None to Accompany Me: A Novel
3/5
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About this ebook
None to Accompany Me is arresting and reverbant - perhaps the most powerful novel to date by one of the world's most commanding writers.
In an extraordinary period immediately before the first non-racial election and the beginning of majority rule in South Africa, Vera Stark, the protagonist of Nadine Gordimer's passionate novel, weaves a ruthless interpretation of her own past into her participation into the present as a lawyer representing blacks in the struggle to reclaim the land.
Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014), the recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in a small South African town. Her first book, a collection of stories, was published when she was in her early twenties. Her ten books of stories include Something Out There (1984), and Jump and Other Stories (1991). Her novels include The Lying Days (1953), A World of Strangers (1958), Occasion for Loving (1963), The Late Bourgeois World (1966), A Guest of Honour (1971), The Conservationist (1975), Burger's Daughter (1979), July's People (1981), A Sport of Nature (1987), My Son's Story (1990), None to Accompany Me (1994), The House Gun (1998), The Pickup (2001), Get a Life (2005), and No Time Like the Present (2012). A World of Strangers, The Late Bourgeois World, and Burger's Daughter were originally banned in South Africa. She published three books of literary and political essays: The Essential Gesture (1988); Writing and Being (1995), the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures she gave at Harvard in 1994; and Living in Hope and History (1999). Ms. Gordimer was a vice president of PEN International and an executive member of the Congress of South African Writers. She was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in Great Britain and an honorary member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was also a Commandeur de'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France). She held fourteen honorary degrees from universities including Harvard, Yale, Smith College, the New School for Social Research, City College of New York, the University of Leuven in Belgium, Oxford University, and Cambridge University. Ms. Gordimer won numerous literary awards, including the Booker Prize for The Conservationist, both internationally and in South Africa.
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Reviews for None to Accompany Me
39 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Middle-aged lawyer contemplates adultery. Set in the early days of post-apartheid South Africa. Feels dated more than engaging; feels more like a political-historical account of the time period than like fiction set in that period. I was disappointed.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This novel is a curious mix of politics - the restitution of Black rights as the country tries to rebuild itself - and family relationships, with an emphasis on motherhood. Perhaps a parallel can be drawn between the birth of a nation, the love, the estrangement, the aborted efforts, and the women specifically who struggle with these very similar ups and downs, at a deeply emotional level.This was not my favourite novel but one that definitely deserved attention and perhaps a second reading.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Set in barely post-apartheid South Africa, this is primarily the story of Vera Stark, who has spent her career working for a legal foundation as an advocate for housing rights. Her longevity makes her an unofficial executive director, and she commands tremendous respect. While Vera and her work are at the center of this book, it is also a moving portrait of two marriages. Vera is a strong woman, and fiercely independent. Her husband Ben needs her more than she needs him. Vera's past figures heavily in her present, and in her relationship with Ben. Vera and Ben have very liberal views about race, and are long-time friends with a black South African couple, Sibongile (Sally) and Didymus Maqoma. Sally and Didy have only recently returned from exile, and in a surprise turn of events Sally is elected to an important post, and Didy finds himself on the sidelines.Several threads run concurrently through this book. One of Vera's black colleagues, Oupa, shows the reader a different layer of black society from that of Didy and Sally, and presents one of the more moving parts of the novel. Vera and Ben's adult children have relationships and challenges of their own, and intersect with the parents' lives in interesting ways. Sally and Didy's daughter Mpho is a teenager, causing her parents angst as she comes of age. And then there's Vera and Ben, whose relationship appears unshakable, but is actually threatened by a number of forces.Nadine Gordimer also has a lot to say about the political structure taking shape in her country at the time of publication (1994), and its effect on everyday people. I suspect there were nuances in the text that went completely over my head. Deeper knowledge would have helped me appreciate the political context underpinning this study of characters and relationships.