None to Accompany Me

by Nadine Gordimer

The Nobel Prize-winning author tells the emotional story of two couples, one black and one white, whose complex relationships evolve as they face the hazards and hopes of post-apartheid South Africa. Reprint.

Genres: Fiction, Africa, Nobel Prize, South Africa, Literary Fiction, African Literature, Literature

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Nadine 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.

Reviews

[Emilio Berra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una donna prdente
**1/2 (assegnate e arrotondate per affetto verso la Gordimer)
Nadine Gordimer (Premio Nobel) era fra i niei autori preferiti. "Era" , perché questo libro mi ha deluso. Come siamo lontani dal bellissimo "Storia di mio figlio" !

Ambientato nel Sud-Africa, poco prima delle elezioni che portarono Nelson Mandela al potere. Un momento di grandi cambiamenti : dall'esilio tornano persone fuggite dal Paese tempo prima in quanto invise alle autorità per le loro lotte a favore dei neri. Tra queste, una coppia 'di colore' sulla mezza età che ora si ritrova, dopo vent'anni, a riprendere contatti di amicizia con una coppia coetanea di bianchi.
La figura femminile di quest'ultima m'è parsa quasi la protagonista del romanzo, pur in una coralità di personaggi. Vera Stark, appunto, è delineata come una donna istruita che da molto vive con un compagno. Superficialità e curiosità sessuale la inducono però ad una relazione clandestina provocando ripercussioni familiari impreviste.

Letto con grande noia, trascinato avanti faticosamente, mi è sembrato un romanzo troppo 'rosa' e poco convincente, di scarso spessore. Solo in alcuni momenti ho colto tratti di autenticità e fuori dagli stereotipi (Vera stessa che percepisce la solitudine che le toccherà ; la signora di colore tornata dall'esilio che pretende un trattamento di riguardo).
Per non mollarlo e basta l'ho terminato con una 'lettura verticale' .

[robin friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Walking That Lonesome Valley

An old American gospel song teaches that "You got to walk that lonesome valley/Well, you gotta go by yourself/Well there ain't nobody else going to go there for you/You gotta go there by yourself."

I was reminded of this much-loved song in reading Nadine Gordimer's much more complex and possibly heartbreaking exploration of this theme in her aptly title novel, "None to Accompany Me". Gordimer (1923 -- 2014) was a South African author who wrote about the evils of apartheid, among other themes, and who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, three years before the publication of this novel. This book was my first exposure to her work.

"None to accompany me" is a challenging difficult work written during South Africa's time of transition. Gordimer's novel explores the brutality of the old South African regime and the difficulties in ending apartheid and racism without a bloodbath. I learned a great deal from her portrayal of these difficult times.

Gordimer combines her story of political transition with a much more personal tale, a bildungsroman, of her main character, a white woman named Vera Stark. Vera is a lawyer who works for the equivalent of a public interest law firm that helps black people secure the land in South Africa that rightfully belongs to them. The firm is loosely connected to the broader Movement to end apartheid. Vera had been married when young and carried on an affair when her husband served in the military during WW II. She divorced her husband to marry her lover Ben, a sculptor and an academic. Ben gave up his artistic and intellectual goals to devote himself to Vera. For her part, Vera devoted herself to her career and to her adulterous love affairs rather than to Ben and the two children.

The political and the personal aspects of the novel are awkwardly woven together. Both South Africa and Vera are in times of transition which, the book suggests, they must resolve for themselves.

I had a mixed response to this novel, but it ultimately left me dissatisfied. The strenghts of this book include the political story together with its character development, particularly of Vera. The author shows insight into the interrelationships of the many people in the novel. She explores a welter of themes with a focus on contemporary women, including career and family and their relationship, and sexuality. There is a tendency in Vera to look skeptically at monogamous man-woman marriage and to look instead at alternative forms of personal life, including lesbianism and independence, which might involve many sexual partners or, ultimately, might involve none. As Vera observes late in the novel, "[e]veryone ends up moving alone towards the self."

