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July's People
Julys People
202 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
About the author
Nadine Gordimer
299 books892 followersNadine Gordimer was a South African writer, political activist, and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".
Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as Burger's Daughter and July's People were banned. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned. She was also active in HIV/AIDS causes.
Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as Burger's Daughter and July's People were banned. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned. She was also active in HIV/AIDS causes.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 713 reviews
May 6, 2015
All the troubles of apartheid-era South Africa are encapsulated in this slim and beautifully-written book. Just when you think that you know the situation, you understand what is going on, the Chief is introduced and you realise that looking at it from the point of view of the (white) Smales and the in-two-worlds view of their ex-'boy' is only the half of it. It's black against white, but not for liberation alone but for power.
There are many reviews of the story of July's People. I am glad I didn't read any of them before reading it. The beauty of the book is in the slow reveal, the step-by-step unfolding both in the book and in your mind of how life really could have been without Mandela.
The brilliant writing, very controlled and precise, treats the reader as a full participant in the story and leaves far more unsaid than written knowing the reader will fill in the details.
Excellent book.
This is a good companion book to Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing which addresses on the domestic level, as July's People does, racism in Zimbabwe, that other greatly problematic southern African country.
There are many reviews of the story of July's People. I am glad I didn't read any of them before reading it. The beauty of the book is in the slow reveal, the step-by-step unfolding both in the book and in your mind of how life really could have been without Mandela.
The brilliant writing, very controlled and precise, treats the reader as a full participant in the story and leaves far more unsaid than written knowing the reader will fill in the details.
Excellent book.
This is a good companion book to Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing which addresses on the domestic level, as July's People does, racism in Zimbabwe, that other greatly problematic southern African country.
May 10, 2017
Nadine Gordimer is an award winning South African author of multiple books, and has won the prestigious Booker Prize. In July's People, Gordimer writes of the 1980 race riots in Johannesburg that wrestled the city out of white control. As the violence begins to escalate and the city begins to crumble, families ponder their future. Gordimer writes of the Smales family and their house servant named July, who rescues them and offers them hope moving forward.
An upper class family, Bamford and Maureen Smales have traveled the world, staying in upper class hotels without thinking about money. Having much disposable income, the Smales often give away used household items to July, their trusted house employee for fifteen years. In a balance of power, July has none, relying on the Smales' for a pay check and his family's subsistence. As soon as Johannesburg falls prey to rioting, July offers to bring the Smales to safety in his village some 600 kilometers away. With many of their friends being killed or fleeing the country, the Smales entrust their survival to July, ensuring that they will be part of the new South Africa moving forward.
Upon their arrival in July's village, the balance of power shifts. Living in primitive huts, bathing in rivers, hunting daily for food, the Smales are immediately out of their comfort zone. July's wife and mother resent these people's presence, as they have taken up residence in a hut that once belonged to villagers. Not being part of July's life in the city, they question why he would bring white people to the bush rather than letting them stay with their own people, not realizing how dangerous it is to return to the city. Used to the comforts of home, the Smales find it difficult to get used to village life, especially as they stand out there. The children view the village as an adventure or as camping but the adults wonder what Johannesburg will be like when they return. Meanwhile, July desires that the Smales treat him with increased respect, especially in light of his bringing them to safety.
This is the first of Gordimer's books that I have read although I doubt it will be the last. Her language is soothing yet descriptive as she describes life in the African bush. She gives insight into the race rioting that inevitably lead to the crumbling of colonial South African rule. Prior to the riots, the best blacks could expect was to work in menial labor like July did. Following the rioting, they expected to be treated as equals to and given access to the same rights as whites. This event is high lighted in the shifting of power in the relationship between July and the Smales family, one that most likely was duplicated throughout South Africa.
