THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 13, 1994 TAG: 9411080535
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY MELISSA DUCKWORTH
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
NONE TO ACCOMPANY ME
NADINE GORDIMER
Farrar Straus & Giroux. 324 pp. $22.
None to Accompany Me, Nadine Gordimer's most recent novel in a career that has spanned more than 40 years, provides glimpses of life, both personal and political, in the new post-revolutionary South Africa.
Gordimer has long been a proponent of change in her country, showing her liberal roots in early works and moving into more radical thought in later novels. Her latest reflects the shift to a black majority-led South Africa, while also examining the personal impact of lives given, figuratively and literally, for the anti-apartheid cause.
Vera Stark is a white lawyer for the Legal Foundation, an organization dedicated to retrieving land that has been illegally taken and finding legal loopholes to stop actions against blacks. Her white husband, Bennet, once a sculptor and now a market consultant, gives up many aspects of his life for her, only to discover that she never wanted that kind of commitment: ``He saw that Vera never ever really wanted a husband - only for a time, when it excited her to have her lover domesticated. . . ''
Vera's inability to commit emotionally to other people is reflected in her extramarital affairs - the first with Bennet while she was in a short-lived first marriage (her husband off at war, she vacationed with her lover), and the second, after her marriage to Bennet, with a younger man, a journalist with whom she shared sex and confidences.
Vera's children also suffer from their mother's moral restlessness. Her son Ivan, the product of a dalliance with her first husband that occurred while she was divorcing him, is himself divorced, with a son he finds difficult to relate to. Vera's daughter Annick is a failure at commitment, but only in her father's eyes: She has a strong relationship in the framework of a lesbian marriage.
Besides Vera's story, Gordimer carefully weaves in a subplot involving the intricate relationship between Didymus and Sibongile Maqoma, a black couple from the leadership class. Gordimer handles this subtle relationship, of shifting power and respect, with great skill.
None to Accompany Me can most accurately be described, in all of its political settings, as a woman's search for self. Vera spends much of the novel isolating herself from others, either intentionally or accidentally, but by the end of the book it is clear that she is not purposely being cold. She is simply a woman in her 60s, with children she has reared and a husband for whom she lacks feeling. She seeks to redefine herself in her new developing country, and like many who seek control and identity, she has no one to accompany her on her search.
Vera's struggle should endear her to us, but it does not. Instead we find her difficult to relate to. Gordimer's characters are usually rich and beautifully rendered. Although she rarely gives physical descriptions of her characters, we always have a sense of who they are. But Vera is a different sort of heroine, enigmatic and troubled.
Those who have delighted in many of Gordimer's recent works, including Burger's Daughter, A Sport of Nature and My Son's Story, are likely to come away from this novel feeling disappointed. Unlike her other works, None to Accompany Me contains few striking truths or stirring moments. It is also among her most difficult to read, containing unusual phrasing that requires rereading.
During an interview after she received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, Gordimer was asked if she would be like most winners and never write anything good again. She replied that she intended to be like Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who wrote his best work (Love in the Time of Cholera) after winning the Nobel. Unfortunately, None to Accompany Me is not it. MEMO: Melissa Duckworth is a high school English teacher in Hampton and a
graduate student in literature at Old Dominion University. Her thesis is
on Nadine Gordimer. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Gordimer
by CNB