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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Into the mind of an unsympathetic man,
By
This review is from: The Conservationist (Paperback)
It has been several years since I read this novel, and what sticks in my memory vividly is the portrait Gordimer creates of a self-satisfied, white property-owner in apartheid-era South Africa. We see the world through his eyes, and we see how well it serves him, keeping him wealthy and comfortable. While he may notice that some suffer and are oppressed, he is not moved to do anything that would make a difference for them. Instead, he justifies his indifference with a sense of racial and class superiority. Gordimer captures the mental framework of someone who feels little or nothing for the misfortunes of others. What is interesting for the reader is that it requires an effort to step out of his mind and see his thoughts and behavior for what they are -- insensitive, self-serving, and at times brutal. Gordimer finds him at a time in his life when he is middle-aged and living alone, no longer married, his grown son estranged from him, and his mistress not all that endeared to him. While money, property, and influence keep him at a safe distance from the political troubles slowly encroaching on his private world, Gordimer reveals his physical and emotional isolation. His defense is to cut his losses and retreat even farther into his solitary world. It's a fascinating, well-written character study.
26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An unparalled story of an African farm,
By Jill Piggott (Wells, Maine) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Conservationist (Paperback)
Gordimer's Booker-prize winning novel is one of the least overtly political of her works--at least in the most traditional understanding of "political fiction" (fiction about the machinations of state power). Yet the book remains a forceful, intricate exploration of power, as timely today as it was in 1974, as relevant to contemporary America as it was to minority-ruled South Africa. I have read--and written about--each of Gordimer's novels, and The Conservationist remains a favorite. Nowhere else in contemporary English-language fiction have I found such memorable passages about landscape; nowhere else have I found such a subtle exploration of self. I recommend the novel to anyone remotely interested in the modernist novel, to anyone who has ever sat under the spell of Virginia Woolf (Gordimer, too, is a Woolf reader), to anyone who turns to literature for both Beauty and that old hound Truth.
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Typical Gordimer intricacy,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Conservationist (Paperback)
Gordimer, as always, provides the reader with stunning, vivid descriptions; living imagery. She describes life on the South African veld, the contrasts between city and country life, and the relationships among people that inhabit this backdrop. Gordimer is always subtle and endows her characters with a realism that illustrates her mastery of perspective and point of view. She intrinsically understands the different people about whom she writes and expertly conveys her understandings to people like me, who can only imagine a world in which daily, mundane details of life are shocking but accepted in apartheid-era South Africa. Like much of Gordimer's work, The Conservationist starts out slowly, but draws the reader into its intricacy with its exploration of the human mind and the development of human relationships. The main character of the book, Mehring, is a wealthy businessman who owns a farm in the veld, mostly just to be able to says he owns the farm. His relationships are probed in the book... including relationships with his teenage son, his mistress (who is somewhat of a liberal supporting equality for the South African blacks.) Gordimer is most adept at exposing some of the hypocrisy inherent in these people's dealings. Gordimer writes some of the most powerful passages I have ever read, including the following: "Change the world but keep bits of it the way I like it for myself-- who wouldn't make the world over if it were to be as easy as that. to keep anything the way you like it for yourself you have to have the stomach to ignore-- dead and hidden- whatever intrudes. Those for whom life is cheapest recognize that." Taken out of context perhaps this comment does not have the same impact, but it is an invitation to read the book. And all of Gordimer's other works which are equally as important and moving.
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