I found July's People to be a fascinating book as my reading continues to take me all over the globe. I felt that Gordimer produced quality historical fiction as she touched on Stephen Biko landing in prison and the Smales wondering what life will be like after the riots. Race relations in South Africa continues to be a contested issue to this day as there are often reports of violence there. Another book that was not on my radar before this year, I found July's People to be evocative and rate it 3.8 solid stars.
An upper class family, Bamford and Maureen Smales have traveled the world, staying in upper class hotels without thinking about money. Having much disposable income, the Smales often give away used household items to July, their trusted house employee for fifteen years. In a balance of power, July has none, relying on the Smales' for a pay check and his family's subsistence. As soon as Johannesburg falls prey to rioting, July offers to bring the Smales to safety in his village some 600 kilometers away. With many of their friends being killed or fleeing the country, the Smales entrust their survival to July, ensuring that they will be part of the new South Africa moving forward.
Upon their arrival in July's village, the balance of power shifts. Living in primitive huts, bathing in rivers, hunting daily for food, the Smales are immediately out of their comfort zone. July's wife and mother resent these people's presence, as they have taken up residence in a hut that once belonged to villagers. Not being part of July's life in the city, they question why he would bring white people to the bush rather than letting them stay with their own people, not realizing how dangerous it is to return to the city. Used to the comforts of home, the Smales find it difficult to get used to village life, especially as they stand out there. The children view the village as an adventure or as camping but the adults wonder what Johannesburg will be like when they return. Meanwhile, July desires that the Smales treat him with increased respect, especially in light of his bringing them to safety.
This is the first of Gordimer's books that I have read although I doubt it will be the last. Her language is soothing yet descriptive as she describes life in the African bush. She gives insight into the race rioting that inevitably lead to the crumbling of colonial South African rule. Prior to the riots, the best blacks could expect was to work in menial labor like July did. Following the rioting, they expected to be treated as equals to and given access to the same rights as whites. This event is high lighted in the shifting of power in the relationship between July and the Smales family, one that most likely was duplicated throughout South Africa.
I found July's People to be a fascinating book as my reading continues to take me all over the globe. I felt that Gordimer produced quality historical fiction as she touched on Stephen Biko landing in prison and the Smales wondering what life will be like after the riots. Race relations in South Africa continues to be a contested issue to this day as there are often reports of violence there. Another book that was not on my radar before this year, I found July's People to be evocative and rate it 3.8 solid stars.
June 6, 2015
The 5 stars you see flashing at you are not just any 5 stars. They are the end result of a whole day of deliberation.
I happen to be one of those people who are not stingy with their ratings. If a book manages to bestow equal importance on both the prose and the message contained within in such a way that neither overshadows the other and both meld into a single entity of an unforgettable work of literature/fiction capable of whisking the reader away to a special place, then it can take my 5 stars right away.
But July's People had me dawdling back and forth between a 4 and a 5 star rating for the longest period of time.
What happens to a middle-class family of white liberals in South Africa fleeing the horrors of a large scale violent agitation started by the blacks in the city? They find a safe haven in their black manservant July's village.
Away from the amenities of an upscale, urban neighborhood in Johannesburg, away from all known civilization, in the heart of the formidable great South African wilderness, among people whose lives are different from their own as chalk is from cheese, Bamford and Maureen Smales and their 3 children become witnesses to the spectacle of humanity, stripped of all its materialistic props.
They become mute spectators to their own struggle for survival in the harshest of conditions and are left with no other option but to fall into the same pattern of weed-gathering, mealie-meal consuming, wart-hog slaying daily activities of the native Africans. They are also forced to accept this drastic role reversal with July, who had so far been at the receiving end of their patronizing 'kindness' and occasional thoughtfulness.
When July becomes their savior and protector, they finally start to realize how it must have been for July all this time to have been reduced to the status of dependence on a white family, to be considered human but still never judged according to the same criteria used to evaluate a white man's worth.
