Customer Reviews

None to Accompany Me

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Nadine Gordimer's novel None to Accompany Me was published in the same year of South Africa's first Democratic election. The fact that these events coincided is an important influence on interpretations of the novel because of the personal and political significance of the event in relation to Gordimer. A preoccupation with the conflicting political parties reverberates in the consciousness of the South African characters who populate the novel because of the radical nature of this changing government. The characters are captured in a state of transformation where they must renegotiate their own sense of national identity. Gordimer lived through the age of apartheid in South Africa. She always renounced it, discussing its inherent flaws and misconceptions in her fiction and nonfiction. The fact that she defiantly chose not to exile herself in the face of political conflict while writing novels which were mainly in opposition to the National Party who enforced apartheid shows her unswerving commitment to an identification with being a South African citizen who works actively against racism. In a society such as South Africa that has a highly turbulent climate of racism Gordimer has found that a sense of "home" is an important component upon which to build an environment of equality. The physical nation is what its citizens have in common and, in negotiating boundaries, mental and emotional divides are laid out as well. Therefore, her emphasis on the importance of the land in her writing, how it is sectioned off, claimed and divided, represents the way South Africans have divided their national identity from having any singular meaning. Gordimer has represented in her fiction the levels of these boundaries between people and she has offered a constructive approach to possibly thinking of South African national identity as inclusive of difference while accepting the pragmatism of boundaries. In her early essays of the 1960s she shows a strong resolution that the inherently racist government would be replaced by a power which enforces greater equality. Yet, she also realized that the most important transformation needed to occur in the minds of the citizens of South Africa. They had to recognize the fact of racial difference but also acknowledge that everyone who lives in South Africa is entitled to equal citizenship.

Due to the governmentally enforced segregation between the different races, citizens found that living in South Africa under apartheid caused a hypersensitive awareness of his or her own race. Gordimer is no exception to this and has spent much of her writing discussing where white people position themselves in relation to black people. She tries to think out how people can change their frame of mind to assimilate to the idea of a South Africa where people have an equal sense of national identity instead of trapping themselves within terms of binaries. She makes this clear in her statement, "If one will always have to feel white first, and African second, it would be better not to stay in Africa." What she seems to be saying is that to live peacefully in a nation you must accept you are entitled to be a citizen of that nation rather than an outsider who happens to inhabit it. This is a dilemma for white Africans who live under the image of "black Africa". To be African does not necessarily mean that you are black. This is something Gordimer has always vehemently asserted in her writing. It is in the fixed idea of "black Africa" that boundaries within the national identity are laid and Gordimer is committed to writing of Africa as inclusive of all the relations between its people of all colors. Both the National Party and the Inkath Movement stressed physical boundaries between white and black people. The impact they had on South African citizens over the 20th century encouraged the idea of a national identity divided by color. It is only with the end of apartheid and subsequently the first democratic national election that South Africans can evaluate the impact this division has had with hindsight and whether or not they choose to leave it behind.

A major theme of the novel is how to reconcile the ideological transformation taking place politically in South Africa with the personal notions of national identity formulated up to the present time. For people who worked to terminate apartheid, it is difficult to envision any progression when the primary motives of one's actions are committed to ending the politically instituted segregation. Personal actions were planned with thought of a watchful government eye. For the majority of the writing there could be no subject other than the institutionalized racism. It became a polemic for a political position whether direct or indirect that perpetuated itself in all the literature produced. Only now that apartheid has ended and a new political group has succeeded to power can South African individuals envision a future that is not strictly concerned with this national condition. Gordimer is trying to capture in None to Accompany Me the moment of this change through personal transformations: "Perhaps the passing away of the old regime makes the abandonment of an old personal life also possible. I'm getting there." Leaving an old notion of national identity behind may make possible the dispensing of an old sense of selfhood. This illustrates the uncertainty of the people who live under this changing government to decide upon how they will perceive their sense of self now that an essential factor of what they perceive to be their identity has changed. The primary subject of this novel then is the omnipresent transformations taking place in South Africa at that time ranging from the personal to the broadly political. This novel is an important work that captures a nation in the midst of dramatic change. It will teach you about the conflicts in South Africa if you have never read much about it before and prompt you to find out more.

I do not know quite what to make of Nadine Gordimer's 1994 novel None to Accompany Me. Gordimer, past winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, writes tellingly of her native South Africa, and of the uneasy relations between blacks and whites during the very recent past. This book tells the story of Vera, a middle-aged married white woman who is employed as a lawyer with a "liberal" organization dedicated to obtaining housing and land for the black majority. While Vera has "relationships" with many in the book, both black and white - including her current husband (a past lover); former husband; grown children; and black employees of her organization and political leaders - ultimately she makes herself a loner, with only her career and transitory relationships. I believe this is the source of the book's title - Vera has none to accompany her, and the reason for this appears to be her own lack of commitment to all save her cause. Gordimer writes with great insight and intelligence, and I very much wanted to enjoy this book more than I did. Her characters are finely drawn, allowing the reader to "get inside" their thinking; nonetheless, this novel did not always keep my attention. Because she is such a fine writer in general, and this book has so many flashes of brilliance and insight, I cannot discourage others from reading it. Perhaps I just am not the right reader for this book. (I recommend highly and without qualification her earlier novel July's People).

