The House Gun (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Nadine Gordimer
- First Published: 1998
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The present
- Setting: South Africa
- Principal Characters: Claudia Lingard, Harald Lingard, Duncan Lingard, Hamilton Motsamai, Carl Jespersen, Natalie James
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Parents and children, Gay men, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Love or romance, Suicide, Murder or homicide, Violence, Guns, Shooting
- Locales: South Africa
“This is not a detective story” says the narrator of Nadine Gordimer’s latest novel. If by that she means that The House Gun is not a conventional “whodunit,” she is correct, but in a deeper sense, the book is indeed a detective novel. The question, however, is not who committed the crime; readers know almost from the first page of the novel that Duncan Lingard shot and killed his roommate and former lover, Carl Jespersen. What readers do not know, and what Duncan’s parents cannot comprehend, is how a young man of Duncan’s upbringing and constitution could possibly...
[The entire page is 1727 words long]
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