Thus in the middle of the intractable African countryside, in the constant presence of buzzing mosquitoes and other poisonous bugs and in an environment redolent of decay and rotting animal corpses, all the hitherto insurmountable barriers between Maureen, the mistress, and July, the servant, are dismantled by the tide of circumstances. Maureen and July assume their true roles as mere humans in a symbiotic relationship where the nature of the dependence of one on the other may vary with a change in the scenario.
And herein lies the poignancy of this story which relies much on the Maureen-July equation to lend the plot its true substance.
Oh I could go on quoting such brilliant lines, fraught with underlying implications of life-changing proportions.
Thus, July's People is not just a fantastic meditation on inter-racial tension but also an attempt at acknowledging the humanity of the ones considered less human.
Gordimer doesn't merely highlight the ambiguity of the South African socio-political situation against the backdrop of the Anti-Apartheid movement or this imperfect intermingling of two cultures so disparate and alien to each other. She also poses a few fundamental questions which go far beyond the limits of a topic like racial discrimination. How do we live together in harmony? How do we come to terms with the differences(social, economic or racial) we perceive in others?
As I write this, I am repeatedly struck by my own inadequacy as a reviewer and the fact that a few measly passages in a review cannot even come close to recording the experience of reading this book. I am fumbling around for the right words to present to the future reader, all the vivid images and the indescribably complex human emotions that Gordimer has stitched together with the gift of her skillful yet subtle story-telling in this narrative.
At times I forgot I was reading this in an air-conditioned room and found myself in Maureen's shoes - having to wash the unhygienic dirty rags she uses in the absence of sanitary napkins to soak up her menstrual blood or squatting down together with the women of July's family and plucking edible vegetables. I could almost imagine myself living the same nightmare as the Smales family in that stifling atmosphere rife with Equatorial heat and humidity and taut with the tension between July's black people and his white employers.
I am letting Ms Gordimer take over from me again-
And so I give July's People all the 5 stars. Because Nadine Gordimer excels at what she sets out to do here - dissect the human predicament with precision and deep sympathy, remove layering upon layering of man-made fabrications and reveal the crux of a human relationship as simple and complicated as Maureen and July's.
And if one thinks about it, she has titled this book ingeniously as well. What does she mean by July's people? July's own kith and kin, the anonymous and indistinguishable (to the white people) blacks of his own village? Does she mean July's white people who are also an indispensable part of his existence? Or is she referring to both at the same time? I think she left it as an unanswered question, left it for us to decide who July's people are.
And one has to admit, that it is certainly a question worth pondering.
I happen to be one of those people who are not stingy with their ratings. If a book manages to bestow equal importance on both the prose and the message contained within in such a way that neither overshadows the other and both meld into a single entity of an unforgettable work of literature/fiction capable of whisking the reader away to a special place, then it can take my 5 stars right away.
But July's People had me dawdling back and forth between a 4 and a 5 star rating for the longest period of time.
What happens to a middle-class family of white liberals in South Africa fleeing the horrors of a large scale violent agitation started by the blacks in the city? They find a safe haven in their black manservant July's village.
Away from the amenities of an upscale, urban neighborhood in Johannesburg, away from all known civilization, in the heart of the formidable great South African wilderness, among people whose lives are different from their own as chalk is from cheese, Bamford and Maureen Smales and their 3 children become witnesses to the spectacle of humanity, stripped of all its materialistic props.
They become mute spectators to their own struggle for survival in the harshest of conditions and are left with no other option but to fall into the same pattern of weed-gathering, mealie-meal consuming, wart-hog slaying daily activities of the native Africans. They are also forced to accept this drastic role reversal with July, who had so far been at the receiving end of their patronizing 'kindness' and occasional thoughtfulness.
When July becomes their savior and protector, they finally start to realize how it must have been for July all this time to have been reduced to the status of dependence on a white family, to be considered human but still never judged according to the same criteria used to evaluate a white man's worth.