The book makes for slow reading, with lengthy many-claused and often involuted sentences and paragraphs. Some of the writing effectively mirrors the complexity of the story and of the themes of the book. In other places the writing bogs down. I found it hard to stay with the book.

In the end, a novel even with difficult themes should be a pleasure to read, and in that sense this book failed. It moved slowly and did not fully reward the attention it demanded. In addition, I found Vera an unsympathetic character on the whole and thought that my response to her was not the response the author intended to convey. Vera's life and the development of her reflections on her life seemed to me atomistic. Her walk of the lonesome valley led to loneliness and unhappiness for herself and others. Her response to gender related issues of modern life left me unconvinced and with sadness.

"None to accompany me" is a provocative, thoughtful book in many ways. I felt the need to explore my own lonesome valley, and it is not the valley of this book.

Robin Friedman

[Cheryl]

After 50 pages in, I just could not finish.

[Gauss74 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peccato, perchè l'idea era buona ed il potenziale c'era (del resto, come potrebbe essere diversamente in un premio nobel?): Nadine Gordimer si presenta uscendo dall' ormai mitica pila di libri da bancarella dell'Ottobre 2015 parlando ancora del suo amato Sud Africa e della sua tormentosa uscita dall' Apartheid, a mio avviso una delle vittorie più gloriose dell'umanità del ventesimo secolo. Lo fa con uno spietato ritratto di quel finto senso di colpa che coglie i membri delle classi colonizzatrici facendoli sentire oh così buoni.
La protagonista Vera ha tutto per potersi considerare una vera eroina dell'emancipazione dall' Apartheid: bianca, ricca, aggressiva, avvocato in carriera, sceglie di dedicare tutta la sua vita pubblica alla causa della lotta dei neri contro la segregazione razziale ed alla tutela in sede legale dei loro pochi e fragili diritti. Tutte balle. Vera non fa altro che giocare con se stessa, gode e si compiace della sua immagine di eroina, ed il suo modo di trattare i suoi clienti tradisce continuamente un insopportabile narcisismo. Agisce come agisce non per ideali, ma perchè le piace sentirsi buona.
Parallelamente alla non sempre trasparente vita pubblica, la vita privata della protagonista ci restituisce l'immagine di una turpe baldracca, quali possono esistere solo nei racconti da ristorante di camionisti ( se ne conoscete indicatemeli che di solito ci si mangia benissimo). Questa qui ancora minorenne resta in cinta di un soldato che parte in guerra, mentre il suo compagno è lontano si fa un amante, molla il primo marito fottendogli anche la casa, solo che nel frattempo tradisce anche il secondo facendo un figlio con il primo, e via così. Il tutto condito da struggimenti ed incertezze realistici come una soap opera, che tentano di delineare il ritratto di una donna che, incapace di subordinare le proprie pulsioni a quelle di chi le sta vicino, inevitabilmente resta sola.
Tanta stronzaggine onestamente mi pareva inutile: la storia dell'avvocato della minoranza bianca in lotta per i diritti dei neri mi sembrava interessante di per sé, di per se ne poteva nascere davvero un grande personaggio a tutto tondo. Ho dovuto tenere il romanzo a decantare nella mia testa per un mese per fare l'ipotesi che forse esiste un parallelismo: tra la disordinata vita sentimentale di Vera che distribuisce sofferenze ad amanti e figli e la doppiezza della carriera politica della stessa. Mah. In ogni caso la storia finisce come deve: la persona che tutta se stessa ha dato agli altri ed alla loro liberazione, per averlo fatto solo in nome di sé alla fine resta sola comunque.
Ulteriore nota negativa la scrittura: grassa, ridondante, inutilmente ed inefficacemente prolissa. Non ho letto altri romanzi della Gordimer e non credo che lo farò, ma di certo l'introspezione psicologica non è nelle corde della scrittrice sudafricana, che appena comincia a parlare di sentimenti e riflessioni vede la sua prosa ingarbugliarsi come un gomitolo. Il paragone con John Steinbeck se sintetizza un libro con una parola sola è impietoso. Peccato davvero, perchè una analisi psicologica di cosa spinga un membro della minoranza dominante a lottare per i diritti della maggioranza dominata (ce ne sono stati tanti), sarebbe stato davvero importante.
Rimane di "Nessuno al mio fianco" la fotografia del grande Sudafrica nel suo faticoso ma glorioso passaggio all'unità, alla democrazia. Nadine Gordimer ce la consegna vivace ed intensa, senza facili effetti epici (Nelson Mandela non viene mai nominato).
Ma non basta.

