Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Gordimer, Nadine (Vol. 123) - Michael Wood (review date 1 December 1994)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

Michael Wood (review date 1 December 1994)

SOURCE: "Free of the Bad Old World," in New York Review of Books, Vol. XLI, No. 20, December 1, 1994, pp. 12-3.

[In the following review, Wood concentrates on characterization in None to Accompany Me, detecting autobiographical impulses in the narrative.]

Prisons have opened, exiles have returned, the notion of apartheid is in ruins. Blacks have moved into white suburbs, a new constitution is being drafted, the old opposition is practicing for new habits of rule. But there are hit lists, muggings, murders; violent rearguard actions; there is a housing shortage, there are land disputes, squatters risking their lives to reverse old patterns of settlement. There are unheeded warnings that corruption doesn't vanish easily, and isn't a respecter of race or class or political and tribal boundaries. This is the last year of the old South Africa, or as Nadine Gordimer puts it in her new novel...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Charles Poore (review date 8 May 1965)
   2. Adrian Mitchell (review date 23 May 1965)
   3. The Times Literary Supplement (review date 22 July 1965)
   4. Patrick Cruttwell (review date Autumn 1965)
   5. Gail Godwin (review date April 1976)
   6. George Kearns (review date Winter 1984–85)
   7. Sylvia Clayton (review date 15-18 April 1984)
   8. Judie Newman (essay date 1985)
   9. Dick Roraback (review date 6 October 1991)
   10. John Bayley (review date 5 December 1991)
   11. Barbara J. Eckstein (essay date Winter 1992)
   12. Nadine Gordimer with Claudia Dreifus (interview date January 1992)
   13. Thomas Knipp (essay date Spring 1993)
   14. Graham Huggan (essay date Winter 1994)
   15. Rosemary Dinnage (review date 9 September 1994)
   16. Richard Eder (review date 18 September 1994)
   17. Richard Bausch (review date 25 September 1994)
   18. Michael Wood (review date 1 December 1994)
   19. Jeremy Harding (review date 12 January 1995)
   20. Philip Graham (review date 5 November 1995)
   21. Nancy Topping Bazin (essay date 1995)
   22. Edith Milton (review date June 1996)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Nadine Gordimer