Thus in the middle of the intractable African countryside, in the constant presence of buzzing mosquitoes and other poisonous bugs and in an environment redolent of decay and rotting animal corpses, all the hitherto insurmountable barriers between Maureen, the mistress, and July, the servant, are dismantled by the tide of circumstances. Maureen and July assume their true roles as mere humans in a symbiotic relationship where the nature of the dependence of one on the other may vary with a change in the scenario.
And herein lies the poignancy of this story which relies much on the Maureen-July equation to lend the plot its true substance.
"We can go to my home - July said it, standing in the living-room where he had never sat down, as he would say 'We can buy a little bit paraffin' when there was a stain to be removed from the floor. That he should have been the one to decide what they should do, that their helplessness, in their own house, should have made it clear to him that he must do this - the sheer unlikeliness was the logic of their position."
"How was she to have known, until she came here, that the special consideration she had shown for his dignity as a man, while he was by definition a servant, would become his humiliation itself, the one thing there was to say between them that had any meaning."
"Of course, 'July' was a name for whites to use; for fifteen years they had not been told what the chief's subject was really called."
"She was unsteady with something that was not anger but a struggle: her inability to enter into a relation of subservience with him that she had never had with Bam."
Oh I could go on quoting such brilliant lines, fraught with underlying implications of life-changing proportions.
Thus, July's People is not just a fantastic meditation on inter-racial tension but also an attempt at acknowledging the humanity of the ones considered less human.
Gordimer doesn't merely highlight the ambiguity of the South African socio-political situation against the backdrop of the Anti-Apartheid movement or this imperfect intermingling of two cultures so disparate and alien to each other. She also poses a few fundamental questions which go far beyond the limits of a topic like racial discrimination. How do we live together in harmony? How do we come to terms with the differences(social, economic or racial) we perceive in others?
As I write this, I am repeatedly struck by my own inadequacy as a reviewer and the fact that a few measly passages in a review cannot even come close to recording the experience of reading this book. I am fumbling around for the right words to present to the future reader, all the vivid images and the indescribably complex human emotions that Gordimer has stitched together with the gift of her skillful yet subtle story-telling in this narrative.
At times I forgot I was reading this in an air-conditioned room and found myself in Maureen's shoes - having to wash the unhygienic dirty rags she uses in the absence of sanitary napkins to soak up her menstrual blood or squatting down together with the women of July's family and plucking edible vegetables. I could almost imagine myself living the same nightmare as the Smales family in that stifling atmosphere rife with Equatorial heat and humidity and taut with the tension between July's black people and his white employers.
I am letting Ms Gordimer take over from me again-
"On this night alone - Saturday - were the people awake among their sleeping companions, their animals; in the darkness(Drawing away, up from it, in the mind, like an eagle putting distance between his talons and the earth) the firelight of their party was a pocket torch held under the blanket of the universe. Heat and dark began to dissolve and she had to go in. There were no gutters; the soft rain was soundless on the thatch."
"It was the first time there had been rain since they came; the worn thatch darkened and began helplessly to conduct water down its smooth stalks; it dripped and dribbled. Insects crawled and flew in. They were activated by the moisture, broke from the chrysalis of darkness that had kept them in the walls, in the roof. She knew that the lamp attracted them but she kept it on. The flying cockroaches that hit her face were creatures she was familiar with."
And so I give July's People all the 5 stars. Because Nadine Gordimer excels at what she sets out to do here - dissect the human predicament with precision and deep sympathy, remove layering upon layering of man-made fabrications and reveal the crux of a human relationship as simple and complicated as Maureen and July's.
And if one thinks about it, she has titled this book ingeniously as well. What does she mean by July's people? July's own kith and kin, the anonymous and indistinguishable (to the white people) blacks of his own village? Does she mean July's white people who are also an indispensable part of his existence? Or is she referring to both at the same time? I think she left it as an unanswered question, left it for us to decide who July's people are.
And one has to admit, that it is certainly a question worth pondering.
