None to Accompany Me (Magill Book Reviews)

Nadine Gordimer’s latest novel of South African political life explores once again relations between politics and the way people conduct their personal lives. Set in the period between the release of Nelson Mandela and the elections that made him South Africa’s president, it parallels two families, the Starks and the Maqomas. Vera Stark, the novel’s central character, is a lawyer for the Legal Foundation, and her success in settling black Africans’ land claims leads to a seat on the important Technical Committee on Constitutional Issues. For her, politics is like art—transcendent—leading to estrangement from her husband, Ben; her lesbian daughter, Annie; and her son, Ivan. Two arresting images, one of Vera dancing alone in an empty house, the other of her gazing into the cold, clear night sky, emphasize the existential isolation she chooses.

Sibongile Maqoma’s rise to political prominence is even more spectacular than Vera’s, but she remains with her husband, Didymus, in spite of the strains caused by his political eclipse and her rise.

Around these parallel stories, Gordimer weaves the complex, shifting, volatile political fabric of South Africa’s perilous state: terrorist violence by both whites and blacks, crime, competing land claims and the dangers they entail, and the country’s pervasive racial tensions. The most compelling of these are the pictures of the country’s acute housing shortage—the ramshackle villages, overcrowded apartments, and suburban neighborhoods shifting from white to black ownership. Gordimer harbors no illusions about the political and social differences facing the new government. If anything, the personal stories emphasize how complex these problems are, how difficult it is and will be for the new government to keep peace and pursue justice.

In style and form, the novel has the energetic, almost chaotic, fluidity of the situation it describes. There is hardly an aspect of life, from teenage rebellion to nursing the aged, that Gordimer does not touch upon; unifying these elements is her technical triumph. The tension between that unity and her nervous, restless style reinforces the novel’s depiction of this fragile moment in South Africa’s politics and people.

Sources for Further Study

The Atlantic. CCLXXIV, October, 1994, p. 131.

Booklist. XC, August, 1994, p. 1989.

Chicago Tribune. September 25, 1994, XIV, p. 1.

Library Journal. CXIX, August, 1994, p. 128.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. September 18, 1994, p. 3.

The New Republic. CCXI, October 24, 1994, p. 34.

New Statesman and Society. VII, September 16, 1994, p. 38.

The New York Times Book Review. XCIX, September 25, 1994, p. 7.

Publishers Weekly. CCXLI, July 11, 1994, p. 61.

The Times Literary Supplement. September 9, 1994, p. 20.