicksville; and I had privilege, while my black friends were oppressed".

Pat Hopkins tells the story of this eccentric man in a personal story that at times becomes intertwined with his own story. The result is a very personal and intriguing memoir of a writer describing an artist who leads him on a dance of discovery.