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No Time Like the Present
A sharply observed new novel about post-apartheid South Africa from the Nobel Prize winner
Nadine Gordimer is one of our most telling contemporary writers. With each new work, she attacks—with a clear-eyed fierceness, a lack of sentimentality, and a deep understanding of the darkest depths of the human soul—her eternal themes: the inextricable link between personal and communal history; the inescapable moral ambiguities of daily life; the political and racial tensions that persist in her homeland, South Africa. And in each new work is fresh evidence of her literary genius: in the sharpness of her psychological insights, the stark beauty of her language, the complexity of her characters, and the difficult choices with which they are faced.
In No Time Like the Present, Gordimer trains her keen eye on Steve and Jabulile, an interracial couple living in a newly, tentatively, free South Africa. They have a daughter, Sindiswa; they move to the suburbs; Steve becomes a lecturer at a university; Jabulile trains to become a lawyer; there is another child, a boy this time. There is nothing so extraordinary about their lives, and yet, in telling their story and the stories of their friends and families, Gordimer manages to capture the tortured, fragmented essence of a nation struggling to define itself post-apartheid.
The subject is contemporary, but Gordimer’s treatment is, as ever, timeless. In No Time Like the Present, she shows herself once again a master novelist, at the height of her prodigious powers.
Nadine Gordimer is one of our most telling contemporary writers. With each new work, she attacks—with a clear-eyed fierceness, a lack of sentimentality, and a deep understanding of the darkest depths of the human soul—her eternal themes: the inextricable link between personal and communal history; the inescapable moral ambiguities of daily life; the political and racial tensions that persist in her homeland, South Africa. And in each new work is fresh evidence of her literary genius: in the sharpness of her psychological insights, the stark beauty of her language, the complexity of her characters, and the difficult choices with which they are faced.
In No Time Like the Present, Gordimer trains her keen eye on Steve and Jabulile, an interracial couple living in a newly, tentatively, free South Africa. They have a daughter, Sindiswa; they move to the suburbs; Steve becomes a lecturer at a university; Jabulile trains to become a lawyer; there is another child, a boy this time. There is nothing so extraordinary about their lives, and yet, in telling their story and the stories of their friends and families, Gordimer manages to capture the tortured, fragmented essence of a nation struggling to define itself post-apartheid.
The subject is contemporary, but Gordimer’s treatment is, as ever, timeless. In No Time Like the Present, she shows herself once again a master novelist, at the height of her prodigious powers.
432 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 30, 2010
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About the author
Nadine Gordimer
325 books954 followersNadine Gordimer was a South African writer, political activist, and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".
Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as Burger's Daughter and July's People were banned. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned. She was also active in HIV/AIDS causes.
Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as Burger's Daughter and July's People were banned. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned. She was also active in HIV/AIDS causes.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 150 reviews
October 29, 2017
A disappointing final novel from a Nobel-winner, which feels overlong and difficult to get through. The book follows an interracial couple in post-apartheid South Africa, but there is no driving narrative to pull you through the pages – just a kind of daily notation of ongoing events: strikes, corruption charges, elections, bourgeoisification, the quotidian frustrations of a newly-free society. It feels a bit like Nadine Gordimer just looked through the headlines every morning and jotted down another couple of pages of the novel – especially near the end, where she seems to be settling in to tackle Zuma's presidency on a gruelling day-by-day basis.
The treacly pace is compounded by a prose style of impressionistic flightiness, comma-splicing thoughts together, dropping conjunctions and quotation marks, and generally darting around in a disconcerting way. One hunts in vain for a finite verb, or scratches one's head over statements like this:
Weirdly, the part that stuck out the most had nothing to do with politics – it was when the husband had an affair during a trip to London. Something that in the hands of a lesser author would have been made to recur as a plot point, but which here is beautifully built-up and described, and then never referred to again. It's strangely beautiful.
Throughout the book, though, there is a frustrating sense that it can't be comfortably flung aside – there are real insights here buried among the blocks of text, and the general subject of how racial inequality has been sublimated into a class struggle, in South Africa's ‘aftermath of peace’, is always of interest. This book, unfortunately, does not approach it in the most compelling way.
The treacly pace is compounded by a prose style of impressionistic flightiness, comma-splicing thoughts together, dropping conjunctions and quotation marks, and generally darting around in a disconcerting way. One hunts in vain for a finite verb, or scratches one's head over statements like this:
What the reasons could be, and these were with them in the times of silence which keep the balance of living together in the tenderly joyous interpenetration of love-making, and the need to be a self.
Weirdly, the part that stuck out the most had nothing to do with politics – it was when the husband had an affair during a trip to London. Something that in the hands of a lesser author would have been made to recur as a plot point, but which here is beautifully built-up and described, and then never referred to again. It's strangely beautiful.
Throughout the book, though, there is a frustrating sense that it can't be comfortably flung aside – there are real insights here buried among the blocks of text, and the general subject of how racial inequality has been sublimated into a class struggle, in South Africa's ‘aftermath of peace’, is always of interest. This book, unfortunately, does not approach it in the most compelling way.
June 14, 2012
In the novel No Time Like The Present, Nadine Gordimer (Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1991) sets up an interesting plot and brings to life a cast of engaging characters. The setting is contemporary South Africa. A young bi-racial couple who met during their common struggle against Apartheid now lives in post-Apartheid South Africa.
This book is chock full of fascinating details about South Africa. Zulu tribal life, Jewish and Christian white culture, and refugees from other parts of Africa are only a few of the milieus explored. There are thought-provoking situations involving corruption of youthful ideals, the effect of poverty and poor education on democracy, and xenophobia in all its forms. This book deserves five stars for interesting content. The story is a good one and the author sets up interest/anxiety about what’s going to happen. It kept me reading.
The author obviously knows her subject thoroughly; however: she doesn’t bother to make her prose readable. There were too many sentences that had to be read multiple times to decipher the meaning. My tongue tripped over the syntax. The problems include simple things like to whom does a pronoun refer, and who is narrating. Standard mechanics of communication (using question and quotation marks appropriately) were not used. Word order can be a style choice, but when it results in obscuring meaning, I vote for clarity. There were far too many places where an unidentified narrator made inscrutable asides.
What a worthwhile project it would be to translate this prose into well-written English.
This book is chock full of fascinating details about South Africa. Zulu tribal life, Jewish and Christian white culture, and refugees from other parts of Africa are only a few of the milieus explored. There are thought-provoking situations involving corruption of youthful ideals, the effect of poverty and poor education on democracy, and xenophobia in all its forms. This book deserves five stars for interesting content. The story is a good one and the author sets up interest/anxiety about what’s going to happen. It kept me reading.
The author obviously knows her subject thoroughly; however: she doesn’t bother to make her prose readable. There were too many sentences that had to be read multiple times to decipher the meaning. My tongue tripped over the syntax. The problems include simple things like to whom does a pronoun refer, and who is narrating. Standard mechanics of communication (using question and quotation marks appropriately) were not used. Word order can be a style choice, but when it results in obscuring meaning, I vote for clarity. There were far too many places where an unidentified narrator made inscrutable asides.
What a worthwhile project it would be to translate this prose into well-written English.
September 30, 2013
I didn’t enjoy this book, which is a shame, because I’ve appreciated Nadine Gordimer’s writing in the past. But it looks to me like she dashed this off without benefit of an editor. The writing is annoying, a mixture of unnecessary repetitions and confusing omissions. In fact, my sense is that it was dictated and then never actually read on the page by anyone before being published.
It’s too bad, because there’s an interesting and worthwhile story buried underneath all this fussy, overdone and poorly structured writing. And that’s what kept me reading, albeit occasionally gritting my teeth.
Gordimer’s observations about people are interesting, and she has a lot to say about life in South Africa after Mandela. The main characters are two freedom fighters – a married couple, Steve and Jabu, a white man and a black woman - who are now settling down to “ordinary life” after the Struggle.
In Gordimer’s novel, most of the freedom fighters have moved to a particular suburb, and Steve and Jabu move there too. Gordimer traces the delicate relationships between the comrades, and the new connections with others in the neighborhood, including a house full of gay men. She deals with Steve’s and Jabu’s differing family traditions. And she goes into a lot of detail about the political situation in South Africa, the campaign and election of Zuma.
So I learned a lot, and I absorbed a viewpoint. But no, I didn’t enjoy it. And when I finally read the last page of “No Time Like the Present”, and started another book, I found myself relieved to encounter clear syntax and good grammar.
It’s too bad, because there’s an interesting and worthwhile story buried underneath all this fussy, overdone and poorly structured writing. And that’s what kept me reading, albeit occasionally gritting my teeth.
