Product Description
An extraordinary achievement, Telling Times reflects the true spirit of the writer as a literary beacon, moral activist, and political visionary.Never before has Gordimer, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, published such a comprehensive collection of her nonfiction. Telling Tales represents the full span of her works in that field—from the twilight of white rule in South Africa to the fight to overthrow the apartheid regime, and most recently, her role over the past seven years in confronting the contemporary phenomena of violence and the dangers of HIV.

The range of this book is staggering, and the work in totality celebrates the lively perseverance of the life-loving individual in the face of political tumult, then the onslaught of a globalized world. The abiding passionate spirit that informs “A South African Childhood,” a youthful autobiographical piece published in The New Yorker in 1954, can be found in each of the book’s ninety-one pieces that span a period of fifty-five years.

Returning to a lifetime of nonfiction work has become an extraordinary experience for Gordimer. She takes from one of her revered great writers, Albert Camus, the conviction that the writer is a “responsible human being” attuned not alone to dedication to the creation of fiction but to the political vortex that inevitably encompasses twentieth- and twenty-first-century life. Born in 1923, Gordimer, who as a child was ambitious to become a ballet dancer, was recognized at fifteen as a writing prodigy. Her sensibility was as much shaped by wide reading as it was to eye-opening sight, passing on her way to school the grim labor compounds where black gold miners lived. These twin decisives—literature and politics—infuse the book, which includes historic accounts of the political atmosphere, firsthand, after the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 and the Soweto uprising of 1976, as well as incisive close-up portraits of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, among others. Gordimer revisits the eternally relevant legacies of Tolstoy, Proust, and Flaubert, and engages vigorously with contemporaries like Susan Sontag, Octavio Paz, and Edward Said. But some of her most sensuous writing comes in her travelogues, where the politics of Africa blend seamlessly with its awe-inspiring nature—including spectacular recollections of childhood holidays beside South Africa’s coast of the Indian Ocean and a riveting account of her journey the length of the Congo River in the wake of Conrad.

Gordimer’s body of work is an extraordinary vision of the world that harks back to the sensibilities—political, moral, and social—of Dickens and Tolstoy, but with a decidedly vivid contemporary consciousness. Telling Times becomes both a literary exploration and extraordinary document of social and political history in our times. ... Read more

Product Description
When Julie Summers's car breaks down on a sleazy street in a South African city, a young Arab mechanic named Abdu comes to her aid. Their attraction to one another is fueled by different motives. Julie is in rebellion against her wealthy background and her father; Abdu, an illegal immigrant, is desperate to avoid deportation to his impoverished country. In the course of their relationship, there are unpredictable consequences, and overwhelming emotions will overturn each one's notion of the other. Set in the new South Africa and in an Arab village in the desert, The Pickup is "a masterpiece of creative empathy . . . a gripping tale of contemporary anguish and unexpected desire, and it also opens the Arab world to unusually nuanced perception" (Edward W. Said). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (33)

A must read
This novel is a must read for both Gordimer fans and those new to her work.It addresses current concernsand takes the discussion of the disenfranchised to a totally different level.Gordimer brings her usual insight and compassion to both her subject and her protagonists.

Why?
I'm so aggravated right now.Like, why?Why didn't the author speak English?Why the short, clipped half sentences?Why no quote marks so we know when people are speaking?Why speak in riddles?There are so many questions.The biggest one is, why is everyone acting like this is genius?

Do you know what this reminds me of?It reminds me of those pretentious reading groups where people used to sit around talking about what this poet or that poet meant.Really, no one knew what they meant because it made no sense, but the dumbbells standing around felt intelligent pretending to understand it.I'm sorry, you can say I'm simply ignorant if you want, but I read TONS of books and this is crap.I will never trust the NY times again. They have done this to me before, leading me right into the pages of another boring book.Why do the stupidest people out there get to decide what's hot and what's not?

To illustrate, I'm going to write the above review in the same language as the book, just to give you an idea of what you'll be dealing with if you buy it:

Disappointment, shudders.Small fingers pinching your eyes out of your head.Blinding.Scorching.Misery.Tears.She slammed the book down in anger.Where was the justice?How much had she paid already?Well then, it was not so much.

Sigh.

distant and bizarrely intimate
at first it's weird, the omniscient-but-distant narrator, reporting everything like third-hand information, and i wondered why she chose to tell the story like that - why not jump into the lives of these two attractive and compelling characters, get into their heads and bed more -but then it starts to make a lot of sense, and ultimately it makes the story feel fresh and real and intimate without blundering into polemic or siding with either character or using their story to say something clumsy.

The Pickup purchase
Product( the Pickupby Nadine Gordimer) in excellent condition anddelivered on time.j. Reinecke

Very insightful ...
After reading the first few pages of "The Pickup", I was determined to reach it's conclusion.The story unfolds of two personalities that are as different as night and day.Here are two people who see the intimate workings of the world through two distinct sets of senses and whose common threads, rather than intertwine with each other's realities, run directly parallel to one another.Theirs is the story of two people who are using one another to fill a void that neither can fill because they are not grounded in the present with an eye toward the future but instead are reliving the past through each other, trying to circumvent the truths that eventually bring them to an awakening of what they are looking for in life.It's an insightful treatment of diversity in relationships that are more about codependency than they are about love. ... Read more

Product Description
The winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature paints a fascinating portrait of a "conservationist" left only with the possibility of self-preservation, a subtle and detailed study of the forces and relationships that seethe in South Africa today. 6 cassettes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Nature - man's and his African surroundings
Slowly engaging, this story weaves the life of an African farm into that of its weekend farmer. Thoughtful and compassionate.

Overrated
Got this from a friend as a gift. I expected a bit more from this author, considering her past success and fame, but I have to admit that is far too overrated as a writer. The characters lack dept and her oversized ego is all over the pages. I would not recommend it to anybody.

Basically I Liked It
The Conservationist was shortlisted for the Booker of Bookers and Gordimer won the Nobel Prize for Literature for her body of work.I liked the Conservationist though it's not a book that I've thought a lot about since I read it about 6 months ago.

It is focused on Mehring, a rich white man in South Africa.He doesn't appear to be an evil man but certainly demonstrates the famous quote , "The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing."He is very accepting of apartheid and the ingrained social structure.

Mehring lives an empty existence, content in his financial comfort but missing something in his life.He has everything and yet nothing.

I really enjoyed reading about South Africa in the 70s as written in that time.It had a very real feel to it.It takes a very neutral approach and is not preachy nor is it overtly political.It simply lets the reader reach the obvious conclusions.

I think this is a good book and an enjoyable read but and I was surprised at it being shortlisted for the Booker of Bookers.I liked it and have no particular issues with it.

Dense
Oddly enough, I could appreciate the magnificent density of this book less from reading it than by thumbing through it afterwards. Only then could I see the intricacies of its recurrent images, its shifts of voice and time, and the rapid interplay of the separate cultures -- white, black, and Indian -- which made up South Africa in the last years of Apartheid. It is not an easy book to follow; drift for even a moment, and you lose track of who is talking about whom. Other readers have compared Gordimer to Faulkner and Virginia Woolf; I personally find her slightly easier than Faulkner, but a lot more difficult than Woolf -- mainly because it is not only Gordimer's style that is strange to me, but her entire world. These are people who live under outrageous legal and social conventions and consider them normal; they inhabit a country where even ordinary things can have strange names (like "mealies" for corn, or "vlei" for shallow lake), and apparently ordinary words (such as "location") can have special meanings. But I am grateful for the insight; from first page to the last, this book breathes authenticity.