October 1, 2017
Sometimes a fictional account of what didn't happen to a country tells you more about its inhabitants than a history book ever could.
What if South Africa had a different development? What if violence erupted and a liberal white family had to rely on their black servant to survive in his village, among his people? What would happen to their power balance, to their understanding of interracial relations, to their personal communication?
Gordimer analyses the tiny details in suddenly changed mutual behaviour to show the switching attitudes between former servants and masters, now put into the opposite roles. The daily routines of eating, sleeping, and personal hygiene gain new dimensions when the available space is shared between people who used to dominate, but are now dependent, and people who used to be humiliated, but are now carrying the mighty weapon of power.
The strength of the narrative lies in the characters' individual responses to the external situation, and in the fact that there is not a simplistic reversal of roles. Many patterns of interaction are deeply rooted and hard to get rid of - even under extreme stress. The story reveals the core of a segregated society, but tells the story of individual life changes at the same time.
Harsh, personal and realistic, it is Gordimer at her best.
What if South Africa had a different development? What if violence erupted and a liberal white family had to rely on their black servant to survive in his village, among his people? What would happen to their power balance, to their understanding of interracial relations, to their personal communication?
Gordimer analyses the tiny details in suddenly changed mutual behaviour to show the switching attitudes between former servants and masters, now put into the opposite roles. The daily routines of eating, sleeping, and personal hygiene gain new dimensions when the available space is shared between people who used to dominate, but are now dependent, and people who used to be humiliated, but are now carrying the mighty weapon of power.
The strength of the narrative lies in the characters' individual responses to the external situation, and in the fact that there is not a simplistic reversal of roles. Many patterns of interaction are deeply rooted and hard to get rid of - even under extreme stress. The story reveals the core of a segregated society, but tells the story of individual life changes at the same time.
Harsh, personal and realistic, it is Gordimer at her best.
September 14, 2016
This book was downright rough. It took a lot of googling and professor explanations to realize what was happening, because me and this writing style just did NOT click. That was the main downfall of this book, I definitely think: the writing was done so weirdly and awkwardly and hard to read. A lot of times, random lists and jagged sentences were thrown together, and with the dialogue having no speaker tags or even quotation marks, I was forced to get the audiobook just so that I could comprehend what the heck was going on and who was talking. In the end, I don't even feel like that helped a lot. The only thing I can say is that there were several times where this book had a sentence or two that really blew me away. There is definitely a lot of thought behind this book, which leads me to say that if perhaps I pick this book up in the future and give it more time (I had to read this entire thing in one week, amongst 4 other college classes), I would probably enjoy it more then. I think going into it knowing what to expect will allow a lot of the details to make sense and I would be able to see much more of what the characters are referring to in their vague dialogue and unexplained flashbacks to their past lives.
Bottom line: I just didn't understand 60% of this book.
Bottom line: I just didn't understand 60% of this book.
February 6, 2024
4.5 ⭐️ rounded up
Although July's People focuses on a heavy topic, a fictional civil war in the dying days of Apartheid in South Africa, I found it an enthralling read. Perhaps, this is due to my own profound connection with the country, which dates back more than a decade, when I lived there from 2010-2012 during my postdoctoral studies. Nadine Gordimer's prose is exquisite as she vividly captures the customs, culture and landscape of South Africa, both the Black and White worlds. The story centers around the tenuous survival of a white Afrikaner family, fleeing the urban violence of the civil war, who are sheltered by their Black 'houseboy' in an unnamed rural area of South Africa. They must come to terms with the harsh reality of their situation, while haunted by the awkwardness wrought by the Apartheid past. July's People is above all a story about the shifting sands of human relationships brought about by changing circumstances. It is a crucible for human behavior exploring the limits of love, trust, loyalty and friendship. I would highly recommend July’s People to anyone interested in delving into South African literature.