Gordimer’s observations about people are interesting, and she has a lot to say about life in South Africa after Mandela. The main characters are two freedom fighters – a married couple, Steve and Jabu, a white man and a black woman - who are now settling down to “ordinary life” after the Struggle.
In Gordimer’s novel, most of the freedom fighters have moved to a particular suburb, and Steve and Jabu move there too. Gordimer traces the delicate relationships between the comrades, and the new connections with others in the neighborhood, including a house full of gay men. She deals with Steve’s and Jabu’s differing family traditions. And she goes into a lot of detail about the political situation in South Africa, the campaign and election of Zuma.
So I learned a lot, and I absorbed a viewpoint. But no, I didn’t enjoy it. And when I finally read the last page of “No Time Like the Present”, and started another book, I found myself relieved to encounter clear syntax and good grammar.
September 18, 2013
In the darkest days of apartheid, when all the men, the leaders, were imprisoned, out of sight, voiceless, three women beautiful, courageous, talented kept the attention of the world focused on the extreme injustice and violence of their country South Africa. Winnie Mandela, Miriam Makeba, Nadine Gordimer; the fist, the song, the pen. Time -because unblemished and living- has made the last the mightiest. At 88, Nadine Gordimer, the agitated bearer of her country's troubled soul, is still raging against the dying of the dream.
In her 1980 short story A Soldier's Embrace, Nadine opens with an imagined celebration of future freedom. The blacks have just won the right to govern themselves, they are dancing in the streets together with whites in solidarity, some in abstention, others enemies accepting defeat. All caught in the rejoice, the spirit of liberty. A white woman throws one arm around a black freedom fighter and the other around a white soldier and kisses each of them. She thinks of that famous war poster. She dreams of a symbolic embrace of all. After the party she begins to remember: the white guy was pale and pimply, the black one had a nasty raw scar. Both later went out to party, get drunk, whore around. The Revolution, too, got drunk on its triumph and went whoring. Her poster is beginning to fade. She realizes that revolutions are not black and white, but gray. Flash forward 30 years later into Nadine's latest -maybe last- novel No Time Like the Present, and the gray has become murky. Nadine is raging, and her rage leaves no stone unturned. Everything comes under scrutiny and denunciation: corruption, poverty, xenophobia, violence and crime, and even lingering racism. It all suggests a very troubled beginning, more than an awkward adolescence, for a new country.
The central characters are umkhonto veterans, a mixed-race couple, professional and middle-class, the symbol and the hope of the new South Africa. The novel starts at the time of the first election, 1994, Liberation official. As time begins to roll they find themselves uncomfortable with a national situation they never foresaw out in the bush, in the guerrilla. While they have managed to live in an enclave of the dream, where race, colour, gender are simply communal, beyond tolerated accepted, the wider society cannot find its place, is increasingly alienated and disaffected. The clashing contradictions are disconcerting to these veterans, and they begin to think the unthinkable: emigration.
Nadine fashions her literary characters, black and white, with keen authenticity, further establishing her claim that she is a white African and not a post-colonial liberal. She emphasizes the shared humanity of her characters by refusing to encapsulate them in rigid ideology, and she creates a wonderful tapestry of what, how, the new South Africa should be ... but is not. The one weakness I want to point out is her depiction of the gay characters. It does not appear to me that she captures these realistically, a bit bizarre in fact, but not so much to prevent this from being a wonderful read.
A note on style. She has been criticized in the past years for her idiosyncratic syntax. Jagged sentences, clauses piled upon others, truncated flow of words. All true. It makes for daunting reading, just like the experience of living -take it from me- in her country. Others might, personally I have no problem with struggling to disentangle meaning from style. I like, welcome, the challenge. Not a lazy reader. A complex syntax for a complex book about a complex society fighting hard to understand itself, to figure out a way to uphold the spirit of ubuntu. I am not giving anything away by saying that, in the end, this ubuntu spirit prevails. A luta continua, masakhane!
....
In her 1980 short story A Soldier's Embrace, Nadine opens with an imagined celebration of future freedom. The blacks have just won the right to govern themselves, they are dancing in the streets together with whites in solidarity, some in abstention, others enemies accepting defeat. All caught in the rejoice, the spirit of liberty. A white woman throws one arm around a black freedom fighter and the other around a white soldier and kisses each of them. She thinks of that famous war poster. She dreams of a symbolic embrace of all. After the party she begins to remember: the white guy was pale and pimply, the black one had a nasty raw scar. Both later went out to party, get drunk, whore around. The Revolution, too, got drunk on its triumph and went whoring. Her poster is beginning to fade. She realizes that revolutions are not black and white, but gray. Flash forward 30 years later into Nadine's latest -maybe last- novel No Time Like the Present, and the gray has become murky. Nadine is raging, and her rage leaves no stone unturned. Everything comes under scrutiny and denunciation: corruption, poverty, xenophobia, violence and crime, and even lingering racism. It all suggests a very troubled beginning, more than an awkward adolescence, for a new country.
The central characters are umkhonto veterans, a mixed-race couple, professional and middle-class, the symbol and the hope of the new South Africa. The novel starts at the time of the first election, 1994, Liberation official. As time begins to roll they find themselves uncomfortable with a national situation they never foresaw out in the bush, in the guerrilla. While they have managed to live in an enclave of the dream, where race, colour, gender are simply communal, beyond tolerated accepted, the wider society cannot find its place, is increasingly alienated and disaffected. The clashing contradictions are disconcerting to these veterans, and they begin to think the unthinkable: emigration.
Nadine fashions her literary characters, black and white, with keen authenticity, further establishing her claim that she is a white African and not a post-colonial liberal. She emphasizes the shared humanity of her characters by refusing to encapsulate them in rigid ideology, and she creates a wonderful tapestry of what, how, the new South Africa should be ... but is not. The one weakness I want to point out is her depiction of the gay characters. It does not appear to me that she captures these realistically, a bit bizarre in fact, but not so much to prevent this from being a wonderful read.
A note on style. She has been criticized in the past years for her idiosyncratic syntax. Jagged sentences, clauses piled upon others, truncated flow of words. All true. It makes for daunting reading, just like the experience of living -take it from me- in her country. Others might, personally I have no problem with struggling to disentangle meaning from style. I like, welcome, the challenge. Not a lazy reader. A complex syntax for a complex book about a complex society fighting hard to understand itself, to figure out a way to uphold the spirit of ubuntu. I am not giving anything away by saying that, in the end, this ubuntu spirit prevails. A luta continua, masakhane!
....
May 1, 2016
I did not enjoy this book. I thought I would like this book. It was chosen by my book club so I had to finish it but it felt like hard work.
The story is an interesting one. A black woman and a white man marry secretly and live in South Africa under apartheid. They are active freedom fighters and rejoice when apartheid is abolished. The true story begins with their life in the new South Africa and all of the contradictions they must face being part of the new middle class. They chose to live in a walled protected area so their children will have a safe environment yet millions still live in poverty. They chose private schools over the public system making their children even more removed from the real south Africa. Throughout the novel, real South African politics are discussed. The Zimbabwean refugee problem brings rise to xenophobia where black people are now being racist against others with the same colour.
So all of this could make for a very interesting story but Nadine Gordimer's writing style was hellish to read. Overly descriptive, little dialogue, disjointed, no quotation marks to mark the beginning of speech. I often had to read the very lengthy sentences two or three times to get the gist of them. I know I missed half the story because sometimes I just couldn't be bothered.
The story is an interesting one. A black woman and a white man marry secretly and live in South Africa under apartheid. They are active freedom fighters and rejoice when apartheid is abolished. The true story begins with their life in the new South Africa and all of the contradictions they must face being part of the new middle class. They chose to live in a walled protected area so their children will have a safe environment yet millions still live in poverty. They chose private schools over the public system making their children even more removed from the real south Africa. Throughout the novel, real South African politics are discussed. The Zimbabwean refugee problem brings rise to xenophobia where black people are now being racist against others with the same colour.
So all of this could make for a very interesting story but Nadine Gordimer's writing style was hellish to read. Overly descriptive, little dialogue, disjointed, no quotation marks to mark the beginning of speech. I often had to read the very lengthy sentences two or three times to get the gist of them. I know I missed half the story because sometimes I just couldn't be bothered.