The Conservationist of the title, a wealthy industrialist named Mehring, buys a weekend farm and works to restore it. This puts him into a new relationship with his black employees, his Boer neighbors, and the land itself. As the ecological task turns out to be largely beyond him, the title comes to have other meanings: the conservation of the way of life of a privileged elite, the preservation of a benevolent patronage between the races, and the search for a basic humanity. Mehring may fail, but he is not a bad man nor, as some have suggested, a cold one. We will meet his like again in DISGRACE by fellow South African Nobelist JM Coetzee -- a much easier novel, though less rich. The protagonists of both books have some unwise (but here very erotic) sexual encounters, and try to find themselves through closer contact with the land. But whereas Coetzee's antihero must learn to cope with a world that has changed more quickly than he can, Gordimer's is trapped in the cul-de-sac of a society where no progress is possible because the true change has not yet happened.

Difficult though the book may be, Gordimer holds everything together by three very special qualities in her writing: the ease with which she penetrates the mind and slips into interior dialogue, an underlying sensuality in almost everything she writes, and a deep love of the African landscape. A single example must suffice; in the midst of lovemaking, Mehring thinks of the landscape of nearby Namibia: "The dunes of the desert lie alongside the road between Swakopmund and Walvis Bay. Golden reclining nudes. Torso upon torso, hip sweeping from waist, smooth beyond smoothness, suggesting to the tactile imagining only the comparison, in relation to the hand, of the sensation of the tongue when some substance evanesces on it." Simple images shifting and becoming denser. Complex writing, perhaps, but appropriate to a novel fueled equally by love and despair, that attempts to shine a moral clarity upon a situation that is virtually impenetrable.

there it is
guess I did expect some more...on what grounds have no idea..
anyways..
after reading the book before which was omg ham on rye by bukowski then I rushed through this one real fast..I don't know...put it the way we did back in my 5th grade...
it was boring....
now u guys don't jump on me all wild now but really..it was let's put it honest alright..nothing more at least not for me...
loved the language...a narrative pace wasn't really all the excitement.honestly...but it was good enough...quick and tiny...if u get all in a land depth with this book,or either drives u nuts or send u to sleep and u wake up and oooh no...here it is again...trust me...
the end..u survive

it is only what?..266 pages...

cake ... Read more

Product Description
When South Africa is riven by war and the Smales, a white couple, take refuge in the village of their former servant July, their relationships are completely transformed.Amazon.com Review
Not all whites in South Africa are outright racists. Some, like Bamand Maureen Smales in Nadine Gordimer's thrilling and powerful novelJuly's People, are sensitive to the plights of blacks during theapartheid state. So imagine their quandary when the blacks stage a full-scalerevolution that sends the Smaleses scampering into isolation. The premise ofthe book is expertly crafted; it speaks much about the confusing state ofaffairs of South Africa and serves as the backbone for a terrificadventure. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (48)

You need to read it more than once!
Nadine Gordmer (Nobel Prize Recipient for Literature) wrote this book, "July's People." I read only one of her short stories. With Gordimer's style of writing, you need to re-read the book to fully appreciate the depth and the levels involving the characters.

The white couple, the Bales, relocate under threat of death in the early 1980s to their servant July's village in a remote part of South Africa. For them, it's a culture shock on many levels. They begin to see the apartheid's lasting effects and devastation of the country's racist policies.

My problem with the book is that you have to read it more than once. A first reading is to find out what happens to the characters. The second reading is for the details. The third reading would be to soak up the material. For those of us who don't have the time or energy, Gordimer's writing needs repetitive readings in order to be appreciated.

While the actions are slow moving, the information is packed into this short novel of only a 160 pages. At times, it was kind of boring because I felt there was nothing much going on in the story and even the end, I was disappointed.

wonderful imaginary future that could have been
This was written during the waning days of the Aparteid Regime, a projection of what it would be like if the order fell by violence.A left-leaning family escapes into the bush, where everything for them is turned around.It is, in my view, novelistic art at its best

On the one hand, it is a journey of self-discovery:the family sees things in a new way, as helples and at the mercy of their former maid.They learn so many things - even how they really smell without deodorant soap - and must find some new way of conceiving their role.

On the other hand, with their powerlessness, they find themselves victims for the first time in their lives.The mystery is whether or not they can cope, let alone survive without the structure they criticized yet benefitted from.The irony is heavy indeed.

Warmly recommended.The book is psychological and asks deep questions, rather than a simplistic argument or political tract.The writing style is wonderfully sensual and impressionistic, not analytic.

Horrible!
Horrible work. Read a classic instead of this rant concocted a a leftist XX century intellectual short on ideas!

Village People
This may be Gordimer's most popular book for reasons that say a lot about readers' expectations. The plot has been summarized elsewhere. What makes the book, I suspect, popular among American teachers who assign it is its setting, which takes a white family deep into the bush to live among the natives. Something tells me that teachers find this appealing, especially given their propensity to teach diversity ideology and the mantra of getting along. The book actually has nothing to do whatsoever with this nauseating theme. Gordimer is a real writer, not an American writer for teen audiences as many teachers seem to believe. Gordimer sets things up and then we are invited into the hut, as it were, to see how things unravel. The whites do not come off so well, but neither do the blacks. The whites, having been members of the "establishment" during the awful years of state racism known as apartheid, clearly can't completely shed their assumptions of class superiority. I am not so sure that they are racists; they are certainly spoiled elitists who have never had to take out the garbage. That their servant happened to be black does not, to my mind, necessarily mean they were racists. They may or may not have been. It so happens that July, their man servant, seems to me to have been very lucky indeed to have had such caring employers. It is shown that they were indeed presumptuous, demanding, and condescending, but I don't see any evidence of racism, if by that one means race hatred. Like all liberals, they are shown to be guilty of stunning hypocrisy, as they never seem to have connected black poverty with white wealth, never considered that their "boy" had a life worth as much as theirs. They clearly believed that he could find human fulfillment as their servant, tending to their insatiable needs. I have never met a liberal who didn't believe that caring about people was the same as taking care of people. Neither has Gordimer. The delusions of the whites are off-putting, but they are not as unattractive as the manipulative, lying "boy" once he is given the chance to take control of the Smales and their property. He need not be grateful, but he should be able to recognize a good thing when he sees it. The Smales are indecently spoiled, but they are not ruthless killers as were many whites. Suddenly, July can't make any distinctions and loses interest in returning small favors. The Smales feel trapped and at his mercy, as they should, and realize he is no friend, not to them, nor to any whites. They are in trouble. They know it and have no idea what to do. End of story.

Challenging, for some
In July's People Nadine Gordimer presents a scenario laden with fears. Written in 1981, the book presents a South Africa afflicted by near-worst case Cold War disintegration. With rumoured external support, the urban black population has instigated a revolution of sorts, transforming the cities into war zones. No longer "nice" places to be, they are no longer home for decent white liberals like Bam and Maureen and their youngsters.
Twenty-five years on, it is this aspect o July's people that grates. The scenario now seems horribly and, perhaps, naively, simplistic, improbable. At the time, people saw things differently, from a perspective that is difficult to communicate to anyone who did not live in through the Cold War.

But then this is an unimportant point. We do not criticize Orwell for the passing of 1984 without Big Brother. Neither do we regard Huxley's current lack of either Bravery or Novelty as a restriction on the relevance of his book to our world. Similarly, the scenario of Margaret Attwood's Handmaid's Tale makes the novel both possible and successful, but its likelihood is no more probable as a result of this well-conceived fiction.