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gordimer is an incredible writer. She makes ingrown hairs sound poetic. I found the whole solitude of the self theme to be particularly captivating and upsetting. I think perhaps one of the things I loved so much about this book, aside from the writing itself, was the multidimensionality of the characters, to the extent that I could never make up my mind if I even liked any of them.

[Aly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book devastated me in way that no book has for a quite some time.

Gordimer expertly twines together narratives of lies and secrecy in both relational and political domains-- the double lives forced on the characters by their work in opposition to Apartheid bleeds into the duplicity of their intimate relationships. It's a brilliant exploration of the limits of intimacy, and while its themes are grandiose, its style is direct and engaging-- the best of both worlds, a truly readable but still truly great book.

[Vida · Rating 2 out of 5]

This seems like a good book, but I just couldn't get into her style, so I gave up.

[Daphne]

Brilliant. This is a book that lingers in the mind long after you've read the final pages.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nadine Gordimer's 1994 novel, None to Accompany Me, is set in the hinge period between the end of apartheid in South Africa and the turn to black-majority democratic rule. Its protagonist is Vera Stark, a white lawyer who works on land disputes for a nonprofit foundation. Despite the scope of the tale, also examining the experience of black Movement friends framing the new constitution and governmental structure, Vera is the odd key to everything.

The two themes of the novel are power versus justice and sexual dependency versus selfhood. Vera is on the side of justice--she's clear about this--but she is less certain about the possibilities of selfhood absent sexual dependence, i.e., the fulfillment in sex between man and woman. Early in her first marriage, then again in her second marriage, she's drawn to infidelity, but even as she switches men, she longs for a man who doesn't need to put all of himself in her keeping, which is the case with her second husband, Ben. That said, her daughter's lesbianism strikes her as a non-answer at the gut level, and her son's marital uncertainties suggest he's no better at resolving sexual needs than she is.

By contrast, Vera's closest black Movement friends seem a bit more adept at managing their affairs by emphasizing their need for and commitment to power...even to the point of Didymus, a rough player during Apartheid rule, accepting lower political status than that accorded to his wife, Sibongile. Their constrained sexuality is focused on an avid teenage daughter's love interests, and what they want, after the girl is impregnated by a married man, is to shut her down and abort the baby, which would detract from their somewhat puritanical and impersonal political claims.

This is a novel built around brief scenes, more briefly described physical settings and circumstances, and more extensively elaborated exercises in reasoning, quite close reasoning. It has the virtue of skillfully rolling a lifetime into a single narrative, thus achieving, in the end, a sense of persuasive duration. There are so many twists and turns in the text, nuances and second thoughts, that a short novel (relatively) seems like a long one, and some of the surprises at the end unfold quite convincingly without much explicit foreshadowing. Ben and Vera, for example, separate in a casual way: Ben's visit to London to spend time with their son, Ivan, becomes a permanent exile from Vera back in South Africa. They just begin calling one another less often, each assuming the other is now living in a separate world. Meanwhile, Ivan takes up the financial slack, enabling both parents to live modestly but well apart.