December 13, 2015
"No Time Like the Present" stunned me in ways that few contemporary books do. Written by Nobel Literature prize-winner Nadine Gordimer, it tells the story of a South African married couple (she, black; he, white) in the decades after they were comrades in the struggle against apartheid. Through their eyes, we see their hopes and disillusionments with the regime as it moves toward the election of a third president since Mandela took that office in the new "better life for all" era. Gordimer does an excellent job of painting an unflinching picture of a society in the struggle to achieve something noble even as it is subject to all the human failings of greed, corruption, and (still) desperate need. Many previous reviews have cited the difficult style in which the book is written. It's definitely NOT an easy read, but if you can get into it and stay with it, "No Time Like the Present" is a richly rewarding read. Not least because it has so much to say about the human condition, and says it so honestly.
January 9, 2013
You probably have to love political novels, and know (and care) a lot about South Africa, in order to enthuse fully about "No Time like the Present." But I plead guilty to both perspectives, and so this book reached me powerfully on an emotional and literary level -- not so much because of its detailed panorama of dramatic South African realities over more than two decades as because of the way Gordimer weaves a compelling personal saga through the years of this political history.
Jabulile Gumede and Steven Reed are a mixed race couple whose secret marriage challenges apartheid fundamentally -- while their underground ANC work confronts the governing white regime in militant terms. But how do they and their comrades deal with the complex, conflicted aftermath of apartheid's overthrow, once Mandela takes over and the ANC tries to govern? There is, of course, an ideological level to that huge question. But there is, even more, a question of living one's life, and how to do that, amid dilemmas that were never expected. For Jabulile, this includes changing her life in response to new opportunities and becoming a lawyer, and coming to terms with her kwaZulu heritage as Jacob Zuma takes power, despite questions about his relationships with women -- questions that threaten her deep ties with her father. For Steven, there is the shift from factory chemist (and ANC bomb maker) to university academic in an institution shaken by financial austerity and racial division -- where he becomes increasingly worried about environmental destruction. The couple's children, in turn, face their own complexities in a world where the education they receive comes to be at the heart of social divisions in the new society.
Nadine Gordimer, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature, traces the searing political story with immense energy and deep insight, though there can be no conclusion to it, because the struggle does continue -- as the killing this month of dozens of miners testifies. The personal saga, however, is traced with equal insight and emotional skill -- and a surprising conclusion.
Jabulile Gumede and Steven Reed are a mixed race couple whose secret marriage challenges apartheid fundamentally -- while their underground ANC work confronts the governing white regime in militant terms. But how do they and their comrades deal with the complex, conflicted aftermath of apartheid's overthrow, once Mandela takes over and the ANC tries to govern? There is, of course, an ideological level to that huge question. But there is, even more, a question of living one's life, and how to do that, amid dilemmas that were never expected. For Jabulile, this includes changing her life in response to new opportunities and becoming a lawyer, and coming to terms with her kwaZulu heritage as Jacob Zuma takes power, despite questions about his relationships with women -- questions that threaten her deep ties with her father. For Steven, there is the shift from factory chemist (and ANC bomb maker) to university academic in an institution shaken by financial austerity and racial division -- where he becomes increasingly worried about environmental destruction. The couple's children, in turn, face their own complexities in a world where the education they receive comes to be at the heart of social divisions in the new society.
Nadine Gordimer, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature, traces the searing political story with immense energy and deep insight, though there can be no conclusion to it, because the struggle does continue -- as the killing this month of dozens of miners testifies. The personal saga, however, is traced with equal insight and emotional skill -- and a surprising conclusion.
December 22, 2013
I just could not get into this book. The style is experimental and one where the experiment remains in the writer's head and does not explode on the page, like Gordimer's other novels do. I had to abandon ship after the first 60 pages, my new motto - given that there are so many books left to read in the world, why struggle through any? And dashes to denote dialogue does not work for me, espcially when a lot of the book is internally driven and other (non-dialogue) dashes get added to the fray.
In retrospect, this book left me with two questions: (1) Does a Nobel prize wining author get to ignore conventions and write a novel in any which way she desires, where editors and readers have no say? (2) Would this book have been better presented as a non-fiction tome, for the subject matter of mixed race couples adjusting to post-Apartheid South Africa is interesting reading?
I am going back to Gordimer's pre-Nobel work now, a time when she had to work hard to earn her readers - the best time for a writer.
In retrospect, this book left me with two questions: (1) Does a Nobel prize wining author get to ignore conventions and write a novel in any which way she desires, where editors and readers have no say? (2) Would this book have been better presented as a non-fiction tome, for the subject matter of mixed race couples adjusting to post-Apartheid South Africa is interesting reading?
I am going back to Gordimer's pre-Nobel work now, a time when she had to work hard to earn her readers - the best time for a writer.
April 21, 2015
I'm abandoning this book on page 126. I admit a complete lack knowledge of post-apartheid South African politics. I don't know who Mbeki is, I've never heard of the Shaik brothers, nor any of the other politicians mentioned, so a lot of the specifics of the politics are lost on me. However, I think that even if I knew such things, the book would still be quite poor. I'd say the truly fundamental flaw is that it tries to cover too much time / subject matter too quickly and thus 1.) the reader never gets to become emotionally involved in the characters because their lives move so fast and generally at a narrated distance (there is very little dialog) and 2.) all of the truly fascinating ideas that this book could grapple with are only cursorily mentioned and never explored. The latter flaw is, to me, the most tragic.
I would have loved to learn about what life was like as a rebel freedom fighter. I would have loved to explore the difficulties and emotions involved in transitioning from a covert life of righteous violence into a post-victory peaceful suburban life. I would have rejoiced to hear about a nation struggling to correct its former sins and how it manages to execute upon its newly-mandated freedom. It would be fascinating to learn why some of the rebels would jump ship from being a fighter for justice and turn into corrupt politicians. All of these issues and more are **hinted** at in the first 120 pages, but they are never explored. No conversations last more than a paragraph and the interesting issues are immediately swept under the rug, often because the characters don't seem to want to talk about them.
Since there is no story-telling / plot to make the reader care about the characters and all of the interesting ideas are only superficially mentioned, how then does the book fill its first 126 pages? It's mainly a lot of trying-to-be-clever-but-almost-never-actually-clever prose. It is quite similar to how I write when I want to be artsy, and frankly I'm a poor writer of fiction. The writing adds nothing; it is not beautiful, it is not insightful, and it does not enhance the emotions of the book (perhaps because there are none). It's a little hard to follow at times, but not quite as bad as what other reviewers have claimed. Frankly, it's just filler.
I'm setting this one down.
I would have loved to learn about what life was like as a rebel freedom fighter. I would have loved to explore the difficulties and emotions involved in transitioning from a covert life of righteous violence into a post-victory peaceful suburban life. I would have rejoiced to hear about a nation struggling to correct its former sins and how it manages to execute upon its newly-mandated freedom. It would be fascinating to learn why some of the rebels would jump ship from being a fighter for justice and turn into corrupt politicians. All of these issues and more are **hinted** at in the first 120 pages, but they are never explored. No conversations last more than a paragraph and the interesting issues are immediately swept under the rug, often because the characters don't seem to want to talk about them.
Since there is no story-telling / plot to make the reader care about the characters and all of the interesting ideas are only superficially mentioned, how then does the book fill its first 126 pages? It's mainly a lot of trying-to-be-clever-but-almost-never-actually-clever prose. It is quite similar to how I write when I want to be artsy, and frankly I'm a poor writer of fiction. The writing adds nothing; it is not beautiful, it is not insightful, and it does not enhance the emotions of the book (perhaps because there are none). It's a little hard to follow at times, but not quite as bad as what other reviewers have claimed. Frankly, it's just filler.
I'm setting this one down.
July 19, 2013
Nadine Gordimer is one of my favorite living writers, but this recent work did not hold my attention. "No Time Like the Present," as reviewers have emphasized, depicts the tensions, disappointments, and new racial politics of post-Apartheid South Africa. This Gordimer does well--she is a shrewd, intelligent observer--but her sociological and political commentary is suspended on what I thought was a fairly thin plot: an interracial couple of anti-Apartheid radicals attempts to come to terms with the new Africa they had risk their lives to help create. It is a tale of disappointment. Aren't most revolutionaries, at least those who retain their ideals, disappointed in some measure in what they have helped to found? For this couple, and their children, the central question is whether to remain in South Africa and compromise with somewhat unhappy realities or to move to Australia where more opportunities and fewer complexities seem to await. This situation raises difficult and important questions, but there is just not enough "story" to activate this increasingly lethargic consciousness!