So Nadine Gordimer's scenario, once accommodated, can be taken as a given, an imagined premise upon which the free-standing substance of the story both develops and succeeds, and then this becomes a strength of the book, not a weakness.

Bam and Maureen, long-time employers of a "houseboy" called July, decide on flight. They pack what little they can in the bakkie - a go-anywhere, basic truck of local manufacture, and set off, mother, father, their two boys, and July, their "boy" to seek safety. Bam bought the truck for bush trips, weekends when they might commune with nature in a limited, controlled way, protected from the harsher demands of Mother Nature by the maintained proximity of a retreat to urban protection.

But now the laden truck is driving into new territory. The city is uninhabitable and the journey to July's rural home area is potentially one way. And so the white-black, black-white relationships of employment, protection, patronage, reliance and condescension are reversed - or at least questioned. And so the liberal white family must come to terms with the precarious necessity of rural poverty. They discover things in themselves that a sophisticated city gloss has hidden or suppressed. They realize how dependent they have been upon status, a commodity not valued in a fundamentally more cooperative way of living.

July's People is presented from Maureen's perspective. She is thirty-nine, a fundamentally confident, though constantly doubting, forceful mother and wife. As the book progresses, she tries to preserve the memory of the family's former life as a way of protecting herself and her brood from the threats of new unknowns. Their "boy", July, is generous, kind, but also pragmatic, and realizes he must make sacrifices on their behalf.

July's People is ultimately enigmatic. It remains undermined to a degree by the hindsight-rendered unlikeliness of its scenario. Its most powerful statement is the way in which the sensibilities of the urban sophisticates are questioned by mere natural necessity. It is a short book, but feels much bigger, much more of a statement as a result of Nadine Gordimer's pithy, abrasive style.

Just as the rural poor find a use for everything, Nadine Gordimer wastes not a single phrase or even word, and neither does she consume more than she needs. The book's prose is economical in the extreme, the language sometimes pricking like the thorn bush described. It remains a moving book about culture and social identity, despite the unlikeliness of its setting.
... Read more

Product Description
Playing truant, Will slips off to a movie theatre near Johannesburg and is shocked to see his father there--with a woman he doesn't know. The father is a "colored" schoolteacher who has become a hero in the struggle against apartheid; his companion is a white activist fiercely dedicated to the cause. "A bold, unnerving tour de force."--The New York Times Book Review. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Not crazy about this story!
In the begining, the book is really engaging.But by the middle, I lost interest, it did not keep me engaged.The story is compelling, apartheid.This is one of the few books I have read that I did not actually finish.

intimate relationships
A brilliant book -- perhaps her best. As usual Gordimer is all about human relationships -- not just blacks vs. whites, but dark blacks vs. lighter skinned blacks; fathers with their sons and daughters and their wives and their mistresses; old,veteran revolutionaries relationships with young, new revoltionaries and on and on.

Her syntax is always complicated, and sometimes frustrating, but well worth the effort.

South Africa Book Club
My Son's Story, by Nadine Gordimer is a novel told by a young boy, who's name is Will. He is the son of Aila and Sonny, two colored South Africans. Sonny is against apartheid and Aila is too. Sonny is put in jail for expressing his views on segregation and apartheid in a school he works in as a teacher. While all this is going on, Sonny is having an affair with a white woman and Will knows about this. Throughout the novel, Will struggles with deciding whether to tell his mother about his father's affair.
In my opinion, this is not one of my favorite books. Gordimer talked too much about Sonny having an affair, and too little about the more important things that were going on in South Africa, such as apartheid and segregation. It seemed as if the author was more interested in writing about an affair between a white woman and black man, rather than sharing her views on different racial situations occuring in South Africa. My Son's Story is a better book for someone who wants to read about a love relationship, more than an informing novel about historical things happening in South Africa.

One of Gordimer's best works
Gordimer's intricate tale of an educated black family struggling with the evils of apartheid is most noteworthy for its rich characterization. The story is told primarily by Will, the teenage son of anti-apartheid activist Sonny. Will acknowledges the horrors of the political situation around him but is painfully affected by the domestic consequences of social change (first his father's affair with white activist Hannah, and later his mother's imprisonment).

The complexity of the writing is necessary for conveying the emotional weight of the story. The chapters alternate (roughly) between the first person narration of Will and a third person account of the unfolding situation. This allows the reader to experience the pain and ambivalence Will feels, while also making the reader aware of the secrets that the family members keep from each other.

I disagree with the other reviewers that Gordimer's work is overly cerebral (if you want to see pretentious, dry, and overintellectualized, check out fellow African author J. M. Coetzee... yawn). My Son's Story is brilliantly realized in terms of both form and content. Without its complexity, the book would not be as believable, heartfelt, or utterly tragic... although I probably wouldn't have appreciated it in the ninth grade either.

Struggling With Apartheid And Adultery
_My Son's Story_ is told by Will, the son of a former schoolmaster, a light skinned, "colored," anti-Apartheid activist in South Africa.Will and his family live in an uneasy peace amongst white Afrikaans.Will's father is known by his sobriquet, Sonny, by the blacks who admire him and depend upon his leadership against the virulent racism endemic in South Africa in those years.The family has to endure Sonny's intermittant jailings related to his political struggles as well as Sonny's love affair with a white woman, named Hannah, who also shares Sonny's anti-Apartheid commitment.Later on, Sonny's beloved daughter, called Baby by everyone, also becomes involved in the anti-Apartheid movement.The most sympathetic person in the book is Aila, Sonny's quiet, dignified wife and mother to Will, who seemingly inadvertently, but inevitably, surplants Sonny as the political activist in the family.Will's particular closeness to Aila and his resentments toward Sonny are the stuff of Greek tragedy.

Unfortunately, Ms. Gordimer's overly convoluted and intellectualized style of writing caused me to often feel distanced from her characters.The result is a novel that frequently falls dead in its tracks.Fortunately, Ms. Gordimer does occasionally write forcefully.It is in these places that her message is communicated clearly and effectively. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (6)

Interesting Enough
We read this book for our book club and all of us were underwhelmed.The stories were interesting enough to keep reading, though, and while none of us had read anything by Gordimer before, loyal fans may find the storiesmore compelling.

mostly wonderful Gordimer
I continue to be amazed that this writer finds so many different ways to write about her society. The usual themes are all here, and yet, for the most part, their treatment is ever fresh. Perhaps not my favorite Gordimer, but I'm grateful that she continues to write.

Disappointed
I've read several of Gordimer's works (Jump, July's People, The Conservationist, The Pickup) and have always enjoyed her edgy political commentary and her minimalist style.However, I didn't care for this collection of short stories at all--found them slow, uninteresting, and uninspired.The out-of-place grotesque little item on a tapeworm was just plain bizarre.

"All Is Lost"
Gordimer's new book of short stories is exquisitely written in a magnificently refined stylized format.Her message is sometimes slightly ephemeral, as she writes in snatches of feeling and emotion.Yet, her truly highly developed writing methodology is tantalizingly complex.The stories are varied and interesting in their subject matter.From the life of a tapeworm, to the very autobiographical story about her mental meanderings on an airplane with a problem, she covers a huge variety of life's experiences.She, better than most, understands how life's vicissitudes impose their will upon us, as we work to succeed at our chosen profession and seek success each in our own way.

What is surely interesting is that her message throughout the collection seems to be one of "Allesverloren" from the Afrikaans/German which translates as "All is lost" or as Gordimer herself translates it in the story, "Everything is lost."She seems to be saying that we live our lives and then they come to an end, and in that end, all is really just lost.Life ends and that is that.