One odd feature of this book, which I have never associated with Nadine Gordimer, is how peculiarly and often badly it is written. The text is strewn with weak, clumsy sentences, strange uses of punctuation, and thoughts Gordimer just hasn't sufficiently reflected upon to state clearly. This isn't arty stuff; it's careless stuff; and it hinders the flow of the story, which has a choppy quality to it. I suspect that Nobel Prizes--Gordimer won hers before writing this novel--aren't good for writers, or at the very least, they cause editors to clam up when they should be raising objections.

[Bogdan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This really prepared me for a tougher read later on this year, the Nelson Mandela's Conversations With MyselfConversations with Myself. It helped me immerse into a world torn apart by the radical changes happening in the early 90s. I am equiped now to better understand South Africa.

Analyzing various aspects of the nove, I will start up with the premise. This revolves on the couple relation and on human sexuality, mainly from the main character perspective, which I assume is largely based on author personality. It was an interesting view, but did not contained anything out of ordinary and this is why I will give it a 3.

Regarding the form, I liked the way the early pages help the reader immerse into the atmosphere with a lot of disparate pieces, as in the times they depict. Later on, the story of Vera Stark and her relationships, builds up pretty much linearly. I will give it a 4 for form.

In terms of originality, this was the first novel I read set in the post-apartheid South Africa. I enjoyed learning about the setting, but on the main topic, this was common in many other books. So I will give it a 3 stars at originality.

The characters are one of the best parts from the novel. You can sense real beings behind most of them and this brings a lot of credibility to the entire book. They are extraordinarily sketched, even the ones that do not appear directly, but only in memories of other characters. I cannot rate it lower than a 5.

Regarding the complexity and difficulty, I feel that the author used a lot of personal memories in building this work of fiction. Or maybe it is less a fiction, more a memoir or a kind of memoir embeded with fictional situations. I will rate it with a 3 for complexity and difficulty.

In terms of credibility I felt the terror of living in that country during the 90s. The feelings were also pretty much real. It almost felt like a memoir, but as it is considered a fiction, I will rate it with a 4.

The last criteria is edition. I liked the cover, but the editor did not mentioned from where it is taken. I also liked it is a hardcover that was sold with a reasonable price. But I did not liked too much the paper, that was not of top quality, and there were few spelling errors. Due to all this, I will only rate it with a 3.

To summarize, I enjoyed this novel, but I hoped, based on the reputation of the author and the other novel I have read, to be a little bit better. At least gave me some background information about the setting of another novel I plan to read soon. All in all, my final rating for this novel is 3.57, which I will round to a 4 on Goodreads system.

+--------------------------+-----------------+
| Criteria | Rating |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Premise | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Form | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Originality | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Characters | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Difficulty/Complexity | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Credibility | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Edition | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Total | 3.57 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+

For more details on how I rated and reviewed this novel, please read these guidelines.

[Scott Huff · Rating 2 out of 5]

A novel covering the period of transition in South Africa leading up to the first non-racial election, None to Accompany Me focuses in on the personal life and self-discovery of the protagonist, Vera Stark. Unfortunately, Vera is an incredibly unlikable person with some hallmark narcissistic traits. Making decisions that continually hurt those in her life, I didn’t find much to enjoy in my time with Mrs. Stark. I would have much preferred more focus on the Maqoma’s, a Black family returning from exile and entering the re-invented world of politics. Theirs is a more interesting, relatable, and human tale that is woefully underutilized.

While Vera justifies every selfish decision as being in service of discovering her self, she also expresses rampant homophobia and misogynistic thoughts against her own daughter. All of this, combined with a format of writing where I was never sure which character was speaking, left me supremely unsatisfied with this novel.

[Maralise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow the author managed to create a vibrant and beautiful character-driven novel set in an action-driven time: a revolution, constant unrest and ceaseless violence. She lets nothing take center stage but the characters she so artfully creates. Not a small accomplishment. A Nobel Prize winning author and a white South African woman, the author is new to me. I will be reading more of her.