Although July's People focuses on a heavy topic, a fictional civil war in the dying days of Apartheid in South Africa, I found it an enthralling read. Perhaps, this is due to my own profound connection with the country, which dates back more than a decade, when I lived there from 2010-2012 during my postdoctoral studies. Nadine Gordimer's prose is exquisite as she vividly captures the customs, culture and landscape of South Africa, both the Black and White worlds. The story centers around the tenuous survival of a white Afrikaner family, fleeing the urban violence of the civil war, who are sheltered by their Black 'houseboy' in an unnamed rural area of South Africa. They must come to terms with the harsh reality of their situation, while haunted by the awkwardness wrought by the Apartheid past. July's People is above all a story about the shifting sands of human relationships brought about by changing circumstances. It is a crucible for human behavior exploring the limits of love, trust, loyalty and friendship. I would highly recommend July’s People to anyone interested in delving into South African literature.
September 6, 2019
Everything shines like blistering cobalt, cooper & gold: dialogue (precise & natural), character, prose, story, history, the resulting legend. "July's People" is all about tiny events that go all but unnoticed as whites and blacks try to hide from the civil war in 80's South Africa. The fractions of moments equal both salvation and apocalypse, & many times simultaneously. A huge question opens up above the whole enterprise. It is thought-provoking and meditative. The type of stuff to get lost in for a while...
It's an exemplary work of fiction. Let's rejoice at the synthesis between masterworks like the late great Edward Albee's play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" & Kazuo Ishiguro's future* "Remains of the Day."
*Written years waaay after "July's People."
It's an exemplary work of fiction. Let's rejoice at the synthesis between masterworks like the late great Edward Albee's play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" & Kazuo Ishiguro's future* "Remains of the Day."
*Written years waaay after "July's People."
August 1, 2016
The more I evolve as a reader, I find my five-star tastes vary from "the norm." But this doesn't deter me, for the way I read of Africa, is from the inside out. I read for texture and sound, for authenticity in 'voice.' These are all the things Gordimer does so well. When Gordimer writes of southern Africa, her characters embody post colonial strife, and her language is African rhythm: smooth, with strange sounds of syntax, with complexity embedded.
July, your people. Even in my part of West Africa, where I was born and raised, the phrase, your people is weighty. Talk to your people-o, someone may caution another. His people dat good people,someone else may say. Your people are the ones closest to you, the ones who claim your loyalty, or they may be the ones you don't even know, but whose heritage you share, so the ties bind you to your people.
July is respectful and charged with responsibility, but he also seems a bit sinister in the eyes of the white people who don't understand July's People.It takes them a while to see that they are also July's People, that this village black man, their former houseboy, has now assumed control of their lives and by doing so, he's protecting them. But the white man cannot fathom giving up control to his black worker, so with the loss of power, there is some distance and distrust. The white woman is confused: where is her place with the black women whose ways she doesn't understand, the village women whose men she once bossed around in the big city?
The Soweto Riots of 1976, the strikes of the 1980s, the moments when southern African blacks formed a resistance and were held back by "white Rhodesian immigrants, some former Selous Scouts…white mercenaries flown in from Bangui, Zaire, Uganda…" The Smaleses, July's former bosses, are liberals who "had fled the fighting in the streets, the danger for their children, the necessity to defend their lives in the name of ideals they didn't share in a destroyed white society they didn't believe in." So why did they stay? They soon find their normal worlds capsized, their living arrangements bare, their money useless, their relationship almost ruined:
This is exquisitely strange writing; bruising and beautifully nuanced, with a jarring density that remains; an ominous remembrance.
July, your people. Even in my part of West Africa, where I was born and raised, the phrase, your people is weighty. Talk to your people-o, someone may caution another. His people dat good people,someone else may say. Your people are the ones closest to you, the ones who claim your loyalty, or they may be the ones you don't even know, but whose heritage you share, so the ties bind you to your people.