While her message seems at times a bit existentially depressing, and interestingly she writes one story about a cockroach that somehow made its way inside the tube of her word processor and appropriately names the story "Gregor" after Kafka's famous piece, "Metamorphosis" her stories are not totally bereft of some hope for the process by which we live them.Yet, she also seems to tell us, that when they come to an end, they end, and thus, in that end, "all is lost."Undoubtedly, this message is a product of her deep dissatisfaction with the state of the nation of South Africa, which was a thriving capitalist society, albeit a government sanctioned apartheid world of discrimination, to the present day denouement that has come to grip the country after the change of control from the White minority, to the Black majority.This condition is expressed very much in her title story, "Beethoven Was One Sixteenth Black."In that story, she conveys that in the old days, all South Africans would try to emphasize the percentage of their blood that was "White," in the present day, all people are now emphasizing the percentage of their blood that is "Black."Her commentary being, `It is the same lie, just the color has changed."

The book is highly recommended for sophisticated adult readers who appreciate fine literary style and vocabulary, combined with deep emotional and psychological messages.As a collection of short stories, it is truly one of the best I have read in a very long time.She certainly put a lot of herself and her efforts into creating this fine piece of literature.It is very certainly worth the read.

Mixed Bag
Nadine Gordimer is masterful in using flawed people to tell the story of post-apartheid South Africa.Unfortunately, though, this collection of short stories is uneven, with about half missing the Gordimer standard.Best -- the opening story, "Bethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black", and the closing trilogy, "Alternative Endings".The tape worm story (Tape Worm) was weak, nauseating, and didn't merit inclusion in the collection.Dreaming of the Dead was also weakly constructed.

If you read July's People and hope for a series of small punches that you get, as in Gordimer's novels, you'll be disappointed.At the same time, most of these stories offer pleasant reflection about the human dimension of life in South Africa. ... Read more

Product Description
Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer follows the inner lives of characters confronted by unforeseen circumstances. Paul Bannerman, an ecologist in South Africa, believes he understands the trajectory of his life, with the usual markers of vocation and marriage. But when he’s diagnosed with thyroid cancer and, after surgery, prescribed treatment that will leave him radioactive—and for a period a danger to others—he begins to question, as Auden wrote, "what Authority gives / existence its surprise." As Paul recuperates in the garden of his childhood home, he enters an unthinkable existence and another kind of illumination—a process that will irrevocably change not only his life but the lives of his wife and parents. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

difficult but rewarding
Nadine Gordimer's novel, "Get a Life" is not a bedtime story or a nook to take on a plane. It requires attention and leaves the reader with a burden of thoughts.

The starting point is a very unusual, extreme situation: Paul, an otherwise healthy, active ecologist in his mid-thirties is diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He undergoes treatment, which, although effective, renders him radioactive and therefore potentially dangerous for those close to him. He decides to separate himself from his wife, Berenice, and his son, Nicky, and to stay in his parents' home, in maximum possible isolation. The forced solitude prompts Paul to think about his relations with people, to re-evaluate his marriage and to feel even more rooted in the world around him (although, paradoxically, also more alienated from it.
Paul's experience deeply affects his closest family - his parents, Lyndsay, a lawyer, and Adrian, a businessman with longings towards archeology, look into their past, and make unexpected decisions about their future. Berenice feels the change in Paul and the shift in their feelings to each other.

Paul's cancer experience changes not only his own life; it transforms the people around him. They seem at the same time more separate, distinct individual entities, and more connected to the network that is the world. As if their senses became sharper, more refined. Gordimer writes with clarity, analytically, looking a the characters from all angles; the novel has an omniscient narrator, and the universal becomes very personal. Despite the clear logic, the novel is not a breeze to read. It was a slow journey through the meandering words and I have to admit that sometimes I thought I'd give up. Luckily, always some breakthrough in the plot happened in these moments of doubt and this way I made it to the end. The multiplicity of weighty subjects (all kinds of interpersonal relations; post-Apartheid South Africa; nuclear energy and its impact on civilization, nature and medicine- to name a few; incidentally, nuclear fission is what becomes a kind of a bracket connecting everything here) together with complex, rich prose, made me pause often - there was just too much to think about and it was not possible to finish this novel at one sitting. But it was worth the effort.

I liked the dual meaning of the title: the colloquial exclamation encouraging to do something with your life; and the understanding of life; the first possible to accomplish with a little effort, the second - not at all.

This is not the Easiest Reading, but it is Good Writing.
Light or fun are not descriptions for a Nadine Gordimer novel -- and this book is no exception.But, it attempts to find happiness.Unlike Burger's Daughter, this book is AFTER Apartheid -- so most of those issues are not the core of the novel.

Revolving around parents Adrian and Lyndsey, the book focuses upon their grown son's (Paul) thyroid cancer experience and what happens afterward.Sprinkled in the first half of the novel is Paul's wife, Benni, and someawkward narratives about Paul's sisters, who we really never get to know or understand with any clarity, let alone depth.

Paul is the Prince, and his survival of cancer is about his and the parent's perspective of his or their own "getting of a life." And then, the author ponders about life and what it means, etc.And, their remonstrance about the same.

Paul's parents are relatively successful, and admirable.His mother is not only a great lawyer, but one who inherits and prevails for the causes of what Americans would call "truth, justice and the American way."She is the advocate for minorities' causes.And she wins.But, what does this success mean? "Success sometimes may be defined as a disaster put on hold." Depressing enough?

While most believe that life is a gift to be cherished and thoroughly enjoyed, Gordimer explains that it is "[N]ot an epiphany, life moves more slowly and inexorably than any belief in that."

This novel can dampen the spirits beneath the brightest blue skies.I do not know if the author's remorse is caused by decades of witnessing and living within Apartheid, or if other causes -- including chemical imbalance -- delivers this writer to darker regions than most people experience in their worst moments.Although not attempting to be a noir novel, the author's perspective is without doubt just that.And, the delivery of family biography -- which is what this is -- in the dark tone of this author can be about as pleasant as a Swedish film festival. The art is there -- but excitation and hilarity are not.

Gordimer, a Nobel laureate, is one of those authors with her own style, own meter, own everything.She can be described as a herky jerky writer.The quotations are dashes.Words are often inverted at times to pick up the African dialect.In short, this is not the easiest reading. But, it is good writing.

Hence, I deliver a warning to the reader that this author should not be necessarily read when all else is happy and good.And, maybe when all else is not good and happy, this should not be read as there may be many tissues and sobs in store which are neither wanted nor sought.

Thought-provoking
Gordimer is avery demanding writer and this book is no exception.
It's almost like a film that has to be viewed twice in order to understand it more fully and to appreciate its nuances.This book is about important topics facing individuals living in contemporary South Africa - illness, fidelity, career choices, the family, the environment. Gordimer ties these together in her inimitable way - the reader must pay attention and let the prose and the images resonate.Gordimer is one of world's great writers and I always feel richer after reading one of her works.

Yes
If you like Gordimer - and I do - you will love this book.It is timely, broad, thoughtful, and it humanizes some of the most important global issues of our times.

As the world turns ...
As the world turns, so does Nadine Gordimer.If she had written novels like this one throughout her career she would not have been awarded the Nobel Prize.There is an apartheid, and a post-apartheid Nadine Gordimer.The former was the combative writer who, with her brilliant prose, greatly contributed to showcasing the horror of life under the old regime; the latter is still up for definition.One thing is for sure: she ended her activism when her party took power.The old problems, compounded by the new -corruption on the rise, crime, the health crisis, and the government's indifference or unwillingness to face them-apparently do not merit scrutiny or criticism from Mrs. Gordimer.And ... has she forgotten how to write sentences?Her boring characters and their boring lives make for cumbersome reading.