May 5, 2012
No Time Like the Present is one of those rare books that you feel you should immediately read a second time as soon as you finish! Nadine Gordimer, 1991 winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, passionately presents her insights as an astute white female observer of her South African homeland. Speaking through her main characters, the mixed-race couple Steve and Jabu Reed, Gordimer vociferously attacks thorny issues most authors sidestep: apartheid, xenophobia, human rights, heritage, poverty, the Struggle. When Steve, an academic, and his lawyer-wife decide to emigrate with their family to Australia, Gordimer explores the political similarities and differences between the two continents and offers readers a surprise ending. She sums up her thesis on p. 270: "It's killingly difficult to accept a priority between choice of existences in the meanly allotted human span."
December 29, 2013
What a pity that her editors did not take a great big red pen to this book. The style is really convoluted so that it makes reading and comprehension a chore. The characterisation and plot do not engage either. So what we are left with is a State of the Nation post Apartheid which is not really enough for a novel. What a shame as I have always enjoyed Gordimer's books.
August 1, 2015
History as Clichés and Confusion
Gordimer’s works are often consulted by readers who hope to gain insight into the culture, problems and future of South Africa, and perhaps her earlier works more clearly express these issues. Unfortunately, her final book, No Time Like the Present, starts with a cliché and never gets much deeper than an exploration of the various clichés that are used by South Africans to understand themselves and their country: Ubuntu--We Are One; Best for All; Umkhonto-Liberation?, Zenophobia--Fear of Foreigners. The title seems positive and hopeful, until one plunges into the confusion of corrupt Black politicians grabbing for power and all South Africans uncertain about their future, while the country is overwhelmed by “foreigners” from neighboring countries worse off economically and politically, who move into the impoverished areas where black South Africans still barely eke out a subsistence living. Leaders of the country propound foolish vegetative remedies for AIDS or war-like slogans to win reelection, wealthy South Africans barricade themselves in gated communities to avoid rampant theft and deadly attacks (or migrate to Australia), schools provide sub-standard education that cannot prepare black students for good employment, and tribal customs nourish links to the past that can prove counterproductive to a modern nation. (Jabu’s father supports Zuma, a fellow Zulu, despite his admission of raping a woman with AIDS--because a Zulu man has to satisfy a woman who is sexually aroused.) But the socialist/Marxist ideology of the whites and blacks who fought to gain freedom is equally rigid and ineffective in this modern state; what worked in the bush and detention cells to unify people into a cohesive group dedicated to a single aim no longer unifies when people are given choices about how to live their lives.
The novel focuses on the married life of Steve Reed, white, and Rebecca Jabulile Gumede, a black whose father, a Zulu tribal leader and Elder in the Methodist Church, singled her out for special, white-quality education, ignoring tribal tradition that favored male children, and encouraged her to learn English along with isiZulu. Thus she is prepared to adapt to changed circumstances and to be politically defiant. After she goes to Swaziland for teacher training she becomes involved with the Struggle against apartheid and even serves time in detention. During this time she meets Steve Reed, whose English family has a Jewish mother who insists on circumcision for her sons. (Gordimer makes numerous references to this fact, as well as other scattered references to penises--nothing much about vaginas. She includes trivial female conversation about sexual relations between the races, makes numerous bizarre comments about the “sexual renegade Marc” (415) who is clearly bisexual, and jokes embarrassingly that “now they even have a black man to bugger” (414) when a gay commune takes in a fleeing Zimbabwean.)
For Steve and Jabu, the comrades who initially flout miscegenation laws and live illegally in S. Africa, their sexual union and mixed blood are almost idealized by Gordimer as the way of the future, which Jabu is able to deal with, while her more rigid husband, still clinging to the Marxist ideology of their bush days, cannot. Reluctantly he agrees to school their children in private schools which will guarantee them a high-quality education, rather than the public schools available to all; apparently he feels somewhat superior in that he has married interracially, but this doesn’t stop him from engaging in a transient sexual affair with a white English woman when he attends a scientific conference in London, thus rebonding with his white ancestral roots. However, this affair, never revealed to his wife, plays no further role in the novel, and is one example of lengthy details that don’t seem essential to the main themes of the novel, unless it shows that white men may not be truly committed to the new S. Africa. This along with somewhat homophobic and even reverse racist interjections by Gordimer may indicate the confusion in South Africa after its liberation from white domination, but they add a very sour note to an already confusing narrative.
While Jabu switches from education to law (basically self-educating via correspondence courses) and begins to move up the judicial system, first working for public causes and securing justice for exploited blacks, then partially transitioning to private legal firms, Steve vegetates in his university assistant professor position, working ineffectively to help poorly prepared students and trying vainly to maintain the rigid ideology of his resistance days. As with many Marxists, he seems reluctant to make any small accommodations that do not directly result in the changes he desires, while his wife accepts them as transitional modifications that may ultimately benefit everyone. She seems aware that the future cannot be preplanned according to ideology or even personal desires. He finally agrees when his son wants to switch to a private, all-male school, thus seeming to move back to an apartheid tradition, but the son’s actual reason is because his black, best friend has chosen to go there. That friend is a son of Peter Mikaze, a black comrade whose own brother was brutally hacked to death by an apartheid army and then roasted at a traditional S. African barbeque, but Peter has been able to put this incident into a perspective that does not hinder him from functioning in the new mixed society and seeking economic gains by capitalist methods. Inevitably it is Steve who gravitates to the idea of emigration to Australia, apparently feeling that he is less integrated into African culture because he is white. Gordimer seems to push the idea that only blacks can really feel at home in Africa because only they have some connection with tribal traditions, even if these vary greatly between different tribes, many of which have been in S. Africa no longer than the white settlers.
In the new capitalist society, most S. Africans are focused mainly on personal needs, making money and political power, as is seen in mixed couples buying the houses vacated by departed Boers and furnishing them in the best bourgeois style, some Blacks economizing with cheap, deadly traditional circumcisions by freelancers, and Zuma (under investigation for criminal misconduct) rising to power on the basis of his tribal connections and involvement in the Struggle against apartheid. Many discussions in the novel are circular, so it is not surprising that at the end, after vivid descriptions of the absolute chaos in the country overrun by Zimbabweans, almost paralyzed by strikes and civic unrest, with Zuma spending millions on personal needs, Steve decides they won’t be going to Australia but will continue the struggle, this time against black corruption. Indeed, if anything, he demonstrates, as does Gordimer herself, that for some South African whites their deeply entrenched beliefs will outweigh rational reexamination of circumstances, a position that can be either heroic or fundamentally foolish.
The biggest problem with this novel for non-native readers, aside from incomplete knowledge of the history of S. Africa, is Gordimer’s writing style. Of course, there is no linear chronology, so incidents from the past are inserted into sections that are in the present, and those past incidents are themselves not in any chronological sequence. So we get an extended homage to a Jewish son’s bar mitzvah, with its reverence for past traditions and male initiation rites, and a brief picture of life in a Zulu tribal enclave, along with a female “family collateral” who moves in with the Reeds and lives happily in a converted chicken coop in the back garden, while engaging in family affairs much like an older aunt. In general Gordimer doesn’t provide narrative description; early in the book she mentions “A motorbike ripped the street like a sheet of paper roughly torn” (5), which she repeats later on, clearly her best metaphor for how the lives of her couple will be changed by their developing country. But as with other modest metaphors, like calling the headlights of a motor car a “monster’s eyes,” there is no inherent connection with her themes or situations--these are just clever descriptions. A poet she is not, although the style of her book is best described as “poetic” with its fractured syntax and lame attempts to create a sense of the confusion of thought and emotion in her white characters. This chaotic style works best at the end of the novel when Steve and a black colleague visit an apparent refuse heap where black S. Africans have constructed makeshift habitats using the detritus of white life, although as with so much in this novel at first it is unclear what is happening.
