Customer Reviews

Burger's Daughter

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have probably by now read almost everything Gordimer has written in her long and prolific career. I have defended her writing to those who have only dabbled in one or two works and form opinions. Gordimer's works are much more complex than one can dissect in one reading of a particularly book or in a reading of only one of her books.

Burger's Daughter was surprising, as all of Gordimer's works are. Gordimer has mastered the art of voice and gives her characters complex lives and thoughts without resorting to or relying on cliché or expectation. In Burger's Daughter, the protagonist lives a life that was created for her before she was even born. Her father's political activism created circumstances into which she would be born and in which she would be expected to live, much as royalty is born and expected to follow in the monarchy's traditions.

The book traces Burger's daughter through her literal and figurative explorations to find her own voice, which can be the most difficult thing one can do in life, particularly when overshadowed by the voices of everyone around you. This work is quite subtle and although surprising (only because I am always amazed that someone has such talent for breathing life into a page) it is very typical Gordimer. Well worth the time to read it.

Nadine Gordimer's prose can be difficult to follow at the initial read, but is full of thought-provoking allusions and is a book you will definitely think about for a long time. In this tale, Burger represents the man who was Nelson Mandela's lawyer in apartheid South Africa. Gordimer follows Burger's daughter as she copes with ties to her homeland, the complicated issue of white and black in South Africa, and with both the persecution and expectations she faces because of her name. Highly recommended!

I have found that many women (including my wife) hate this book with a passion. Initially, I also disliked it because the sentences are so long and the plot just plods along aimlessly. However, after living and working in South Africa and understanding the lives of liberation heroes such as Rusty and Hilda Bernstein, I actually have great respect and admiration for this work. "The Conservationist" is still Gordimer's best long fiction. However, this has to be a close second despite its many often-justifiable criticisms.

Just as Barack Hussein Obama glides into the oval office, reading a book like "Burger's Daughter" awakens dulled memories about how just a few decades ago tremendous racial injustice affected so many people for so many wrong reasons.

This is not so much about the story of a person with choice, but about how the privileged can be without choice. In South Africa, a determined doctor named Lionel Burger seeks to fight Apartheid with every ounce of strength he can muster. After numerous arrests, and a few trials, he eventually succumbs to illness delivered by reprehensible conditions of the jail - a home for years of his adult life. With him, he drags down his wife who enlists for his cause. And, while this spirit to fight for the oppressed continues, his son dives into the family's pool and dies a truly unfortunate and unexpected death - leaving an orphan and sibling-less child - Rosa Burger.

Uncle and aunt finish raising Rosa and she continues life in South Africa without life ruining remorse. What we may envision as interminable intolerance by Apartheid dogma which grates every imaginable ethic, Rosa seems not too angered, even in a land where she is rebuffed by others. Instead, she seems happy regardless of the aleatory destiny of her childhood - how a throw of the die has cast upon her a life totally deprived of family. The almost god-like avatar to the "cause", Doctor Burger never realizes that his choice to follow Chinese proverbs can have great ramifications upon his heirs, upon the living, upon the innocents. The Doctor follows Wang Ying-ming's dictate: "To know and not to act is not to know." From this faith of the father, Rosa suffers.

Burger sacrifices much. He gave up everything ". . . to turn his back on the laurels of white society and risk - no, refute outright - reputation, success and personal liberty, in the cause of the black people." What he also gave up what Rosa's freedom.

The book is chopped into three unequal parts. The first is the longest, and deals primarily with Rosa as she is now - the daughter of the white doctor who fought for the black commoner. This portion probably loses many readers as it is long and difficult in certain places. The second, shorter and more pleasant, deals with Rosa experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime vacation when the government allows her to go to Europe under the proviso that she says nothing about the oppression she knows too well. She meets Bernard Chabalier and has a great French affair. Here Rosa is no longer "Burger's daughter." Here she is in love, but not as happy as in Pretoria.

But, in the European trip she meets people who are rebels. She did not ask to meet them, they approached her. Rosa abided by her bargain - she refused an interview and left them without divulgence. But, the big brother of South Africa - BOSS - saw. And, Rosa ends up where her father lived most of his last years. In South Africa, she again is - and realizes that she always was- nothing more to the government than "Burger's daughter" and is thrown into a prison for having publicly met government rebels in another country where such meetings are neither outlawed nor even disdained.

The last two books read much more easily than the first. The love scenes in the second remind me of F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you are able to tread through the first, you will like and maybe love the last. But, getting past that hurdle has been difficult for many and is what delivers many of the poorer reviews on this page.

The book is somewhat outdated, which is surprising in that it was written in 1979. The topics of Red Russia, Trotsky-influenced Socialism, Leninists and more radical ideologies espoused by white well educated people reminds me of Lessing's The Golden Notebook This may alienate some readers. It is a topic that is perhaps too old to young readers.

This is not a self-pitying maudlin narrative. It is an effective account of great injustice by a government which almost blue-printed its oppressive hand from Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four or Hitler's Reich.