I'm sure Nadine Gordimer set out to write a good novel, in her usual vein; what she has published is a mediocrity. ... Read more

Product Description
The Nobel Prize-winning author treats the dynamics of family life, international terrorism, and racial tension in her native South Africa and elsewhere with characteristic moral and emotional force and striking detail in sixteen new stories. Reprint. NYT. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Different
This is a different kind of book for the average one's out their. But I needed it for my English class. And it arrived on time.

In times of civil disorder
African turmoil is reflected in these stories by Nadine Gordimer.The storytelling is crisp and detached.We are lucky to have so acute an observer of the passing scene.Universality is achieved through the careful attention paid to minute particulars.Reports of artistry and fidelity make points in understated fashion.

A man is rewarded with a house for giving information.When the debriefing is over hardly anyone comes to see him.He was an ordinary colonial child.It was his fate to be detained for five weeks in a dirty cell for merely taking a picture.Later he joins the counter-revolutionary forces.Horror comes slowly.Debriefing doesn't describe methods and experience.His parents may have spoiled him when they let him use a parachute.

A little boy dies on the barbed wire near his house playing a character from Sleeping Beauty.In another story the character doesn't know what day it is because the areas for services, churches and schools, have closed.With a mother gone and having undergone other losses, villagers and members of the family are going away from the land, carrying belongings.On the way through Kruger Park the grandfather, old and slow, is lost.The family does not hope to go back to Mozambique when the war is over.The people in the new village, it is fortunate, speak their language.

A twice-married man goes to a resort.The place seems to glisten with women.He flings stones into the sea and finds a ring.After advertising it in a local paper, he ends up marrying the woman who comes to claim it. The moon in the southern hemisphere seems the wrong way around.A couple rents a room to a young man because their son is to be away for eighteen months.The lodger works in a restaurant.Vera, the daughter, tells her parents that Rad, the lodger, wants to make a meal for them.Vera and Rad become involved with each other.She carries a black box for him on an airplane trip and the plane explodes.

A woman leaves a conference with four members of a youth delegation.She feeds them at her house.It seems their education was interrupted by two years detention.Those two years will never be regained, she surmises. Goats live on a shipwreck island and cause erosion.Through exogamous marriage the islanders change.They are moved. Afterwards the island is used as a weather station.A tour of duty on the island lasts a year.The personnel are subject to problems with insects and mice.Then there are cats on the island.The birds and turtles are disturbed.Young men from the university travel there.They are under orders to shoot the cats.

An Afrikaner farmer shoots a black man.He carries the man in his bakkie to the police station and confesses to the shooting.He had ridden with Lucas, the victim, in a vehicle in which there was a loaded weapon. Driving over a pothole, the weapon had discharged.The ending of this story is a surprise. Teresa took a leave of absence from her job and slept away from home, away from her Swedish husband, in order to find out the circumstances of the jailing of her mother, brother and sister.The husband had suspected an affair.Houseguests at a lodge troop out to witness lions eating a zebra.In the night they see the cubs in the body of the zebra.In daylight scarabs are seen devouring the stomach leavings.

A man, for reason of the indemnity process, is supposed to be free.He walks and takes buses.His friends help.The movement wants him to leave the country but he enjoys being home again.He notes a fellow bus passenger as being out of place.She is someone who would treat her servants well, but place her children in segregated schools.He is now living without consequences, being underground.He finds out the woman's husband is away in Japan and that they are drawn to each other as a couple.There is an interval of closeness in the absence of an exchange of personal identifying information.After several more moves the police find him and he is brought to take a seat in an ongoing trial.

Good Old Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer's writing in Jump was amazing.As an English Major, I can honestly say that this book was one of the few that actually had me anxious to turn the page.The way that Gordimer leaves the endings wide open forinterpretation has the reader questioning the intent of the author as wellas the characters.

Gordimer's Jump is a motley compilation of stories
Jump starts off with a complicated short story and follows up with a series of diverse pieces which make you question our society's values.Although she never outright accuses us of anything, she forces us to consider our cultural practices and beliefs in an attempt to make ussensitive to the world around us.

Jump and stories review...
N. Gordimer writes with a very gripping style. I found myself engrosed in many of her stories. Some critical and polemic issues are treated with an approach that will leave a reader with many a deep thought. ... Read more

Product Description
In this study, which may be used as an introduction as well as by those already familiar with Gordimer's work, Dominic Head discusses each of Nadine Gordimer's novels in detail, examining the texts both as a reflection of events and situations in the real world, and as evidence of her constant rethinking of her craft.Head shows how Gordimer's typical concerns are developed through increasing stress on the politics of textuality; and he considers how her work as a whole contributes to the creation of a literature to challenge apartheid. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (6)

A couple of good stories and a good cause
Nadine Gordimer has assembled a collection of stories by highly respected writers who were permitted to select their "favorite" stories for inclusion. If you are interested in proof that writers are dismal judges of their own work, by all means buy this book. Otherwise, donate some money to your local AIDS project and look elsewhere for reading material.

I fear that other reviewers who have glorified this book are either reacting favorably to the charitable cause or enamored of highly experimental or quirky stories. Very few of these tales were a pleasure to read, and I am a voracious reader of all manner of prose. A singular exception is Margaret Atwood's piece, "The Age of Lead." Yet, to be fair, most of these works have been previously published in book or magazine form.

I have read several collections in the Best American Short Stories series, The Best American Short Stories 2008, and have found them to be of far higher and more uniform quality. I'm only guessing, but I suspect it is because the writers didn't self-select.

What an amazing compilation!
Some great, some strange, some experimental, and some that may be better in the original language, but a fabulous cooperative effort by the greatest storytellers of our time. These works show the intricate complexity characteristic of a great short, and most illustrate that more effort goes into 5000 words than 50,000, or 500,000 in the case of Rushdie. (sorry, couldn't resist).

I can't pick a favorite. Some will stay with me forever, and a few have already faded in memory, but I am richer having read them all. Thank you, Nadine Gordimer, for this exceptional collection.

Sharing for a cause
Some writers, like musicians, go public about their caring about people and causes. They may not appear at a Live 8 concert, but when approached they can be just as generous. The result of one such approach is this highly enjoyable collection of "tales" told by well known authors from around the world. Nadine Gordimer, the initiator of the project, and 20 authors have donated a story each. The publishers, translators and designers have waived their fees and profits. The book was published simultaneously in several languages. All proceeds will go to HIV/AIDS education and treatment in South Africa.

This in itself would be enough reason to buy and look at this book! Yet, there are more grounds for spending your money on it. The stories, selected by the authors themselves, reflect some of the best of each author's writing. They convey diverse personal outlooks or describe real or imagined life experiences. We find John Updike next to Arthur Miller, Paul Theroux and Gabriel Garcia Marquez together with Amos Oz and Günter Grass... Several less known African authors, such as Njabulo Ndebele, share a spot with well known Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. In its totality, we have been offered a smorgasbord of excellent story-telling.It's a partial who's who of current world literature. The topics presented are as wide ranging as the authors' backgrounds and perspectives. Some are serious, some are funny or satirical. All excel in style and expression. This anthology is one to treasure, to pick up from time to time to read or revisit one of the authors. The ideal gift for yourself and others who enjoy a glimpse into the writing of some of the world's literary greats.[Friederike Knabe]

A Great Book for a Great Cause
It's bad form for a reviewer to suggest that readers go out and buy a book. The reviewer is charged with examining a book's content --- its soul, if you will --- without consideration for the commercial transaction that might actually put that book in someone's hands. However, TELLING TALES, a remarkable collection of short stories, demands a recommendation about purchase. After all, this is more than a book; it's a fundraiser.