Favorite quote: "Everyone ends up moving alone towards the self.'

[Will Ansbacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this several years ago and gave up because the subject matter become too minutely political – details of the South African political system just before the ANC took over. But I’m glad I finished it. It’s written with such a taut, elegant style that it is worth reading for that pleasure alone.

[Alexander Theofanidis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I CERTAINLY WON’T BE ACCOMPANYING YOU...

Neither hot nor cold. Essentially, a tepid mess out of season, much like an artichoke that made an early appearance in a boutique vegetable shop, but despite the careful wax coating from the posh greengrocer, it went unsold and spoiled.

Nadine Gordimer tackles the years immediately following the horrific apartheid in South Africa, and - to a lesser extent- the exploration of sexuality, and manages to write a lifeless and tedious novel about a momentous period and the most captivating thing in the world (sex).

Vera divorces her husband because she already has a lover she desires more, but at the last moment, she fucks has sex with him (the husband to be divorced) on the floor and gets pregnant before marrying the lover. She then cheats on the lover (henceforth… “husband”) with a rather unattractive Lebensborn (curse you, eugenicists and your Mengele-like ideals). I suppose we are meant to be shocked by her unconventional behaviour. Yet, a quick scroll through Instagram or OnlyFans, where women (and men) post images that reveal even their pancreas, makes one realise that the world has changed. You yawn at Vera’s “indiscretions,” you look on with condescending tolerance at her exploration of sexuality (another glance at the forums reveals that the world has indeed shifted, and unless you’re featuring at least “ménage à quatre” with dogs, aliens, and minerals, nobody is shocked), and you start to wonder about the fall of the system that kept South Africa in international isolation until the 1990s...

Another pitfall. In the background, distant, relatively muted and smothered, the country changes, while we’re preoccupied with who’s bedding whom, who’s divorcing, who’s keeping the child, who’s been reunited with their biological father, and diving into the Great Barrier Reef of Australia... WHAT AM I EVEN SAYING?!? Generally, we’re experiencing the petty bourgeois leftovers of a mostly white family with some black friends (secondary characters in terms of roles), who, in theory, are “in the movement,” and we’re all terribly anxious about whether they’ll find an affordable home and... GIRL, YA KNOW A FELLA CALLED “MANDELA”? He played a small role in what transpired, I’m not implying anything, but if you’re planning an edit or reissue, maybe you could mention him a bit.

The characters are absolutely and completely beyond salvation fucked a waste of time, utterly pointless, except for Vera, who you want to slap (not for fucking around her sexual liberty but because of her narcissistic disorder), the plot is a lukewarm broth, and honestly, even the cover of the English edition makes you feel borritated (sic).

[Deea · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5*

[G · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sharp-eyed, thickly written consideration of growth and loneliness. The sentences are convoluted, taking abrupt and sometimes grammatically curious right turns. But some delicious phrases: "a girl who had to have lessons to claim a mother tongue"; "The giant sky cracked its knuckles far off in an approaching assault."

What I appreciate most about this novel is what it seemed other reviewers disliked - that Vera is, at the core, selfish, that she is impatient with being someone else's everything. It's not about whether she is a good person or a bad person; as the novel tells us, this isn't about measuring bags of sugar and bags of mealies,* this is about learning who you are, everything you are, and what it costs to do so. And even if the ending scene is one of stark aloneness, half pained, half relieved, there's never any sense of regret, or, as we're told in one quick brilliant paragraph, of looking back like Orpheus.

Also I'm sorry, I love a selfish female character - a later-middle-aged character, no less - who wants to fuck and fight for justice and doesn't want to be lost in someone else's romantic fantasy and puts herself first over even her kids. Who's brave enough to know herself. Not nearly enough of 'em.