In general Gordimer focuses on what people think, say and do. And this is where the biggest problems arise with this novel, for she likes to leave verbs out of her sentences and to switch modifying phrases around so that a reader can feel it’s a book they’re trying to read, French or German, poorly written. An example of the first occurs on p. 188: “Sindi and Gary went about their own preoccupations. Sindi to the secrecy that was her own small room from which there came always ...the adolescent beat of whichever pop group in favour with her friends, Gary to clean his bicycle companionably.” This is one of the easier sentences to decode, but verbs are consistently left out of passages that thus become basically incomprehensible. It takes some careful reading of p. 215 to become certain that Jabu aborts her third child. “Stupid not to have gone to the doctor at once. It seemed so unlikely. Or some atavistic hangover. Baba’s women running a gaze as wisdom over a flat stomach: husbands expect sons for their perpetuation ...Abortion is no longer illegal. It is skillfully done by the comrade’s freedom achieved as a gynaecologist” (216). As for the confusing use of phrases, “There used to be a gem that came up from the village her scrambled made with eggs laid by her own hens was fabulous, famous, but that cordon bleu’s on pension now” (179). Style can be useful in creating mood or establishing the mental state of characters, but when it’s used the same way throughout the novel it ultimately becomes annoying, forcing the reader to reread a passage that may have little relevance or importance for her major themes. In addition, Gordimer uses slang and words that are unclear to non-S. Africans, including phrases possibly in isiZulu, and at points the reader is thoroughly perplexed as to what or who is being talked about. By reading rather rapidly one can glean some coherence out of the scattered phrases and foreign words, but in general this is annoying. At the least a brief appendix with some definitions would be helpful. Then there are her own creations/metaphors (such as “gem” to describe a female cook) that make the reader uncertain about her points. When Isa, the wife of Jake who has been brutally hijacked by black migrants, attempts to speak on the drive to the hospital, her language is described as “stunned, stunted” (144), and this is a good description of Gordimer’s style in this book. Generously we could assume that the style reflects the trauma being undergone by the country’s inhabitants, and the confusion of the reader is like the confusion of the citizens, but that diminishes the novel’s “art,” and clearly Gordimer has a message she’s trying to transmit about her country.
Reading the novel is rather a slog, even if some of the characters are interesting. There is some cute writing about the “Dolphins,” which it takes a while to understand are the young gay men who have taken over an abandoned church and created a swimming pool they regularly use. Steve’s gay brother, Alan, also occurs briefly, with parallels between treatment of gays and blacks, Jews (especially in the Holocaust) and blacks, although it isn’t really clear whether Gordimer’s characters (and she herself) see these as essentially different forms of discrimination. At one point it’s claimed that homosexuals have it easier because their whole lives haven’t been determined by the white controllers, but that point is arguable, and isn’t there an important difference between the attitude of Jews, facing imminent extinction in a concentration camp, who develop a certain attitude toward their fate, and the attitude developed by downtrodden blacks in a supposedly free society who have discovered its limits? Philosophy and politics are mixed almost incoherently, as Steve decides at one point to study Epicurus, apparently in an attempt to gain some wisdom from a source other than Marx, while Zuma is running for (and being elected to various important positions) thus causing whites like Steve to consider abandoning political consistency and emigrating to Australia.
Mundane details are a mainstay of this novel, but not details that especially enlighten the reader about the characters or what is happening. When Steven finally decides the family should emigrate to Australia, the reader is given enough detail to be able to personally emigrate. Similarly, the issues around Zuma’s “criminal” behavior and his avoidance of judicial punishment are gone over and over, along with minute details about the upcoming election for the country’s third president, and whether or not Steve and Jabu should still feel involved since they are intending to emigrate. When Jabu and her son Gary Elias return to the patriarchal village we are indulged with isiZulu phrases (not translated) and repetitive statements about how well the son fits in with his black cousins. All the while Jabu is apparently suffering from guilt because her alignment with the white culture has resulted in her success, while her black fellow citizens are starving and living in intolerable circumstances, and she has had to break intellectually with her father, who stolidly supports the rapist Zuma, a fellow tribesman. She even decides to emigrate to Australia thus disconnecting further from her tribal roots, and in fact, separating from tribal roots might be the most rational course for black S. Africans who hope to achieve a workable democracy.
Issues about white/black responsibility for the current situation are one of the themes, but as with any such complex problem, the answer or possible solution is almost impossible to decipher. Similarly, the conflict between Marxist and capitalist ideas is a central theme, but it is also one that doesn’t achieve any clear closure. It is as if Gordimer still thinks a clear answer should be able to be achieved, much as a traditionalist or even a Marxist or capitalist would assume--one clear way to the future, one right way, one inevitable way. But none of this occurs in the reality of S. Africa’s post-apartheid transformation. Ideals give way to greed and self-interest, because with freedom there is no obligation to be concerned about your fellow citizens, as even the comrades have learned when none of them came to the aid of Jake after his attack, and only the bisexual Marc provided care.
The future will require that each individual balance personal with political/social needs, deciding in specific circumstances which end of the spectrum to follow. Traditions, social norms and political goals will change or be abandoned in the new S. Africa, hard as it may be for those experiencing the transition. Gordimer does not provide any vision of the country’s future but instead shows how idealistic goals and achievements can become lost when freedom is interpreted to mean placing self-interest above social responsibility. Whether ordinary citizens who feel such responsibility can make any difference in a chaotic, politically and economically corrupt country is the great unanswered question in Gordimer’s novel.
Gordimer’s works are often consulted by readers who hope to gain insight into the culture, problems and future of South Africa, and perhaps her earlier works more clearly express these issues. Unfortunately, her final book, No Time Like the Present, starts with a cliché and never gets much deeper than an exploration of the various clichés that are used by South Africans to understand themselves and their country: Ubuntu--We Are One; Best for All; Umkhonto-Liberation?, Zenophobia--Fear of Foreigners. The title seems positive and hopeful, until one plunges into the confusion of corrupt Black politicians grabbing for power and all South Africans uncertain about their future, while the country is overwhelmed by “foreigners” from neighboring countries worse off economically and politically, who move into the impoverished areas where black South Africans still barely eke out a subsistence living. Leaders of the country propound foolish vegetative remedies for AIDS or war-like slogans to win reelection, wealthy South Africans barricade themselves in gated communities to avoid rampant theft and deadly attacks (or migrate to Australia), schools provide sub-standard education that cannot prepare black students for good employment, and tribal customs nourish links to the past that can prove counterproductive to a modern nation. (Jabu’s father supports Zuma, a fellow Zulu, despite his admission of raping a woman with AIDS--because a Zulu man has to satisfy a woman who is sexually aroused.) But the socialist/Marxist ideology of the whites and blacks who fought to gain freedom is equally rigid and ineffective in this modern state; what worked in the bush and detention cells to unify people into a cohesive group dedicated to a single aim no longer unifies when people are given choices about how to live their lives.
The novel focuses on the married life of Steve Reed, white, and Rebecca Jabulile Gumede, a black whose father, a Zulu tribal leader and Elder in the Methodist Church, singled her out for special, white-quality education, ignoring tribal tradition that favored male children, and encouraged her to learn English along with isiZulu. Thus she is prepared to adapt to changed circumstances and to be politically defiant. After she goes to Swaziland for teacher training she becomes involved with the Struggle against apartheid and even serves time in detention. During this time she meets Steve Reed, whose English family has a Jewish mother who insists on circumcision for her sons. (Gordimer makes numerous references to this fact, as well as other scattered references to penises--nothing much about vaginas. She includes trivial female conversation about sexual relations between the races, makes numerous bizarre comments about the “sexual renegade Marc” (415) who is clearly bisexual, and jokes embarrassingly that “now they even have a black man to bugger” (414) when a gay commune takes in a fleeing Zimbabwean.)
For Steve and Jabu, the comrades who initially flout miscegenation laws and live illegally in S. Africa, their sexual union and mixed blood are almost idealized by Gordimer as the way of the future, which Jabu is able to deal with, while her more rigid husband, still clinging to the Marxist ideology of their bush days, cannot. Reluctantly he agrees to school their children in private schools which will guarantee them a high-quality education, rather than the public schools available to all; apparently he feels somewhat superior in that he has married interracially, but this doesn’t stop him from engaging in a transient sexual affair with a white English woman when he attends a scientific conference in London, thus rebonding with his white ancestral roots. However, this affair, never revealed to his wife, plays no further role in the novel, and is one example of lengthy details that don’t seem essential to the main themes of the novel, unless it shows that white men may not be truly committed to the new S. Africa. This along with somewhat homophobic and even reverse racist interjections by Gordimer may indicate the confusion in South Africa after its liberation from white domination, but they add a very sour note to an already confusing narrative.
While Jabu switches from education to law (basically self-educating via correspondence courses) and begins to move up the judicial system, first working for public causes and securing justice for exploited blacks, then partially transitioning to private legal firms, Steve vegetates in his university assistant professor position, working ineffectively to help poorly prepared students and trying vainly to maintain the rigid ideology of his resistance days. As with many Marxists, he seems reluctant to make any small accommodations that do not directly result in the changes he desires, while his wife accepts them as transitional modifications that may ultimately benefit everyone. She seems aware that the future cannot be preplanned according to ideology or even personal desires. He finally agrees when his son wants to switch to a private, all-male school, thus seeming to move back to an apartheid tradition, but the son’s actual reason is because his black, best friend has chosen to go there. That friend is a son of Peter Mikaze, a black comrade whose own brother was brutally hacked to death by an apartheid army and then roasted at a traditional S. African barbeque, but Peter has been able to put this incident into a perspective that does not hinder him from functioning in the new mixed society and seeking economic gains by capitalist methods. Inevitably it is Steve who gravitates to the idea of emigration to Australia, apparently feeling that he is less integrated into African culture because he is white. Gordimer seems to push the idea that only blacks can really feel at home in Africa because only they have some connection with tribal traditions, even if these vary greatly between different tribes, many of which have been in S. Africa no longer than the white settlers.