TELLING TALES collects 21 stories by writers from around the world, including five Nobel Prize winners (Gunter Grass, Jose Saramago, Kenzaburo Oe, Gordimer and Gabriel Garcia Marquez); two National Book Award winners (John Updike and Susan Sontag); a pair of Pulitzer Prize winners (Updike and Arthur Miller); and three winners of the Booker Prize (Margaret Atwood, Gordimer, and Salman Rushdie). Toss in Woody Allen, Paul Theroux and several more extremely talented writers, and you have an amazing collection.

Each story was chosen by the author, and each was provided sans fee or expectation of royalty. All royalties and profits will be donated for HIV/AIDS preventative education and medical treatment for people in southern Africa, an area of the world devastated by the disease. Gordimer, a native of South Africa, is to be commended for bringing together such an esteemed body of authors.

The stories themselves run the gamut from comedy to tragedy and many seem to sparkle on the page. Miller's "Bulldog" (which is built around an incident that would be fraught with the perils of AIDS if it were set in the present) is filled with striking language; Marquez's "Death Constant Beyond Love" is a gem of magic realism; and Allen delivers laughs in the satiric "The Rejection."

TELLING TALES is both marvelously varied in terms of subject and style, and remarkably consistent in terms of quality. This is a great book for a great cause.

--- Reviewed by Rob Cline

Saving the World
Nadine Gordimer is not only an admirable writer, but an admirable person.Her altruism is shown in the gathering of material for this great book, with no thought of gain for herself.The stories are all excellent and thoughtfully chosen.There is so much to choose from, it must have been difficult to select.For readers interested in South Africa, I recommend A TELLING TIME by Glynnis Hayward(ISBN 1591295912),a gripping tale by a new South African author. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
In these stories, selected by Gordimer herself, characters from every corner of society come to life, along with the South African landscape they inhabit. The stories have a strong focus on racial issues, yet their implications are universal. The stories are National Curriculum recommended reading. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Nadine Gordimer : Selected Stories
This collection of short stories gives a view of one woman's observations of the people and culture of South Africa. The stories are cleverly written and very thought provoking. The first story I read, The Catch, was a littledifficult to understand. After reading one more, The Bridegroom, I washooked and enjoyed many more. ... Read more

Product Description
In South Africa, where Blacks and whites are caught in the winds of change, a young woman tries to uphold the radical heritage she received from her martyred parents while carvingout a sense of self. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Moving and psychologically engaging
Gordimer provides a rare glimpse into the lives of white anti-apartheid activists in South Africa. The many similarities with US leftists under the rightward drift of the Reagan-Bush-Carter-Bush-Obama years are unescapable. Not only is there the alienation of being a minority within a white minority population, but the apartheid regime treats white anti-apartheid activists every bit as brutally as those who are black. Moreover like the French Resistance, organizing has to be done underground, which means work colleagues, friends and neighbors may be totally unaware of your political commitment and activities.

Gordimer brilliantly captures the psychological challenges of such a life. The novel starts as 14 year old Rosa, named after the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, is visiting her mother, who has just been imprisoned. Her mother dies just as her father is imprisoned. He, too, dies prematurely, leaving Rosa to struggle with finding her own identity in the shadow of parents with larger than life personalities. She escapes politics and South Africa by traveling in Europe, but eventually something calls her back. Returning to South Africa, she yearns for the sense of belonging she remembers fondly from the gathering of white and black activists in her parents' home. And she rejoins the movement. Gordimer relates this emotional journey in a way that is both psychologically genuine and profoundly moving.

An added delight of this book is Gordimer's sensuous description of the lush South African landscape.

By Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall, author of THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT: MEMOIR OF AN AMERICAN REFUGEE.

Get Past the First Book, and Rest Will Be Pleasant [S]
Just as Barack Hussein Obama glides into the oval office, reading a book like "Burger's Daughter" awakens dulled memories about how just a few decades ago tremendous racial injustice affected so many people for so many wrong reasons.

This is not so much about the story of a person with choice, but about how the privileged can be without choice. In South Africa, a determined doctor named Lionel Burger seeks to fight Apartheid with every ounce of strength he can muster.After numerous arrests, and a few trials, he eventually succumbs to illness delivered by reprehensible conditions of the jail - a home for years of his adult life.With him, he drags down his wife who enlists for his cause. And, while this spirit to fight for the oppressed continues, his son dives into the family's pool and dies a truly unfortunate and unexpected death - leaving an orphan and sibling-less child - Rosa Burger.

Uncle and aunt finish raising Rosa and she continues life in South Africa without life ruining remorse.What we may envision as interminable intolerance by Apartheid dogma which grates every imaginable ethic, Rosa seemsnot too angered, evenin a land where she is rebuffed by others.Instead, she seems happy regardless of the aleatory destiny of her childhood - how a throw of the die has cast upon her a life totally deprived of family. The almost god-like avatar to the "cause", Doctor Burger never realizes that his choice to follow Chinese proverbs can have great ramifications upon his heirs, upon the living, upon the innocents.The Doctor follows Wang Ying-ming's dictate: "To know and not to act is not to know." From this faith of the father, Rosa suffers.

Burger sacrifices much. He gave up everything ". . . to turn his back on the laurels of white society and risk - no, refute outright - reputation, success and personal liberty, in the cause of the black people." What he also gave up what Rosa's freedom.

The book is chopped into three unequal parts. The first is the longest, and deals primarily with Rosa as she is now - the daughter of the white doctor who fought for the black commoner. This portion probably loses many readers as it is long and difficult in certain places.The second, shorter and more pleasant, deals with Rosa experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime vacation when the government allows her to go to Europe under the proviso that she says nothing about the oppression she knows too well. She meets Bernard Chabalier and has a great French affair. Here Rosa is no longer "Burger's daughter." Here she is in love, but not as happy as in Pretoria.

But, in the European trip she meets people who are rebels.She did not ask to meet them, they approached her.Rosa abided by her bargain - she refused an interview and left them without divulgence.But, the big brother of South Africa - BOSS - saw.And, Rosa ends up where her father lived most of his last years. In South Africa, she again is - and realizes that she always was- nothing more to the government than "Burger's daughter" and is thrown into a prison for having publicly met government rebels in another country where such meetings are neither outlawed nor even disdained.

The last two books read much more easily than the first.The love scenes in the second remind me of F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you are able to tread through the first, you will like and maybe love the last.But, getting past that hurdle has been difficult for many and is what delivers many of the poorer reviews on this page.

The book is somewhat outdated, which is surprising in that it was written in 1979.The topics of Red Russia, Trotsky-influenced Socialism, Leninists and more radical ideologies espoused by white well educated people reminds me of Lessing's The Golden NotebookThis may alienate some readers. It is a topic that is perhaps too old to young readers.

This is not a self-pitying maudlin narrative. It is an effective account of great injustice by a government which almost blue-printed its oppressive hand from Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four or Hitler's Reich.

Apartheid's Reach
This is a masterful work for two specific reasons: 1. It very realistically displays the depths to which Apartheid pervaded South African society.It goes beyond the simplistic "Apartheid is bad" motif so easily turned out in Paton and Brink.
2. Gordimer is masterful--shame on those reviewrs who call it exclusive or pompous.This is a tremendous work that has blended polemic with prose.Had Mailer, Wolfe, or Brink written this, they would have been hailed genius: why should Gordimer face such scrutiny?
A must read for anyone getting into South African lit.

