Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Gordimer, Nadine (Vol. 17) - John Edgar Wideman (essay date 1991)

Gordimer, Nadine (Vol. 17) - John Edgar Wideman (essay date 1991)

John Edgar Wideman (essay date 1991)

SOURCE: "So Much Is Always at Stake," in The New York Times Book Review, September 29, 1991, p. 7.

[In the following favorable review of Jump, and Other Stories, Wideman commends Gordimer's eloquent, realistic portrayals of interpersonal relationships amidst the turbulent socio-political conditions in South Africa.]

Nadine Gordimer's best writing keeps us aware it is being written, even when it fades to a kind of pulse or background music in the imagined world that absorbs us. What is described becomes real, but also more—and less—than real.

Four shapes come forward along the beams; and stop. He stops. Motes of dust, scraps of leaf and bark knocked off the vegetation float blurring the beams surrounding four lionesses who stand, not ten yards away. Their eyes are wide, now, gem-yellow, expanded by the glare they face, and never blink. Their jaws hang open and their heads...

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