- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd; New edition edition (16 Sep 1993)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0224038311
- ISBN-13: 978-0224038317
- Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,491,432 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Conservationist
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'This is a novel of enormous power' New Statesman 'Gordimer is a great writer ... It is Turgenev that she most brings to mind' New York Review of Books 'Nadine Gordimer writes of blacks and whites, but her steady, unblinking eye sees something grey there. You could call it human nature, and you would be right' Daily Telegraph 'Gordimer has undoubtedly become one of the World's Great Writers ... her rootedness in a political time, place and faith has never dimmed her complex gifts as an artist' Independent
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
A wealthy industrialist, attractive to women and not yet 50, Mehring wants nothing that white privilege in a black country can bring him. But the presence of a dead man on his 400-acre farm, asserts that Africa, in the end, is something a white man can't buy. Winner of the 1974 Booker Prize.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Despite having won the Booker Prize, and Gordimer herself being a Nobel literature laureate, I found 'The Conservationist' rather disappointing. It's not terrible, but it's unexciting and often quite hard work to read. It does improve as it goes along and you become more familiar with the style, but it was one of those books I had to make a conscious effort to pick up and read.
The story is set in South Africa during the seventies, and focuses on a rich white businessman who owns a farm as a weekend hobby. Other characters are the farm workers, the local shopkeepers, and the son of the businessman. I found it hard to get to know or really empathise with any of the characters. The prose from Mehring's point of view frequently refers to his former mistress, a liberal humanist, and his arguments with her. There are some interesting points in there but I found the intrusion of flashbacks into the past and sudden changes into second person narration irritating and confusing.
This is a story that may have more resonance for those who lived in or visited South Africa during the seventies. For those who haven't, this book doesn't bring the setting or era alive enough to draw the reader in.
The story is set in South Africa during the seventies, and focuses on a rich white businessman who owns a farm as a weekend hobby. Other characters are the farm workers, the local shopkeepers, and the son of the businessman. I found it hard to get to know or really empathise with any of the characters. The prose from Mehring's point of view frequently refers to his former mistress, a liberal humanist, and his arguments with her. There are some interesting points in there but I found the intrusion of flashbacks into the past and sudden changes into second person narration irritating and confusing.
This is a story that may have more resonance for those who lived in or visited South Africa during the seventies. For those who haven't, this book doesn't bring the setting or era alive enough to draw the reader in.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
What hard work, tedious and unrewarding, to get through this novel. It is the worst I've read in years. The story is really simple and utterly unoriginal, it's hardly a story at all, more like silly social realism of the seventies. But the worst thing about it is the style. Characters are not really introduced and settings neither. The reader pops in and out of heads of people but as they aren't really grounded in a figure the thoughts and shallow oberservations we read come across as echoes of thoughts. Real observations are very few indeed. Assumption on the other hand are quite plentifull.
But listen to this one: an Indian family plays a minor role and suddenly we zoom in on them and see the wife standing in a room.
" What did she think, standing looking out into the yard or across the burned veld - you could grow bananas, it would be warm and steamy and green, like the coast?"
And goodbye wife, not to be heard of again. What do we care what she might think if it isn't put into perspective of something, anything, show some respect for the trees Gordimer!
But listen to this one: an Indian family plays a minor role and suddenly we zoom in on them and see the wife standing in a room.
" What did she think, standing looking out into the yard or across the burned veld - you could grow bananas, it would be warm and steamy and green, like the coast?"
And goodbye wife, not to be heard of again. What do we care what she might think if it isn't put into perspective of something, anything, show some respect for the trees Gordimer!
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read every boring word on every boring page of this boring, boring book - and only because my mission is to read every Booker prize winner. Otherwise, I would have hurled this book into the bin after twenty pages. NOTHING HAPPENS, except a tedious interior monologue from someone about whom you constantly think 'who cares?' To add insult to injury, the punctuation makes it almost impossible to follow what is going on. Even if Gordimer holds her readers in such contempt, at least her publisher should have ensured that the small concession of making the work readable would be a good idea.
If I could give negative numbers of stars for this book, I would.
If I could give negative numbers of stars for this book, I would.
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