A Delicacy
Gordimer's style of writing, filled with descriptive writing, layered with both illusions and allusions, and topped off with a coating of metaphors makes reading a delicacy. The main theme in the book was self-identity, which the title, `Burger's Daughter' hints at. A character on a quest to find out who she is was a wonderful way to portray a notion. The theme was clearly presented, as I hoped it would be. The book met my expectations of successful use of descriptive writing, to illustrate the setting, and intricate syntax, to describe the conflict. In my opinion, the novel's biggest strength was its character development. Through the recollection of her past, how she deals with the present, and her hopes and fears for the future, the reader becomes attached to 22 year old Rosa.
~~~ But I must warn you, it is not very filling if you are hungry for information, specifically, details about the government. This is probably its biggest weakness. Nevertheless, it is a great. After reading this, I was left with the positive, yet mysterious thought "Who am I going to let myself become?" I have never read any other books by her, but after this uplifting read, I might just have to read more books by her.

(maggie)

I have never written a review here before but...
I had to say that I, too, thought this was the worst book I have ever read--hands down.I have a master's degree in comparitive literature, and other than Moll Flanders and Fanny Hill, I have never read a...what did the other reviewer call them "bodice-rippers"?--so it's not a case of lack of taste.The author of this book is self-indulgent, pompous, "in the know, and I'm never going to let you forget it!"--the whole thing is like listening to a half muttered conversation that after time you realize that you are never going to be let into.I did plow through to the end, but only as a test of my endurance.And I cheered at the end--but only because the damned thing was done. ... Read more

Product Description

Nadine Gordimer is one of the most important writers to emerge in the twentieth century. Her anti-Apartheid novel July's People (1981) is a powerful example of resistance writing and continues even now to unsettle easy assumptions about issues of power, race, gender and identity.

This guide to Gordimer's compelling novel offers:

• an accessible introduction to the text and contexts of July's People
• a critical history, surveying the many interpretations of the text from publication to the present
• a selection of new and reprinted critical essays on July's People, providing a range of perspectives on the novel and extending the coverage of key approaches identified in the critical survey
• cross-references between sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism
• suggestions for further reading.

Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of July's People and seeking not only a guide to the novel, but a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds Gordimer's text.

Customer Reviews (7)

Yawn
This is said to be one of Nadine Gordimer's finest works, and she is a Nobel prize winner, so I hoped for great things when I picked this one out at the bookstore, unfortunately assuming that the Nobel prize would be a guarantee that I would love it.Well, I didn't love it.While indeed a competent storytelling, I don't really regard this as literature.There is not the fire, imagination or creativity one expects, nor the sophistication that should elevate such a work above its peers.I managed to get to the end, but I can't say that I felt or learned anything at all.It makes me wonder if there were political, rather than literary reasons that caused the Nobel comittee to honor this author.

what happened to Carole?
I have nothing negative to say about this work of Nadine Gordimer whom I continue to regard as one of the top lliving writers.I've read every novel she's written and will get on to her short stories soon.I'm a little late getting to "A Sport of Nature" and just finished it.BRAVO.Except, we don't find out what happens to Carole.Big no-no.She can certainly be considered a main character.She had her own personality and confusion.I would like to have had Gordimer at least offer a small glimpse of Carole in her adult life.

haunting
This is a richly written book.Gordimer handles the character in an interesting way--one of the reviewers said that she couldn't relate to the character, and I think that is because Gordimer is presenting her as someone who is puzzling to other people, a "sport" or new species.You don't get into the heroine's head so much as you try to figure out her mysteries.Of course, that means Gordimer is giving the reader the role of someone from the ordinary world who isn't quite as evolved sexually or politically as her heroine.I found the heroine haunting because of her self possession, her practically unselfconscious drive to grow that freed her of much of the guilt and fear of isolation that keep most of us from doing the right things.

Look beyond normal reading
I do not agree with the substandard reviews of this book.If you are interested in South Africa don't be afraid of a more difficult read and pick up this book.It is a little difficult to get into but once you get used to Gordimer's writing style, anyone will enjoy it.Hillela is a very interesting character who one can not underestimate.I like her spirit, and I truely think she has a complete change of character by the end of the story.

big disapointment
This was a book that i was required to read for my english lit class.Although i didn't personally like the book, many people that i know did.I found the subject matter very boring, partly because of my inability to relate to it.I would only recommend this book to someone with a strong interest in South African politics. ... Read more

Product Description

What this collection offers, then, is not art itself but the record of onewoman's fierce dedication to both her art and her politics--and herattempts to negotiate the relationship between them. Living in Hope andHistory includes graduation addresses, lectures, the author's Nobelacceptance speech, impressively learned essays on Joseph Roth and GünterGrass, and even her correspondence with Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe.Dating from the dark old days of apartheid through the present, theassemblage also offers a moving document of the South African struggle andits eventual fruits. Some of the most exhilarating pieces chronicle thenew, postapartheid nation--"The First Time" finds Gordimer standing invoting queues for her country's first democratic elections, and "Act Two:One Year Later" is a celebration of Johannesburg's newfound vibrancy.Living in Hope and History is first and foremost a record ofGordimer's life as a public figure. In these essays, however, the politicaland the imaginative seem to sound a common, joyful note: this is the waythings are, this is the way things should be. --Mary Park ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

When it gets dark enough, you can see the stars.
A compilation of essays by Ms. Gordimer not to be overlooked by those of us "burnt out" on societal issues...or even personal issues.A heartfull of optimism and honesty that I found refreshing.I read this while walking my daily treadmills at the gym after my daily treadmills atmy job.Often feeling weary of life's struggles, I choose to look atothers's woes for distraction (usually the newspaper).Reading herthoughts and essays Icouldn't help but be inspired not only by heroptimism and honesty and her unflagging belief and value in people, butalso her analytic mind.She's obviously not afraid to think deeply aboutpeoples and is not afraid to "get personal".I read the booklate last year and will probably pick it up again or another of hers. Iquit my 19 years of successful employment inthe private sector and am nowconsidering non-profit work, thanks to Ms. Gordimer and others like her. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Gordimer quietly exposes South Africa
If you want real African literature, skip Poisonwood Bible, and read Nadine Gordimer's Lying Days. She powerfully reveals the many layers of South African life back in the days of the Struggle without advancing herown political agenda or point of view. Gordimer's unabashed prose willbreak your soul with its brilliant clarity and eloquence.

At last a female coming-of-age story
I couldn't have timed my reading of this book any better.The book's treatment of the artistic conciousness vs. the social conscience is excellent.Nadine Gordimer is one of the very few authors who has managedto indulge her creative side and be an activist for social change.Thisinspires me. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Gordimer quietly exposes South Africa
If you want real African literature, skip Poisonwood Bible, and read Nadine Gordimer's Lying Days. She powerfully reveals the many layers of South African life back in the days of the Struggle without advancing herown political agenda or point of view. Gordimer's unabashed prose willbreak your soul with its brilliant clarity and eloquence.

At last a female coming-of-age story
I couldn't have timed my reading of this book any better.The book's treatment of the artistic conciousness vs. the social conscience is excellent.Nadine Gordimer is one of the very few authors who has managedto indulge her creative side and be an activist for social change.Thisinspires me. ... Read more

Product Description