In the new capitalist society, most S. Africans are focused mainly on personal needs, making money and political power, as is seen in mixed couples buying the houses vacated by departed Boers and furnishing them in the best bourgeois style, some Blacks economizing with cheap, deadly traditional circumcisions by freelancers, and Zuma (under investigation for criminal misconduct) rising to power on the basis of his tribal connections and involvement in the Struggle against apartheid. Many discussions in the novel are circular, so it is not surprising that at the end, after vivid descriptions of the absolute chaos in the country overrun by Zimbabweans, almost paralyzed by strikes and civic unrest, with Zuma spending millions on personal needs, Steve decides they won’t be going to Australia but will continue the struggle, this time against black corruption. Indeed, if anything, he demonstrates, as does Gordimer herself, that for some South African whites their deeply entrenched beliefs will outweigh rational reexamination of circumstances, a position that can be either heroic or fundamentally foolish.
The biggest problem with this novel for non-native readers, aside from incomplete knowledge of the history of S. Africa, is Gordimer’s writing style. Of course, there is no linear chronology, so incidents from the past are inserted into sections that are in the present, and those past incidents are themselves not in any chronological sequence. So we get an extended homage to a Jewish son’s bar mitzvah, with its reverence for past traditions and male initiation rites, and a brief picture of life in a Zulu tribal enclave, along with a female “family collateral” who moves in with the Reeds and lives happily in a converted chicken coop in the back garden, while engaging in family affairs much like an older aunt. In general Gordimer doesn’t provide narrative description; early in the book she mentions “A motorbike ripped the street like a sheet of paper roughly torn” (5), which she repeats later on, clearly her best metaphor for how the lives of her couple will be changed by their developing country. But as with other modest metaphors, like calling the headlights of a motor car a “monster’s eyes,” there is no inherent connection with her themes or situations--these are just clever descriptions. A poet she is not, although the style of her book is best described as “poetic” with its fractured syntax and lame attempts to create a sense of the confusion of thought and emotion in her white characters. This chaotic style works best at the end of the novel when Steve and a black colleague visit an apparent refuse heap where black S. Africans have constructed makeshift habitats using the detritus of white life, although as with so much in this novel at first it is unclear what is happening.
In general Gordimer focuses on what people think, say and do. And this is where the biggest problems arise with this novel, for she likes to leave verbs out of her sentences and to switch modifying phrases around so that a reader can feel it’s a book they’re trying to read, French or German, poorly written. An example of the first occurs on p. 188: “Sindi and Gary went about their own preoccupations. Sindi to the secrecy that was her own small room from which there came always ...the adolescent beat of whichever pop group in favour with her friends, Gary to clean his bicycle companionably.” This is one of the easier sentences to decode, but verbs are consistently left out of passages that thus become basically incomprehensible. It takes some careful reading of p. 215 to become certain that Jabu aborts her third child. “Stupid not to have gone to the doctor at once. It seemed so unlikely. Or some atavistic hangover. Baba’s women running a gaze as wisdom over a flat stomach: husbands expect sons for their perpetuation ...Abortion is no longer illegal. It is skillfully done by the comrade’s freedom achieved as a gynaecologist” (216). As for the confusing use of phrases, “There used to be a gem that came up from the village her scrambled made with eggs laid by her own hens was fabulous, famous, but that cordon bleu’s on pension now” (179). Style can be useful in creating mood or establishing the mental state of characters, but when it’s used the same way throughout the novel it ultimately becomes annoying, forcing the reader to reread a passage that may have little relevance or importance for her major themes. In addition, Gordimer uses slang and words that are unclear to non-S. Africans, including phrases possibly in isiZulu, and at points the reader is thoroughly perplexed as to what or who is being talked about. By reading rather rapidly one can glean some coherence out of the scattered phrases and foreign words, but in general this is annoying. At the least a brief appendix with some definitions would be helpful. Then there are her own creations/metaphors (such as “gem” to describe a female cook) that make the reader uncertain about her points. When Isa, the wife of Jake who has been brutally hijacked by black migrants, attempts to speak on the drive to the hospital, her language is described as “stunned, stunted” (144), and this is a good description of Gordimer’s style in this book. Generously we could assume that the style reflects the trauma being undergone by the country’s inhabitants, and the confusion of the reader is like the confusion of the citizens, but that diminishes the novel’s “art,” and clearly Gordimer has a message she’s trying to transmit about her country.
Reading the novel is rather a slog, even if some of the characters are interesting. There is some cute writing about the “Dolphins,” which it takes a while to understand are the young gay men who have taken over an abandoned church and created a swimming pool they regularly use. Steve’s gay brother, Alan, also occurs briefly, with parallels between treatment of gays and blacks, Jews (especially in the Holocaust) and blacks, although it isn’t really clear whether Gordimer’s characters (and she herself) see these as essentially different forms of discrimination. At one point it’s claimed that homosexuals have it easier because their whole lives haven’t been determined by the white controllers, but that point is arguable, and isn’t there an important difference between the attitude of Jews, facing imminent extinction in a concentration camp, who develop a certain attitude toward their fate, and the attitude developed by downtrodden blacks in a supposedly free society who have discovered its limits? Philosophy and politics are mixed almost incoherently, as Steve decides at one point to study Epicurus, apparently in an attempt to gain some wisdom from a source other than Marx, while Zuma is running for (and being elected to various important positions) thus causing whites like Steve to consider abandoning political consistency and emigrating to Australia.
Mundane details are a mainstay of this novel, but not details that especially enlighten the reader about the characters or what is happening. When Steven finally decides the family should emigrate to Australia, the reader is given enough detail to be able to personally emigrate. Similarly, the issues around Zuma’s “criminal” behavior and his avoidance of judicial punishment are gone over and over, along with minute details about the upcoming election for the country’s third president, and whether or not Steve and Jabu should still feel involved since they are intending to emigrate. When Jabu and her son Gary Elias return to the patriarchal village we are indulged with isiZulu phrases (not translated) and repetitive statements about how well the son fits in with his black cousins. All the while Jabu is apparently suffering from guilt because her alignment with the white culture has resulted in her success, while her black fellow citizens are starving and living in intolerable circumstances, and she has had to break intellectually with her father, who stolidly supports the rapist Zuma, a fellow tribesman. She even decides to emigrate to Australia thus disconnecting further from her tribal roots, and in fact, separating from tribal roots might be the most rational course for black S. Africans who hope to achieve a workable democracy.
Issues about white/black responsibility for the current situation are one of the themes, but as with any such complex problem, the answer or possible solution is almost impossible to decipher. Similarly, the conflict between Marxist and capitalist ideas is a central theme, but it is also one that doesn’t achieve any clear closure. It is as if Gordimer still thinks a clear answer should be able to be achieved, much as a traditionalist or even a Marxist or capitalist would assume--one clear way to the future, one right way, one inevitable way. But none of this occurs in the reality of S. Africa’s post-apartheid transformation. Ideals give way to greed and self-interest, because with freedom there is no obligation to be concerned about your fellow citizens, as even the comrades have learned when none of them came to the aid of Jake after his attack, and only the bisexual Marc provided care.
The future will require that each individual balance personal with political/social needs, deciding in specific circumstances which end of the spectrum to follow. Traditions, social norms and political goals will change or be abandoned in the new S. Africa, hard as it may be for those experiencing the transition. Gordimer does not provide any vision of the country’s future but instead shows how idealistic goals and achievements can become lost when freedom is interpreted to mean placing self-interest above social responsibility. Whether ordinary citizens who feel such responsibility can make any difference in a chaotic, politically and economically corrupt country is the great unanswered question in Gordimer’s novel.
April 11, 2017
Wonderfully insightful and VERY real..
April 26, 2020
I struggled with the writing style, the first 150 pages where difficult to get through! However, the plot and the combination of the political and personal spheres made up for it in the end.