Consider the parallels of country. If South Africa, if any place with blood in its soil, which is almost all of them, wants to rebuilt into a better future it has to know what it is and where it came from and what it's done. The characters in None to Accompany Me are sober-eyed about the stakes, rational and practical yet idealistic beyond compare. These revolutionaries tortured spies; they work within the system; no one sits around arguing leftist theory, not even the far-leftists; they're fighting to unite a country where one half despises the other. We see people hurt by chaotic, random crime (robberies, home invasions) that's growing in the aftermath of apartheid, but, and this is important, we also see people hurt by apartheid, by the system working as it was designed. Violence is no less cruel because it comes from a government edict instead of a random car hijacker.

If I have one complaint it's that, despite raising their stakes several times, the novel forgets about Sibongile and Didymus Maqoma by the end. They needed at least one more chapter, but this is very much Vera's story. Disappointing regardless, but especially considering the setting and circumstances.

*Side note: Learned a lot about South Africa reading this, including that mealies refers to corn. I was picturing bags of mealybugs tbh

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book, but the narration style was too distant for my tastes, harder to get lost in it.

[Eric Lotke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is wonderful. It is set in South Africa shortly after the end of Apartheid, when the new government is taking shape. Nelson Mandela is mentioned rarely and only as a marker of time and place; the story isn’t about him or the great shapers of history.

This main character is the wife – with her husbands, children and affairs. But the focus is less her personal story than her work in the community and her efforts to make sense of law, history and injustice where she lives.

What’s so wonderful about it? The community is re-forming after the struggles. People are returning from prison, from exile, and from the long hard work of revolution.

• Two revolutionaries return from exile. One fled because the police were after him. One fled because he was alleged have been an informer and the movement would hold him to account. Are they both heroes? What do you say when you see the alleged snitch in the street? Those allegations were never proven and don’t matter anymore. Now he’s looking for work. What do you do?

• Your service to the movement led to your arrest and incarceration. You served time on Robben Island with dangerous scary robbers and street criminals … where you developed bonds of respect, if not affection. Now you’ve both been released, and your comrade needs a place to stay. What do you do?

Questions like this provide the backbone of the book. They show the complexity of civil society, personal relationships, and change over time. Or to put it differently, Gordimer explores the answers to questions I never even thought to ask.

BTW the main character is a white woman. The characters who fill the community are black, mostly men. What is said, unsaid or implied simply by the demographics of the relationship?

I read other reviews. Some people complain about long complex sentences and confusing dialogue that slips between which character is talking, what is only an internal thought, which character is having it, and what just happened in the room. Complainants say Gordimer needed an editor, or maybe post-Pulitzer she refused to take their suggestions.

Bah! Humbug! Yes, the sentences are long and sometimes confusing. I could read them quickly, get the main idea, and wish they’d been edited for clarity. True enough. But I could also read them slowly, puzzle the pieces into place, and marvel over how much she’d achieved in two short paragraphs. I recommend Door B. This book is wonderful.

Sidebar: I pulled this book from a little free library. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to read it, but there it was. I knew Nadine Gordimer only for July’s People, but I spent time in South Africa both before and after Mandela’s release from prison – so I was curious to learn of the times.

I’m so glad I did. Not because of what I learned of the times but from what I learned that’s timeless. Thank you to whoever gave me the book. Have a nice day.

[Kathryn MacDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ostensibly, None to Accompany Me is a political story, a story of the unraveling of white South Africa and the turmoil that spreads from the black townships, a story toward integration (of a sort), and toward the time when Nelson Mandela will become president (although his name is never mentioned). But, at the heart of the story, is a woman called Vera when she is at home and with friends, Mrs. Stark when she’s in the context of the Foundation. In this way, we see her as lover, mother, wife, friend and as dedicated, driven, compassionate, and fearless.

The trajectory of Vera Spark’s life parallels the militants’ passion during the long period between the official legislation (1991) and the actual creation of the new government. It is during this period of often violent change that the narrative unfolds giving readers an intimate look of the ups and downs of political life as the exiles and prisoners return and the personal toll of shifts and accommodations. We share Vera’s story as we weave through this morass toward change and freedom and the impact on lives.

