Pick Up/Mixed Gordimer Dumpbin [Paperback]

Nadine Gordimer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 24, 2002

When Julie Summers's car breaks down on a sleazy street in a South African city, a young Arab mechanic named Abdu comes to her aid. Their attraction to one another is fueled by different motives. Julie is in rebellion against her wealthy background and her father; Abdu, an illegal immigrant, is desperate to avoid deportation to his impoverished country. In the course of their relationship, there are unpredictable consequences, and overwhelming emotions will overturn each one's notion of the other. Set in the new South Africa and in an Arab village in the desert, The Pickup is "a masterpiece of creative empathy . . . a gripping tale of contemporary anguish and unexpected desire, and it also opens the Arab world to unusually nuanced perception" (Edward W. Said).

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While Nobel Prize-winner Gordimer's trenchant fiction has always achieved universal relevance in capturing apartheid and its lingering effects in South Africa, this new work attains still broader impact as she explores the condition of the world's desperate dispossessed. To Julie Summer, rebellious daughter of a rich white investment banker, the black mechanic she meets at a garage is initially merely an interesting person to add to her circle of bohemian friends. But as their relationship swiftly escalates, Julie comes to understand her lover's perilous tightrope attempts to find a country that will shelter him. Abdu, as he calls himself (it's not his real name), is an illegal immigrant from an abysmally poor Arab country. Now on the verge of deportation from South Africa, he's forced to return to his ancestral village. Julie insists on marrying him and going with him, despite his fears that she does not understand how primitive conditions are in the desert town where his strict Muslim family lives. Abdu (now Ibrahim) is astonished when she willingly does manual labor to earn his family's respect. They clash, however, over his decision to try once again to gain entry into a country that discriminates against immigrants from his part of the world. Gradually realizing that she has finally found a center to her heretofore aimless life, Julie matures; in many ways, she has become more cognizant of reality than her frantically hopeful husband. Gordimer handles these psychological nuances with understated finesse. With characteristic bravado, she reprises a character from her previous book, The House Gun, to show how some blacks are now faring in a reorganized South African society. The brilliant black defense lawyer in that book has taken advantage of opportunities to join a banking conglomerate; he is now involved in "the intimate language of money." It's the people still trapped by economic chaos and racism who now interest this inveterate and eloquent champion of the world's outcasts.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

An incinerating affair between a wealthy young woman and an Arab mechanic.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (October 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0747562687
• ISBN-13: 978-0747562689
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,233,911 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gordimer goes Global -- and does it with panache, September 14, 2001

By 

Helen Moffett (Cape Town, South Africa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pickup (Hardcover)

I tend to read Nobel Prize-winning writer Nadine Gordimer's books more out of a sense of duty than pleasure, but in this intense work, she's produced a page-turner as gripping as her apocalyptic July's People.

The story is told against two backdrops, from the perspective of two very different people, who "pick each other up". It's a cliche to say their lives are changed forever by their encounter, but Gordimer introduces fresh and complex twists into this most ancient of plots --Boy Meets Girl, and Nothing is Ever the Same Again.

Julie Summers, the archetypal poor little rich girl, meets Adbu -- not his real name -- in a garage workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa. Julie is in flight from her privileged background and splintered family; Abdu is an illegal immigrant from an impoverished desert nation, desperate to make a better life for himself. They become lovers, and a chain of events is set in motion that eventually leads to marriage, deportation and exile in a remote desert village in Africa.

The powerful erotic tension between them keeps them together, in spite of the widening gulf between their goals and values. Julie -- who takes for granted so many of the advantages that come with her background of wealth and status -- is fascinated by the strange new world, the exotic culture, religion and language into which her bond with Abdu plunges her. She is mesmerised by the desert, and builds deepening bonds with the women of the clan. Abdu, however, is almost fanatically determined to emigrate to a Western nation and build a "good life", one with the security and comforts that Julie has the luxury of despising.

Gordimer is an incisive and intelligent as ever in exploring complex issues, and she has her finger on the pulse of issues perplexing both post-apartheid South Africa and the global village. Migrancy and refugee movements have become major issues for the 21st century, with wealthier countries adopting increasingly hard-line attitudes and policies, even though many of them were founded by immigrants. In a relatively short book, Gordimer also touches deftly on the entire range of questions raised by cross-cultural relationships -- from the intimate and domestic to the broad and metaphysical ones of religion and identity. She also provides a fascinating study of how two people who love each other can fail utterly to understand one another.

I've withheld a fifth star only because I was slightly dissatisfied with the ending; Gordimer often resists closure, but I am a little wary with the trend in current South African writing that has women accepting the "lesser portion" and resigning themselves to fate. But I recognise that the ending is what will spark much debate about this fine work. So, to find out what actually happens -- read the book!

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great love story ..., June 1, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Pickup (Hardcover)

...if you like books that complicate conventional notions of love. The first half of the book is a disorienting bit of restraint, the meaning of which is only revealed once the story's location changes at the mid-point to some unnamed poor African country. Then you see these two characters' lives crossing at an intersection that we might call love. Or are these just the colliding desires of two desperate and unhappy people? Gordimer is a master of economy and subtle observance. There is not an ounce of crap in this book. It's not just about love but about the contemporary world and its stupefyingly unfair inequalities, but also about the startling similarities that people can share amid those inequalities.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable, until the end, April 13, 2002

By 

Suzanne E. Anderson "Author of Mrs. Tuesday's... (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pickup (Hardcover)

Okay let's start with what I didn't like......the ending. I found it terribly unsatisfying....perhaps because I am a romantic and had hoped for something more along those lines.

That said. As a whole I loved the book for its wonderful writing, challenging to read at times, but a unique and interesting voice that seemed to suit the characters and the plot. I haven't read anything else by this author so I can't compare it with her other works, but I am intrigued enough to pick up another of her novels in the future.

What works in the novel is the exploration of the clash of cultures that infiltrates a love relationship between two people of very disparate backgrounds, and the differing motivations they bring to their relationship. Do they ultimately both get what they wanted? Some would argue yes, even in the end. I just would have preferred the storybook happy ending. But that's my cultural and romantic bias.