July is respectful and charged with responsibility, but he also seems a bit sinister in the eyes of the white people who don't understand July's People.It takes them a while to see that they are also July's People, that this village black man, their former houseboy, has now assumed control of their lives and by doing so, he's protecting them. But the white man cannot fathom giving up control to his black worker, so with the loss of power, there is some distance and distrust. The white woman is confused: where is her place with the black women whose ways she doesn't understand, the village women whose men she once bossed around in the big city?
She rolled her jeans high, yellow bruises and fine, purple-red ruptured blood-vessels of her thighs, blue varicose ropes behind her knees, coarse hair of her calves against the white skin showed as if she had somehow forgotten her thirty-nine years and scars of childbearing and got into the brief shorts worn by the adolescent dancer on mine property. July's unsmiling wife was laughing; looking straight at those white legs: she did not turn away when Maureen caught her at it. Laughing: why shouldn't she? July's wife with those great hams outbalancing the rest of her - Maureen laughed back at her, at her small pretty tight-drawn face whose blackness was a closed quality acting upon it from within rather than a matter of pigment. Why should the white woman be ashamed to be seen in her weaknesses, blemishes, as she saw the other woman's?
The Soweto Riots of 1976, the strikes of the 1980s, the moments when southern African blacks formed a resistance and were held back by "white Rhodesian immigrants, some former Selous Scouts…white mercenaries flown in from Bangui, Zaire, Uganda…" The Smaleses, July's former bosses, are liberals who "had fled the fighting in the streets, the danger for their children, the necessity to defend their lives in the name of ideals they didn't share in a destroyed white society they didn't believe in." So why did they stay? They soon find their normal worlds capsized, their living arrangements bare, their money useless, their relationship almost ruined:
They made love, wrestling together with deep resonance coming to each through the other's body, in the presence of their children breathing close round them and the nightly intimacy of cockroaches, crickets, and mice feeling-out the darkness of the hut; of the sleeping settlement; of the bush.
This is exquisitely strange writing; bruising and beautifully nuanced, with a jarring density that remains; an ominous remembrance.
November 6, 2023
The story is about a white family who escape a civil war by the help of their faithful servant who shelters them from the angry and revenge-seeking black population of South Africa.
The story, which in itself was good, was very difficult to follow. The disjointed writing style and the countless use of parentheses made it almost unreadable.
Frequently I had to go back and read a sentence again to understand what was said and half the time I remained confused with a headache to boot.
The book read like a composition written by a 15 year old who likes to use big words, adverbs and adjectives, but doesn’t know how to arrange them in a coherent manner.
And in my opinion, use of parentheses, is a very lazy style and escape method.
The followings are excerpts:
Once, she knew-she always knew-her husband was awake although still breathing stertorously as a drunk. She heard herself speak. -Where is it?- She was seeing, feeling herself contained by the vehicle.
.................................................
It began prosaically weirdly. The strikes of 1980 had dragged on, one inspired or brought about by solidarity with another until the walkout and the shut-down were lived with as contiguous and continuous phenomena rather than industrial chaos. While the government continued to compose concessions to the black trade unions exquisitely worded to conceal exactly concomitant restrictions, the black workers concerned went hungry, angry, and workless anyway, and the shop-floor was often all that was left of burned-out factories.
................................................
July's knowledge or instinct that in country dorps the black petrol attendants often live in sheds behind the garage-and-general-store complex-on that they had kept going, on and on, although they had left with only enough fuel to take them less than half way…How that load of human beings with the haphazard few possessions there was time to take along (the bag of oranges Maureen had run back to fetch from the kitchen, the radio Bam remembered so that they could hear what was happening behind them as they fled) could hope to arrive at the destination placed before them-that was an impossibility from minute to minute.
....................................................
And this one was one of the most headache-inducing of all:
There was the risk that if, as he seemed to assume, he could reconcile them to the strange presence of whites in their midst and keep their mouths shut, he could not prevent other people, living scattered round about, who knew the look of every thorn-bush, from discovering there were thorn-bushes that overgrew a white man's car, and passing on that information to any black army patrol. If not acting upon it themselves?