As a class project I had to choose a book by a foreign author. I was recommended "None to Accompany Me" I started reading it as soon as I got it. At first I was terribly confused and bored with the book, but enjoying a challenge I stuck it through and completed the novel. After finishing it I realized I didn't fully understand the purpose of the struggles contained within the pages. I did understand the personal lives of Gordimers' characters but the politics threw me a loop. I now am beginning to realize the tremendous writing ability this author really has. I may not have grasped the concepts at first, but now after reading a few reviews my eyes have begun to open up. This really is a good book.

Life often presents an illusion of constancy or even continuity. They are illusions, of course, because ultimately we can never take anything for granted. Just ask the last friend who died. Equally, however, there are always things that we work towards, goals whose continued non-achievement gives life both meaning and direction. Surely we fear their achievement, because everything would then have to be redefined, a process that would prove at least messy.

This is the territory of Nadine Gordimer's novel None To Accompany Me. For me the title signifies how every individual, when confronted with the necessity for change, must pursue personal, perhaps even selfish goals.

In None To Accompnay Me Nadine Gordimer presents characters in a newly-liberated, but as yet ill-defined South Africa. The struggle has been long. It has also been defining for its participants. It allowed differences to be ignored, splits to be papered over. It convinced some of a necessity to over-react, to over-compensate. And then, when the uniting goal is achieved, all realise that opposing is a less complicated act than supporting. We all know what we are against, but what we are for can only be argued. Like Byron's Prisoner Of Chillon, experiencing the security of captivity can seem reassuring when the unknown of freedom is finally achieved.

Vera is as central a character as any. She's white, married to Ben, has a daughter and has worked for liberation. She devoted just less than her life to the cause, less because she has retained an element of selfishness in her personal relations. So loosely intertwined are all of the strands of her life that change in one can apparently unravel all of them.

And then there's Dydimus and Sibongile, also lifelong devotees of the cause. Opportunity begins to divide them. So does their past. There are new positions of responsibility to be adopted, politics to be worked out, compromises to be made. But there are also deeds from the past lacked away, skeletons that can be marched out for other's convenience. And not all of them are personal.

The major issues of the time appear in the book. Cultural and economic differences between black and white cannot be escaped. Neither, it seems, can the prevalence of violence and crime. A pressing need to redistribute land will have to engage in battle with those who own it and want to exploit it. A nation whose majority has never been asked its opinion has to learn to live with the fact that the question's answers now promote division above the assumed unity of the past.

And, if this is not already sufficient complication, those released from struggle must also come to terms with a generational shift. Progeny do not seem to have the same values. Whereas community was demanded by struggle, freedom promotes the individual, allows personal decisions that the older generation would not have tolerated.

A reader looking for a linear experience with characters wheeled on and off the set in order to assist a plot's continued progress will truly hate None To Accompany Me. A reader with the patience to get to know people, to empathise with them and share their dilemmas will appreciate the non-linearity, non-literalness of Nadine Gordimer's book. It is certainly a novel of its time, a period of uncertainly presenting perhaps an illusory cusp between a known past and an unknown future. Eventually we must ask if this state is anything unusual.

I really like reading this novel. I thought the characters were very well developed. The relationships between all the characters (major and minor) are so complex that it times is somewhat hard to follow, but I usually found this to make the reading more enjoyable.

The reason I gave it three stars instead of more than that is the racial undercurrents. I call it undercurrents because on the surface it is a novel about acceptance and moving to a new life for the country, but there is so much more below the surface here. I actually found that there was quite a bit of racism in the novel, from the author herself. Before I go on I have to say that she has done incredible work through her fiction and voice for equality in South Africa, but she seems to have racism hardwired into her brain. Her white characters consistently patronize the black characters, especially Vera Stark. Vera seems to think she has to take care of the entire racial population, even when working with people that very obviously don't need her. Her black characters that were in exile and have somewhat become heros to the black populace do everything they can to remove themselves from the black culture and black experience in South Africa. Sibonguile even ponders at one point that she puts on her African gard so she can look more African. I don't know how I feel about the Nobel Prize, because I feel like she got it for the politics behind her novels. And I believe that her politics are consistently subjected racist ideas that are mostly sub-conscious.

With all that said it is still an amazing novel worth picking up!

Having read the entire catalog of Gordimer's work, I find None to Accompany Me somewhat disappointing. While it had moments in which the reader could feel at one with the story's characters, I did not feel engaged by the story nor the insights Gordimer offers. Part of what makes Gordimer so appealing is her ability to put into words what most people just think and cannot articulate. As well, Gordimer puts fresh perspectives on various issues that make her work constantly thought-provoking. I felt a bit deflated upon discovering that None to Accompany Me was not going to offer the same sort of stimuli.

I could not get into this book at all. The method of writing was very hard to follow. I couldn't tell who was talking most of the time. If there were more than two people in a conversation, forget it. I often had to go back to the begin of the conversation and try to figure it out. There also seemed to be more detail about the "politics" of South Africa than I cared to know or be able to understand. Granted there may be some that would enjoy this, but it lost me. The only thing that kept me from rating this with 1 star is that I did like the ultimate message of the book. I just would have preferred that the message be given it a bit more understandable fashion.