June 9, 2013
Steve und Jabulile sind ein junges Akademikerpaar aus Johannesburg. Als Sohn einer jüdischen Mutter und eines nichtreligiösen Vaters stellt Steve eine Art kulturellen Mischling dar. Jabus Vater dagegen ist als Schulrektor und Gemeindeältester einer Methodistengemeine in der Provinz Kwa Zulu fest in seiner Gemeinde verankert. Jabu ging mit 17 ans Lehrerseminar in Swaziland, die winzige Enklave grenzt an Kwa Zulu. Inzwischen hat sie zusätzlich ein Jurastudium abgeschlossen und ist Mutter einer kleinen Tochter, Sendiswa. "Baba", Jabus Vater, hat seine kluge Tochter bewusst und zu Lasten ihrer Brüder gefördert. Seit den Zeiten des Anti-Apartheids-Kampfes sieht das Paar sich als ehemalige Kampfgenossen. Beide sind sich stets bewusst, dass Jabus berufliche Position und eine Ehe zwischen Schwarz und Weiß in der jungen Demokratie Pioniertaten sind. Die Alltagssorgen der jungen Familie unterscheiden sich kaum von denen junger Eltern in anderen Ländern. Wie lässt sich der Beruf (der Mutter!) mit der Kinderbetreuung vereinbaren, wie viel Einmischung der Großeltern in die Beziehung wollen die beiden zulassen, wer will eigentlich ein zweites Kind, Steve, Jabu oder die Großfamilie in Kwa Zulu? Durch ihren Umzug in eine neue Nachbarschaft werden Steve und Jabu mit dem Strom von Flüchtlingen aus Zimbabwe und dem Kongo konfrontiert, die unter unmenschlichen Bedingungen hausen und Arbeit suchen. Die Zuwanderung hat zu offener Fremdenfeindlichkeit von Schwarzen gegenüber Schwarzen geführt, der die südafrikanische Regierung hilflos gegenübersteht.
Die Beziehung zwischen Steve und Jabu spiegelt im Kleinen die aktuellen Probleme Südafrikas. Steve, der von seiner eigenen Kultur wenig zu vermitteln hat, erlebt sich am Familientisch in der Minderheit, wenn Mutter und Tochter Zulu miteinander sprechen. Steve versteht kein Zulu. Obwohl die Ehe des Mittelschichtpaars im Laufe der Handlung an die 20 Jahre dauert, zeigt er kaum Interesse an der Kultur seiner Frau. Ein Sohn wird geboren, der als Grundschüler Verhaltensauffälligkeiten zeigt. Jabu wendet sich um Rat an ihren Vater und findet Hilfe in seiner entschiedenen Ansicht, dass Kinder nicht allein geliebt werden sollen, sondern Pflichten brauchen. Gary verbringt zukünftig die Schulferien im großväterlichen Clan und entwickelt sich in einer großen Gruppe von Cousins sehr positiv. Wie wird Steve wohl reagieren, wenn wegen seiner Unentschlossenheit in Erziehungsfragen zukünftig die Werte des Großvaters in seiner Familie dominieren werden? Unterbrochen von einer Reise Steves zu einer Tagung in England mit anschließendem klischeehaften Seitensprung sehen sich die Reeds den Sorgen der weißen Mittelschicht um die Schulkarriere ihrer Kinder gegenüber. Beruflich wird Jabu mit der in Südafrika alltäglichen Gewalt gegen Frauen konfrontiert; auch der Prozess gegen Jacob Zuma (2005) bewegt sie. Jabu muss sich eingestehen, dass die Werte der ehemaligen Freiheitskämpfer des ANC und der Generation ihres Vaters im Kampf gegen Aberglauben und Gewalt offensichtlich untauglich sind. Der Auseinandersetzung mit ihrem Vater, der sich im Lauf der Handlung nicht verändert und stramm zu Zuma steht, weicht Jabu aus.
Für die Leser überraschend wird die Auswanderung nach Australien geplant. Die Ehepartner sind gezwungen, sich realistisch mit ihren Berufsaussichten und neuen Anforderungen auseinanderzusetzen. Der zeitliche Ablauf der Ereignisse ist nicht einfach nachvollziehbar, allein aus dem Alter der Kinder können einige Szenen eingeordnet werden. Nadine Gordimer unterhält ihre Leser einerseits duch die bissige Ironie, mit der sie die Nachkommen der ehemaligen Kolonialmächte schildert, andererseits irritiert ihr erhobener pädagogischer Zeigefinger. Wer bis zum Schluss des Buches durchhält, erfährt zum Ende, was man gern früher gewusst hätte, um die plötzlichen Auswanderungspläne der Reeds zu verstehen.
Nadine Gordimer hat mit "Keine Zeit wie diese" einen aktuellen politischen Roman vorlegen wollen. Sie spricht die drängenden Probleme im Bildungs- und Gesundheitssystem Südafrikas und dem daraus folgenden Exodus der qualifizierten Mittelschicht auch sehr deutlich an. Um Leser weltweit zu erreichen und nicht nur die, die mit den Verhältnissen im Land vertraut sind, hätten die Ereignisse in der Familie Reed und Südafrikas aktuelle Probleme jedoch etwas gefälliger miteinander verknüpft sein dürfen.
Die Beziehung zwischen Steve und Jabu spiegelt im Kleinen die aktuellen Probleme Südafrikas. Steve, der von seiner eigenen Kultur wenig zu vermitteln hat, erlebt sich am Familientisch in der Minderheit, wenn Mutter und Tochter Zulu miteinander sprechen. Steve versteht kein Zulu. Obwohl die Ehe des Mittelschichtpaars im Laufe der Handlung an die 20 Jahre dauert, zeigt er kaum Interesse an der Kultur seiner Frau. Ein Sohn wird geboren, der als Grundschüler Verhaltensauffälligkeiten zeigt. Jabu wendet sich um Rat an ihren Vater und findet Hilfe in seiner entschiedenen Ansicht, dass Kinder nicht allein geliebt werden sollen, sondern Pflichten brauchen. Gary verbringt zukünftig die Schulferien im großväterlichen Clan und entwickelt sich in einer großen Gruppe von Cousins sehr positiv. Wie wird Steve wohl reagieren, wenn wegen seiner Unentschlossenheit in Erziehungsfragen zukünftig die Werte des Großvaters in seiner Familie dominieren werden? Unterbrochen von einer Reise Steves zu einer Tagung in England mit anschließendem klischeehaften Seitensprung sehen sich die Reeds den Sorgen der weißen Mittelschicht um die Schulkarriere ihrer Kinder gegenüber. Beruflich wird Jabu mit der in Südafrika alltäglichen Gewalt gegen Frauen konfrontiert; auch der Prozess gegen Jacob Zuma (2005) bewegt sie. Jabu muss sich eingestehen, dass die Werte der ehemaligen Freiheitskämpfer des ANC und der Generation ihres Vaters im Kampf gegen Aberglauben und Gewalt offensichtlich untauglich sind. Der Auseinandersetzung mit ihrem Vater, der sich im Lauf der Handlung nicht verändert und stramm zu Zuma steht, weicht Jabu aus.
Für die Leser überraschend wird die Auswanderung nach Australien geplant. Die Ehepartner sind gezwungen, sich realistisch mit ihren Berufsaussichten und neuen Anforderungen auseinanderzusetzen. Der zeitliche Ablauf der Ereignisse ist nicht einfach nachvollziehbar, allein aus dem Alter der Kinder können einige Szenen eingeordnet werden. Nadine Gordimer unterhält ihre Leser einerseits duch die bissige Ironie, mit der sie die Nachkommen der ehemaligen Kolonialmächte schildert, andererseits irritiert ihr erhobener pädagogischer Zeigefinger. Wer bis zum Schluss des Buches durchhält, erfährt zum Ende, was man gern früher gewusst hätte, um die plötzlichen Auswanderungspläne der Reeds zu verstehen.
Nadine Gordimer hat mit "Keine Zeit wie diese" einen aktuellen politischen Roman vorlegen wollen. Sie spricht die drängenden Probleme im Bildungs- und Gesundheitssystem Südafrikas und dem daraus folgenden Exodus der qualifizierten Mittelschicht auch sehr deutlich an. Um Leser weltweit zu erreichen und nicht nur die, die mit den Verhältnissen im Land vertraut sind, hätten die Ereignisse in der Familie Reed und Südafrikas aktuelle Probleme jedoch etwas gefälliger miteinander verknüpft sein dürfen.
November 2, 2013
He is white and she is black. They were comrades and then lovers and then married (illegal in South Africa) and then parents of a little girl. At the home of another 'comrade', "They're all young but it's as if they are old men living in the past, there everything happened. Their experience of life defined: now is everything after. Detention cells, the anecdotes fromo camp in Angola, the misunderstanding with the Cubans who came - so determinately, idealistically brave - to support this Struggle at the risk of their own lives, the clash of personalities, personal habits in the isolation of acadres, all contained by comradeship of danger, the presence of death eavesdropping always close by in the desert, the bush."