At one point, on a trip into the townships, she and her black co-worker are shot, she in the leg. Ben, her husband, fears losing her, and says, “I couldn’t live without you.”

"She could not see the violence at the roadside as evidence of her meaning in his [Ben’s] life. She could not share the experience with him on those terms. She was not responsible for his existence, no, no, love does not carry that covenant; no, no, it was not entered into in the mountains [where their affair began], it could not be, not anywhere. What to do with that love. Now she saw what it was about, the sudden irrelevant question, a sort of distress within herself, that came to her from time to time, lately."
Gradually, she comes to a realization (or admission) of what propelled the love affair with Ben and other “indiscretions.” The fallout of that creates a schism between them, as other holes develop between the politicians—old guard and new. In None to Accompany Me we find both personal and social transformation.

Nadine Gordimer (1954-2001), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1991) among many other awards, knows of what she speaks, having been an activist and member of the National African Congress (ANC). Her lyrical—and at times poetical—writing focuses on apartheid and South Africa without a trace of the tract that slips into the stories of lesser writers. Although she takes on a political cause, her stories are literary, giving us fully realized characters that we care about and whose journeys keep us turning pages. None to Accompany Me is prefaced with the words of Bashō: “None to accompany me on this path:/Nightfall in Autumn.” Gordimer takes us through the seasons of a woman as she demystifies South Africa’s political transition from apartheid.

[Irina Moise · Rating 4 out of 5]

O carte care se citeşte cu rapiditate, un stil lejer şi plăcut, o poveste interesantă, presarată cu politică în aşa manieră încât să nu plictisească, despre puterea propriei companii şi despre cum nu putem fi mai apropiați de altcineva decât suntem de noi. Personajul feminin are parte de tulburări din partea țării în ale cărei probleme se implică, din partea dragostei care i se oferă în exces şi căreia nu îi poate răspunde. Personajele masculine nu sunt puternic evidențiate in text şi sunt construite (parerea mea) dupa acelasi tipar, avand rolul de a incadra eroinele naratiunii. Se pune in vedere evolutia problemei discriminării rasiale din Africa de Sud şi sunt prezentate aspectele vietii in zona cu pricina, nu cu mult timp in urma zilelor noastre. As fi preferat ca autoarea sa intre mai puternic în aspectele ce țin de gândurile şi emoțiile personajelor. Am considerat că unele trăiri puteau fi exploatate mai mult.

Totuşi, este o lucrare care merită să primească interes din partea noastră! :)

[Mari Spallone · Rating 5 out of 5]

“His embrace was again a public one, the hug and hard kiss on the mouth from the comrade-husband; his presence before her bounced off the excited glare of her face like the flash of a piece of glass in the sun” (96). Her metaphors are so appropriate to the literal situation she is writing about and the characters involved. She portrays human relationships with such a nuanced comprehension of the way our interiors operate and the ways in which we communicate it takes my breath away: “With him there was no haste in communication; in every encounter between human beings there is a pace set that belongs to them, and that will be taken up in its own rhythm whenever they are together“ (259). Her ability to actually go from the conceptual to the page is astonishing. Plus plot and putting the reader right in the middle of the narrative. The moral compass is explored in a very specific time and setting. Not a breezy read but that’s a plus; it’s interesting and rewarding and satisfying and really makes you think.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't often give five star reviews. I'm rather stingy with those. I wish Goodreads had more than a five star system, for one. I would also have a different rating system for different genres. I might give a four star to an easy read, but it wouldn't equate to a four star for a much heavier subject.

I gave this book five stars because of the author's depth of understanding of the complex situation of post-apartheid South Africa, and of the emotional landscape of her characters that she depicts in this novel. She has a way of reflecting the societal upheavals in the intimate relationships of the main characters. She has a true artist's sense of phrasing. Having said that, I also find the structure of some of her sentences and paragraphs to be grammatically confusing. If there were 10 stars I would subtract a star for that to give this book a rating of nine.

