Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Special Commissioned Essay on The Lying Days by Nadine Gordimer, Judith Newman - Critical Response To The Lying Days

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CRITICAL RESPONSE TO THE LYING DAYS

CRITICAL SUMMARY

The Lying Days has attracted much critical attention, but, unusually perhaps for a South African novel, remains readily accessible to the general reader. Much of the richness of the novel depends upon the intensity of its evocation of a now lost South Africa, in its striking imagery, metaphors, and style. This is a novel in which the capture of atmosphere, from the dry, restrictive environment of the colonial compound, to the lyrical evocation of the seascape at the coast, and the muted unease and evasions of the city, has been generally considered to be a major fictional achievement. As a bildungsroman, tracing the development of a young girl towards maturity, it also has a continual appeal to readers quite apart from its South African setting.

That setting is nonetheless a major focus for critics, for the action of Gordimer's novel takes place at a critical moment in South African...

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1. Introduction
2. Essay: Introduction
3. Themes In The Lying Days
4. Critical Response To The Lying Days
5. The Lying Days In History
6. The Lying Days As Studied
7. Further Reading
8. Copyright

1. Nadine Gordimer