And now? In South Africa what can take place in the life of this small family in the new democracy with the new political leaders with the old antipathies just as real?
Gordimer's writing style is very terse and repetitive and initially annoying. Eventually I found myself skimming the repetitive bits. It was if she had to remind you why some event was more significant to one of the main characters by reminding you again that they had been part of The Struggle against apartheid. I think it is worth reading because in the end it is about ordinary, real, not perfect life and how we approach it in our thoughts and do or don't respond with action.
And now? In South Africa what can take place in the life of this small family in the new democracy with the new political leaders with the old antipathies just as real?
Gordimer's writing style is very terse and repetitive and initially annoying. Eventually I found myself skimming the repetitive bits. It was if she had to remind you why some event was more significant to one of the main characters by reminding you again that they had been part of The Struggle against apartheid. I think it is worth reading because in the end it is about ordinary, real, not perfect life and how we approach it in our thoughts and do or don't respond with action.
March 1, 2021
Esta novela me gustó mucho. Es interesante y al mismo tiempo triste ver cómo hay tanta diferencia entre blancos y negros. Cómo llega otra generación, una mixta, ya que algunos se atrevieron a cruzar las barreras de color y casarse. Incluso cuando estába prohibido y se tenían que esconder.
Ella fue profesora y estudio para ser abogada. Su padre, al contrario de las comstumbres, cedio el turno de su hermano menor a ella, ya que es normal que el hombre tenga el privilegio a ir primero. Es muy independiente pero siempre seguirá a su marido. Está en su ser.
Él es un joven blanco cuya filiación política hace que se ausente por un tiempo de la universidad. Trabajaba de pintor para engañar de que podía crear bombas potentes.
Los dos ignorando las consecuencias se enamoraron y se casaron.
Te narra la vida política a través de estos esposos mixtos, de Sudáfrica. A mí gusto te cuenta mucha política y poca trama. Tratan temas sensibles en pocas páginas y después se olvidan de él, como que aquí no ha pasado nada. Aunque esto no me dejó tan mal sabor de boca.
Siempre te interesa saber cómo sigue.
Ella fue profesora y estudio para ser abogada. Su padre, al contrario de las comstumbres, cedio el turno de su hermano menor a ella, ya que es normal que el hombre tenga el privilegio a ir primero. Es muy independiente pero siempre seguirá a su marido. Está en su ser.
Él es un joven blanco cuya filiación política hace que se ausente por un tiempo de la universidad. Trabajaba de pintor para engañar de que podía crear bombas potentes.
Los dos ignorando las consecuencias se enamoraron y se casaron.
Te narra la vida política a través de estos esposos mixtos, de Sudáfrica. A mí gusto te cuenta mucha política y poca trama. Tratan temas sensibles en pocas páginas y después se olvidan de él, como que aquí no ha pasado nada. Aunque esto no me dejó tan mal sabor de boca.
Siempre te interesa saber cómo sigue.
September 21, 2012
A novel of post-post-Apartheid South Africa, in the sense that Mandela’s presidency has passed and the setting illustrates the issues of tribalism, corrruption, and how to continue to work for the once-shared dream in the new reality. A suburban bohemian neighborhood of former freedom fighters who had suffered prison and other hardships of the struggle, both Black and white, which also includes the Dolphins (with the swimming pool used by all and a gathering place), a household of gay men (one of whom falls in love with and marries a woman). The tone is odd, third person detached, and yet as impressionistic detail is added to impressionistic detail, as the difficulties of building a present out of a colonialist past, I was won over. The narrative concerns a couple -- she of zulu family and he of white -- and their children and the months leading up to their planned emigration to Australia.
March 6, 2013
an epic novel of modern south africa centering on a yuppy couple (woman=zulu/man=white[english also jewish]) their growing family, changing careers, politics, poverty, living conditions, gays, immigrating (the couple eventually does immigrate to austrailia) , education systems both succesful and failing ones, infidelities, and of course apratheids long lasting consequenses. if you only read one novel to get your history of south africa this would be a good one.
that all said, man o man is it hard to read. layered more thickly than the most delicate pastry and runs the gamut of tastes from firey to salty, sweet, savory, disgusting to ambrosia. and at times reader is confused who is talking, what is going on. my advice: just keep going, author will straighten you out in the end. author gordimer is a most fitting winner of nobel prize.
that all said, man o man is it hard to read. layered more thickly than the most delicate pastry and runs the gamut of tastes from firey to salty, sweet, savory, disgusting to ambrosia. and at times reader is confused who is talking, what is going on. my advice: just keep going, author will straighten you out in the end. author gordimer is a most fitting winner of nobel prize.
July 23, 2012
I really like this author and feel I should have enjoyed this book more but it was a little boring and also hard to physically read. I felt very aware of reading each sentence, no flow. I was not invested emotionally in any of her characters and it felt surface glancing evidence by the fact I had to keep reminding myself who was who. It was long and I did not like the cover, but I was curious enough to see both her story develop and end to slog through. I did not expect the ending and appreciated how she just
Dropped it.
January 7, 2013
I thought I would be super interested in a novel by Gordimer analyzing
today's South Africa, but I found the book quite hard to read. It was more like an essay than a novel and the characters did not feel like human beings. I think this novel is an interesting analysis of the political corruption and the disappointment of the freedom fighters, but it did not feel like fiction.
Suomeksi kirjoitin kirjasta Café Voltaire -blogiin: http://avaincafevoltaire.blogspot.com...
today's South Africa, but I found the book quite hard to read. It was more like an essay than a novel and the characters did not feel like human beings. I think this novel is an interesting analysis of the political corruption and the disappointment of the freedom fighters, but it did not feel like fiction.
Suomeksi kirjoitin kirjasta Café Voltaire -blogiin: http://avaincafevoltaire.blogspot.com...
February 10, 2022
Una pena que siendo un tema que me interesa muchísimo, me haya aburrido tantísimo. Muy repetitivo, pesado, sin emoción, puramente descriptivo. He estado tentada de abandonarlo pero finalmente he optado por una lectura horizontal pasando tramos políticos infumables.
Ojalá hubiese estado escrito de una forma más amena para llegar más al corazón de los lectores que queremos comprender lo que dejó en herencia el Apartheid. Una pena.
Ojalá hubiese estado escrito de una forma más amena para llegar más al corazón de los lectores que queremos comprender lo que dejó en herencia el Apartheid. Una pena.
March 26, 2022
Interesante en su forma y en su fondo. Un relato que describe Sudáfrica tras el apartheid a través de las vidas de una familia (él blanco, ella negra, ambos activistas en su juventud y ahora en una clase media relativamente acomodada) y sus parientes y amigos cercanos. Con una forma de narrar original aunque algo caótica, transmite la esencia del día a día en el país y el pulso político y social del momento de una forma muy eficaz.
December 4, 2012
I like Nadine Gordimer, usually. Maybe it's just my current frame of mind, but I struggled through 60 pages of this and finally gave up. I felt like I kept waiting for whatever was going to "happen" to happen. Gordimer is never an easy read, but usually worth it. Maybe I will try this one again another time.
December 27, 2012
I found this book to be a real slog, and had I not been to South Africa twice, I'd not have stuck with it. Chosen for a book lecture that I attend, it was a book which was more politically driven than character driven. The "action" was the politics of the country; and while I enjoyed the lesson in South African politics, I would not recommend the book to a friend.
November 20, 2016
Nadine Gordimers kluge politische und soziologische Analyse des heutigen Südafrika verdient allen Respekt und macht dieses Buch zu einer lohnenden Lektüre, die reichlich Erkenntnisgewinn verschafft. Herz und Seele kommen hier allerdings etwas zu kurz.
Meine ausführliche Rezension:
https://buchuhu.wordpress.com/2016/11...
Meine ausführliche Rezension:
https://buchuhu.wordpress.com/2016/11...
November 6, 2014
I read this book because the story tells about people and situations, in a decade in recent South-African history that I want to know more about. I read the book from cover to cover because it really tells a good story. But the style was downright disappointing. As if it wasn't edited, sometimes just jotted down and never looked at again.
April 17, 2012
Fascinating current account of life and decisions in South Africa. Writing style was a little difficult for me but like many other books this rich (Wolf Hall come to mind), worth the effort.
So pleased "I met" Nadine Gordimer as well.
So pleased "I met" Nadine Gordimer as well.
July 7, 2015
I thought the characters and story were captivating, but felt the same as other reviews in that I could not get into the writing style. I appreciated it, but couldn't get lost in the story because of it.
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