July's People
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Review
'Breathtaking ... It is so flawlessly written that every one of its events seems chillingly, ominously possible' Anne Tyler, New York Times Book Review 'If one were never to read any other literature about South Africa, Gordimer's work would be enough ... As a literary keeper of records, she has no peer' Sunday Times 'Nadine Gordimer is the real thing: by which I mean a true writer of graphic power, palpitating sensibility, and high and persistent emotional voltage' Observer
Product Description
For years, it has been what is called a 'deteriorating situation'. Now all over South Africa the cities are battlegrounds. The members of the Smales family - liberal whites - are rescued from the terror by their servant, July, who leads them to refuge in his native village. What happens to the Smaleses and to July - the shifts in character and relationships - gives us an unforgettable look into the terrifying, tacit understandings and misunderstandings between blacks and whites.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Maureen Smales, the White bourgois wife and mother of three children in Johannesburg, finds herself in the middle of the South African wilderness, a guest of her own servant. The Smales have safely gone through the 1976 and the 1980s riots, but now the situation has gone beyond control. Black people are ravaging the country, raising hell for White people and chasing them out of their own houses. The Smales are 'lucky to be alive', that's why they have to put up with all the inconveniences of settlement in a hut in the middle of nowhere. the narrator meticulously depicts the White family's lapse into a black life of filth, physical discomfort and humiliating dependency upon their host, July. A spoilt servant from 'back there', July continues to maintain the previous relationship of black servant to white master, but the circumstances appear to be grossly inadequate to either that habitual relationship or the simple interplay of hosting accomodation. The narrative shows the gradual breakdown of white power, white urban ethics and etiquette and white racial superiority. The loss of the car and the gun are symbolic acts of castration of white civilisation, while no attempts to bridge the gap between the white family and the community of blacks that accomodates them are signalled. As the gap remains unbridgeable, the awesome aura of whiteness is gradually dispelled around the Smales as they lapse into physical degradation and repulsiveness. July's People is a piece of fiction that is beyond the grasp of its own characters, where the fictional confounds its own creation with the disproportionate sense of nightmare. Maureen Smales feels she is the inhabitant of a book and she dreamily moves through its thorny space. Gordimer's character is a trapped woman wondering at the magic of her captivity, whence no logic could ever liberate her.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A challenging work on race relationship in Apartheid South Africa from the colour-blind angle that allowed light to settle on the sweet energy of a progressive South Africa . The dream of a rainbow nation must have cannot be dissociated from this book. Gordimer joined the ranks of Achebe, Tisi and Patton in contributing to the jolting nature of Africa' s jolting literature. In different ways, JULY'S PEOPLE also reminded me of DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE, A BLADE OF GRASS, which are African novels with wake up call story lines
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This short, ambiguous and intensely claustrophobic novel, written at the height of apartheid, imagines a revolution where Black people throughout South Africa are rising up, reclaiming their country and murdering any white people they find. The white liberal middle-class couple Maureen and Bam have been relatively respectful and supportive of their black Servant, July, over many years, and so he agrees to shelter them in his rural village while the worst of the violence ensues outside. The novel centres on how this white family barely acclimatises to this relatively primitive life, how they interact with the black community around them, and their ongoing relationship with July, who now is in effect the master of their domain. The style, mainly told through the eyes of Maureen and Bam, is stilted, with half-sentences, unexpected changes of subject, at times almost hallucinatory physical detail, yet only a sparse smattering of inner thoughts. The world and everyone in it seems to be subjected to a conceptual fog. As the novel progresses, Maureen and Bam increasingly, unwittingly, lose their former civilised possessions and symbols of power, as step by step they are reduced to the black people they are living with, and July's attitude towards them shifts towards defiance and indifference. They stumble through basic survival as if in dementia - they have no idea who steals their prized white possessions or how, they only hear transitory snippets of the state of the world and the revolution outside, and even their memories of their past relations with July at times seems hopelessly flawed. The only clarity for the reader to emerge occurs during the dialogue, which is blisteringly accurate, particularly between Maureen and Bam, but even here most chats are littered with failures to understood each other's thoughts. Sometimes this is simply because of the problems with language, but one suspects it also reflects that no one understands themselves or their motives, let alone anyone else's . So these spoken sentences are meagre oases in a novel which gains considerable power from its vagueness, ambiguity and seeming lack of direction. It is almost impossible for us to place on a firm footing any of the relationships between the major characters, particularly of that between July and Maureen, which at times could be defined as Master and Slave, at others is the reverse of this, and still at other moments feels like two lovers or even an old married couple. It is equally difficult to understand why July looks after this white family. Such profound ambiguities of relationships run through this central artery of the novel and pervade every inch of its flesh. They also make it an absolutely fascinating and rich read, and one that probably demands a second reading immediately after the first.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A denouement avoided...
Nadine Gordimer won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. As is customary, the Nobel committee makes the award to the author, and does not normally specify a particular work. Read more
Published 7 months ago by John P. Jones III
very pleased
Exactly what it said on the tin - new book and expedite delivery, sooner than expected. Book is great, sparked interesting discussions at our Book Club. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Marion
An Authors Imaginary Vision of South Africa
I think its best for me to be straight with you all and say I went into reading `July's People' with certain expectations. Read more
Published on 5 Mar 2010 by Simon Savidge Reads
Challenging, for some
In July's People Nadine Gordimer presents a scenario laden with fears. Written in 1981, the book presents a South Africa afflicted by near-worst case Cold War disintegration. Read more
Published on 20 Feb 2008 by Philip Spires
to buy or not to buy that is the question
In fairness to Julys people it was always going to be a struggle as most readers like me would be European, but to add to this Gordimers complex style of jumbing words sentences... Read more
Published on 25 Oct 2001
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