How else can you defend yourself against losing your hi-fi equipment, your TV set and computer, your watch and rings? A house gun, like a house cat; that is a fact of ordinary life in many cities of the world as we come to the end of the twentieth century, especially in South Africa. At this time the successful, respected executive director of an insurance company, Harold, and his doctor wife, Claudia, for whom violence could never be a means of solving personal conflict, are faced with something that could never happen to them: their son has committed murder. What kind of loyalty do a mother and a father owe a son who has committed this unimaginable horror? What have they done, in influencing his character; more ominously, where is it they have failed him? "The House Gun" is a passionate narrative of love being particularly complex between parents and their children. It moves with the restless pace of living itself, from the intimate to the general condition; if it is a parable of present violence, it is also an affirmation of the will to human reconciliation that starts where it must, between individuals.Amazon.com Review
"There is no privacy more inviolable than that of the prisoner. Tovisualize that cell in which he is thinking, to reach what he alone knows;that is a blank in the dark."

Privileged whites in post-apartheid South Africa, Harald and ClaudiaLindgard have managed to live the better part of 50 years without everconfronting the deepest shadows in their culture or in their own souls.Though they conceive of themselves as liberal-minded, neither has evertaken any active political stand; neither has ever been in any blackperson's home. Harald sits on the board of an insurance company; Claudia isa compassionate doctor. Neither of them has ever been inside a courtroombefore; neither has ever been inside a prison. When their architect-son,Duncan, is arrested for murder, both know that the charge is preposterous.But Duncan himself fails to deny his guilt, and his parents are brought bya harsh and ungainly process to accept the possibility that he hascommitted an unthinkable crime.

Nadine Gordimer'sThe House Gun is a gravely sustained explorationof their long-delayed but necessary descent into an intimate acquaintancewith the culture of violence that surrounds them and that is "the commonhell of all who are associated with it." The novel is a mystery, but not inthe usual sense of the whodunit. Here the question of whoquickly gives way to why and thence to other, still deeperquandaries of culpability, both immediate and ultimate. The enigmaticDuncan becomes a dark mirror in which his stunned parents must desperatelygrope for a new vision of themselves and their world--a vision that willnot shatter, as their old one has, under a single blow from reality.

Gordimer's prose is mannered and severe; humor is rare, or absent. "As thecouple emerge into the foyer of the courts, vast and lofty cathedralechoing with the susurration of its different kind of supplicants gatheredthere, Claudia suddenly breaks away, disappearing towards the signindicating toilets. Harald waits for her among these people patient introuble, no choice to be otherwise, for them, he is one of them, the wives,husbands, fathers, lovers, children of forgers, thieves and murderers."This difficult exposition is the reader's own dark mirror, where we asspectators fumble from one dubious explanation to the next--a twistedreflection always reminding us that, underlying this social tragedy, thereis a mystery play in the old sense, and an unanswerable question: What is ahuman being? Paragraph after paragraph, the reader is led into deeper anddeeper perceptions of the sensibilities and the dilemmas of thesecharacters--into a quiet intimacy with their trouble that is sometimesacutely uncomfortable, but which pays off richly in an ending thatreconciles our sense of the horror of violence with our desire to believein the value of each life. --Daniel Hintzsche ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

A jewel of a book!
Fans of thriller-a-minute, page-turners will find this book a drag!

But readers who enjoy good prose and appreciate a talented wordsmiths intricate tapestry will find 'The House Gun' a jewel of a book.

The story involves an upper-middle class family who must suddenly confront the fact that their son could be a murderer. There are enough twists and turns in the plot to hold the readers' interest but it is not so much the story as Nadine Gordimer's prose that makes this novel such a compelling read. Nadine manages to convey the complex human emotions associated with murder and it's defense with a rare, almost stunning clarity. The deliberately-slow narrative and the delineation of the main characters gradually creates, for the reader, what is almost a first-person familiarity with the characters.

The novel is a page-turner alright but not of the who-dun-it variety. Rather one turns the pages of 'The House Gun' spell-bound by the author's artistry.

The House Gun is No Misfire
I'm baffled by the negative reviews this book has garnered here; I suppose it's more of a reaction to Gordimer's subject matter than to her style or content. People are more comfortable with a revolutionary spouting rhetoric that they agree with: if you, as a reader, are still wrapping your brain around the reality of South Africa as it was, Gordimer's earlier works will ring more true with you. If, however, you are interested in the legacy of Apartheid as it is, The House Gun will resonate more. The House Gun, so to speak, will only fire in the direction in which you point it.

As with all Gordimer works, the pace is slow and deliberately so, the words carefully chosen not to describe action but to allow the reader into the minds and souls of people who have lived in circumstances of which the majority of us can hardly conceive. The plot, intriguing though it is, is really secondary to the introspection taken on by each of the accused murderer's parents; the most pressing question, that of choosing to support your child with whatever means you have at your disposal (financial, spiritual, intellectual, emotional)in the face of your indecision as to whether or not you believe his version of events (or if any version of events would be acceptable). If your child murdered someone else, how would you feel? What would you do? Is the social legacy of apartheid going to color your beliefs; what happens when you are "open-minded" (no one ever really is), and your child commits a race crime? Do you use the race card to exonerate him, even when you are repulsed by his choice and behavior? And while the stress of saving your child from what he or she deserves in the course of law taps all of your inner resources, what happens to your marriage, your career, your friendships, your faith? Do you question all of your motives, all of your beliefs, all of your emotions?

I believe that you do. Every crisis, by nature, requires self-examination. It is not always pretty, or easy to accept, what you find at the end of your questioning. Gordimer, here, takes this family's condition, in microcosm, to expose South Africa's current quandary, many years after the abolition of Apartheid. Where do they stand as a society? What do they believe? What is excusable, what is justifiable? Who pays for what has been done, and how? Where will they go? What will be possible? No one knows, and maybe that's too unsettling for most.

Great Alternative to a Sleeping Pill
This book is soporific.I fell asleep every time I picked it up.The opportunity for a meaningful and dynamic book was there but the promise was never kept.Boring!It is unlikely that I will read anything else by this author.Give it to someone you don't like very much.

Disappointing
Gordimer is an excellent writer, but The House Gun finds her far from the top of her game. The plot of the story is certainly intriguing: in post-apartheid South Africa, a man is accused of murdering his lover; his affluent, supposedly liberal parents hire a black attorney to represent him, despite the fact that the parents have never interacted with a black person in their lives. Gordimer has a great deal to say here about the legacy of apartheid, its violence, and about liberal culture, but getting to these messages is arduous. Even by literary standards, the text is dry, devoid of humor and even emotion to the point of being painful, and Gordimer does little to help her cause by adopting such a difficult style, weighting down the text with unpunctuated dialogue and terse prose. Unlike other "challenging" works (read: Faulkner, Joyce, early Gordimer, etc.) that ultimately reward readers for their efforts, The House Gun has a promising start that languishes up to an unsatisfying ending. The reviewer who stated that this is not a work for "best seller" readers is certainly on the mark, but I would go as far as to say that this isn't really much of a book for those of us with high brow tastes. Gordimer has written a number of outstanding books (My Son's Story, Burger's Daughter, and Jump come to mind), but The House Gun falls short of Gordimer's standards. If you love Gordimer, you'll probably read this book anyway, but her new readers (and I highly recommend reading her) should start elsewhere.

so hard to read
it is not worth the try... i am not going to write anything more nor am i going to argue with pseudo intellectuals who find it intriguing because of a new? writing style... It is a completely inhuman book.Scepanovic wrote differently and hardly maybe for some people but in the end what emerged was pure brilliance not the void that dominates this book. The characters are totally boring. sorry ... Read more