Gordimer's style of writing, filled with descriptive writing, layered with both illusions and allusions, and topped off with a coating of metaphors makes reading a delicacy. The main theme in the book was self-identity, which the title, `Burger's Daughter' hints at. A character on a quest to find out who she is was a wonderful way to portray a notion. The theme was clearly presented, as I hoped it would be. The book met my expectations of successful use of descriptive writing, to illustrate the setting, and intricate syntax, to describe the conflict. In my opinion, the novel's biggest strength was its character development. Through the recollection of her past, how she deals with the present, and her hopes and fears for the future, the reader becomes attached to 22 year old Rosa.
~~~ But I must warn you, it is not very filling if you are hungry for information, specifically, details about the government. This is probably its biggest weakness. Nevertheless, it is a great. After reading this, I was left with the positive, yet mysterious thought "Who am I going to let myself become?" I have never read any other books by her, but after this uplifting read, I might just have to read more books by her.

(maggie)

I can't understand the reviewers who have downplayed this book. I think maybe they should stick to the thrillers and bodice-rippers in the bus station rack. Gordimer's book is a classic study of the conflicts between ones duty to ones country - in this case, the struggle for a non-racialist South Africa - and ones duty to ones family. The story is told through the eyes of the daughter of a pair of white, South African activists. We watch her as she grows up, hurt and bemused by, then running away from, and eventually coming to her own very personal terms with, the burdens she bears because of her parents commitment. It's a wonderful character study, often enigmatic, due to the ambivalent feelings Rosa Burger experiences, but ultimately very satisfying.

This is not light reading; if you're looking for something to graze over while you sit at the pool, look elsewhere. If, however, you're looking to be challenged, to learn, to have your ideas and opinions broadened, Nadine Gordimer's works, in general, and this book in particular, will fill you to brimming if you will take the time and energy to plumb its depths. Many have written about Apartheid, but Gordimer does so with such depth and gravity and coherence and novelty, it's hard to grasp just how ambitious an undertaking this book really is.

My favorite element is the conceit she employs of the protagonist, Rosa Burger, and her connection, ambivalence to, and ultimate embracing of, being "Burger's Daughter." It's her story, most of all, of coming to terms with her individuality, her own self-determination, her own sense of justice and humanity, and discovery of her deepest beliefs; the luxury she has, as a white woman in her society, of being able to make these psychological, spiritual and physical journies. The arguments of apartheid, communism, social movements and injustices are all deep and involving, but play second fiddle to the real issue of the book, the right of self-determination for all people. Rosa ultimately capitulates to the same fate as did her father, but it is her choice, come upon by examining herself and what she values. You can't help but think that Gordimer is ruminating the odds of whether or not the rest of the populace of her native land will ever get the same chance in their lifetimes.

Until I read this novel, years ago, I had very simplistic views of South Africa. "Burger's Daughter" changed that.

While telling the story of an individual young woman growing up in a well-known activist family and learning to discover her own identity, Gordimer also paints a broad and detailed picture of life in South Africa among those who fought apartheid while Mandela was still in prison.

It is a rich cast of characters, black and white, who find their strength and their joy in their heroic resistance to the government and their civil disobedience. Through them you learn of the complexity of the problems created by apartheid and the range of social issues rooted in a system of racial separatism.

You also learn a great deal about the mindset and courage of those who were free to leave South Africa during those dark days yet chose to stay and fight a well-armed and oppressive foe. And as modern-day South Africa has inherited the legacy of apartheid, the book is as fully relevant today as it was when it was written.

Gordimer packs a lot into this novel; it's not a page turner, but a book that you soak up slowly and deliberately. It is a solid, important book, worthy of a world-class writer and Nobel Prize winner.

Having lived in the Apartheid, Nadine Gordimer knows a big deal about political and historical facts of that period. So don't we. In this book, she uses her knowledge to give us the impression of the power of history, overcoming life of normal people. But neither we leave the book with the feeling of being enriched by a talent psychological insight, nor can we avoid the frustration not to be able to follow her detailed but rambling historical picture.

The main character, Rose, is the daughter of an important anti-apartheid leader. Her childhood, her adolescence and her entire life will turn out to be completely affected by her origins. And that's fine with me, although I don't like the idea we can't change our fate. What I didn't like is that the character Rose's development is dropped little by little through the very long book and mixed up with a quantity of events regarding Apartheid and Rose's father connection with the communist party, which the average reader can't understand. There is no order in their happening and the book is not trying to explain them: they are just mentioned!

So, if you want to know more about Apartheid this is not the right book. Probably an essay would be more useful than this novel. And about Ms. Gordimer's psychological insight and characters living in the Apartheid, I would rather suggest "My Son's Story".

Gordimer provides a rare glimpse into the lives of white anti-apartheid activists in South Africa. The many similarities with US leftists under the rightward drift of the Reagan-Bush-Carter-Bush-Obama years are unescapable. Not only is there the alienation of being a minority within a white minority population, but the apartheid regime treats white anti-apartheid activists every bit as brutally as those who are black. Moreover like the French Resistance, organizing has to be done underground, which means work colleagues, friends and neighbors may be totally unaware of your political commitment and activities.

Gordimer brilliantly captures the psychological challenges of such a life. The novel starts as 14 year old Rosa, named after the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, is visiting her mother, who has just been imprisoned. Her mother dies just as her father is imprisoned. He, too, dies prematurely, leaving Rosa to struggle with finding her own identity in the shadow of parents with larger than life personalities. She escapes politics and South Africa by traveling in Europe, but eventually something calls her back. Returning to South Africa, she yearns for the sense of belonging she remembers fondly from the gathering of white and black activists in her parents' home. And she rejoins the movement. Gordimer relates this emotional journey in a way that is both psychologically genuine and profoundly moving.

An added delight of this book is Gordimer's sensuous description of the lush South African landscape.

By Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall, author of THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT: MEMOIR OF AN AMERICAN REFUGEE.