[Tomek Kobyliński · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ciekawa rzecz. Rzecz o transformacji ustrojowej w RPA a także o tym jak prywatne się w jej trakcie się ma. Dzieje się na chwilę przed pierwszymi wolnymi wyborami, gdy już do kraju wrócili dawni emigrancji, gdy tajne organizacje wyszły na powierzchnie. Nagle dawni bohaterowie przestają być potrzebni, nagle to wcale nie Ci najdzielniejsi robią karierę. A w tym wszystkim zwykłe życie. Bardzo fajne studium związków i tego jak to na nie wpływa. Inaczej mówiąc, wszystko to co my w Polsce znamy. Czytanie tej dobrej - ale nie wybitnej - powieści w Polsce jak się nie trudno domyśleć jest wyjątkowo ciekawym doświadczeniem, podobieństwa, różnice, pytanie czemu my nie mamy takiej literatury.

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm giving up after reading 127 pages. I got this book from the library after receiving a cryptic text from a number I didn't recognize asking if I had sent that person this book as a surprise because he/she is really enjoying it. I'm guessing it was a phishing text, but I checked out the book just in case.

Even though the author is a Nobel Prize winner, I can't seem to bond with the characters in the way I prefer. I don't mind admitting that the typeface is hard on my eyes, another motivation for not finishing the book.

The main character is Vera Stark, a lawyer-trained advocate in South Africa after the fall of apartheid.

[Kevin Eigelbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another novel by a Nobel laureate. The protagonist is a white South African who leads a foundation that helps the former victims of apartheid get justice. Most of the action concerns her, but she also has two black friends, husband and wife, whose lives also figure prominently. I found it difficult to catch the rhythms of Gordimer's prose. She uses lots of passive voice and circulatory sentences that I had to reread twice. Reminded me of Henry James in The Golden Bowl, when he would never say in ten words what he could say in one hundred. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading None to Accompany Me, once I had read the first hundred pages or so. I read some sentences that I had to stop and admire.

[Kristianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Research for a novel I'm working on set in a similar time period in South Africa. Reading this was no easy feat as the writing style was lengthy and hard to read at times. But I gained some insight into the political atmosphere and climate during the late 80s, early 90s. I thought Vera was an insightful and fascinating character, although not exactly the kind of character you want to emulate, in terms of her personal life.

Content warning: Mention of political violence, descriptions of sex, and portrayal of lesbian couple

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not much into character studies, so this was a slog for me. I was also disconnected from the main metaphor since sex is such a huge part of Vera's identity. The setting was what drew me to the book, but I didn't feel like it was too consequential to the story. Gordimer definitely has a knack for storytelling (little beats and details prove it), but I just didn't like the book on personal preference.

[Rodolphe Gintz · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'ai beaucoup lu sur ce livre, la réflexion sur l'identité de femme blanche dans une Afrique du Sud au sortir de l'apartheid, sur la lutte politique, sur le chemin personnel.
Tout ceci est vrai et le Nobel de Nadine Gordimer n'est pas usurpé.
Mais je pense que le plus remarquable dans " Personne pour m'accompagner ", ce sont les dialogues ciselés et qui nous placent au coeur des joutes familiales, amoureuses, juridiques ou politiques.

[Line · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was a quite okay book. I never would have picked it up if I hadn't have to read it for class, but I also didn't hate reading it. The only part I hated was these dumbass straights speculating about the one lesbian in the book and making it absolute clear that they were not happy with their daughter "turning gay". Fuck that.

[Donna Flemming · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an exceptionally good book, although not an easy read. Her sentences are unbelievably long, with numerous ideas that make you pause and re-read them. There is a lot going on in this book which takes place right after the apartheid in South Africa - it is well worth a second read through and I don't say that very often!