The story, which in itself was good, was very difficult to follow. The disjointed writing style and the countless use of parentheses made it almost unreadable.
Frequently I had to go back and read a sentence again to understand what was said and half the time I remained confused with a headache to boot.
The book read like a composition written by a 15 year old who likes to use big words, adverbs and adjectives, but doesn’t know how to arrange them in a coherent manner.
And in my opinion, use of parentheses, is a very lazy style and escape method.
The followings are excerpts:
Once, she knew-she always knew-her husband was awake although still breathing stertorously as a drunk. She heard herself speak. -Where is it?- She was seeing, feeling herself contained by the vehicle.
.................................................
It began prosaically weirdly. The strikes of 1980 had dragged on, one inspired or brought about by solidarity with another until the walkout and the shut-down were lived with as contiguous and continuous phenomena rather than industrial chaos. While the government continued to compose concessions to the black trade unions exquisitely worded to conceal exactly concomitant restrictions, the black workers concerned went hungry, angry, and workless anyway, and the shop-floor was often all that was left of burned-out factories.
................................................
July's knowledge or instinct that in country dorps the black petrol attendants often live in sheds behind the garage-and-general-store complex-on that they had kept going, on and on, although they had left with only enough fuel to take them less than half way…How that load of human beings with the haphazard few possessions there was time to take along (the bag of oranges Maureen had run back to fetch from the kitchen, the radio Bam remembered so that they could hear what was happening behind them as they fled) could hope to arrive at the destination placed before them-that was an impossibility from minute to minute.
....................................................
And this one was one of the most headache-inducing of all:
There was the risk that if, as he seemed to assume, he could reconcile them to the strange presence of whites in their midst and keep their mouths shut, he could not prevent other people, living scattered round about, who knew the look of every thorn-bush, from discovering there were thorn-bushes that overgrew a white man's car, and passing on that information to any black army patrol. If not acting upon it themselves?
June 14, 2018
While reading certain books, like this one, I think of the numerous term papers that can be written from them. Nadine Gordimer's writing is concise, her ability to dissect relationships remarkable.
In this book, Gordimer envisions civil unrest after Black South Africans take up arms against the apartheid regime. July, a black servant to the Smales, a liberal white family, leads them to his rural village for safety.
Reading South African books from the days of the apartheid regime, I always feel a sense of claustrophobia. It happened with Bessie Head, it happened with J.M. Coetzee. One can literally feel the helplessness and frustrations of the characters, and it happened again with Gordimer and the characters in her book finding ways to cope with situations that are alien to them.
Through Maureen and Bamford Smale, Gordimer shows how being well meaning is fruitless in the face of systematic oppression. Having been well off and living in the suburbs of the city, they find themselves hiding in a thatched hut without the amenities they are used to and relying on the kindness of those that had been until their escape, less privileged than them.
One of the things that stuck with me from this story is how freedom for the oppressed has to go beyond sentiment. That small gestures and well meant thoughts are never enough in the face of systematic oppression.
It is only after I finished reading did I notice how well written and multidimensional the characters are. Even the minor characters that breeze in and out of the story, have been written so well, and all within 160 pages.
In this book, Gordimer envisions civil unrest after Black South Africans take up arms against the apartheid regime. July, a black servant to the Smales, a liberal white family, leads them to his rural village for safety.
Reading South African books from the days of the apartheid regime, I always feel a sense of claustrophobia. It happened with Bessie Head, it happened with J.M. Coetzee. One can literally feel the helplessness and frustrations of the characters, and it happened again with Gordimer and the characters in her book finding ways to cope with situations that are alien to them.
Through Maureen and Bamford Smale, Gordimer shows how being well meaning is fruitless in the face of systematic oppression. Having been well off and living in the suburbs of the city, they find themselves hiding in a thatched hut without the amenities they are used to and relying on the kindness of those that had been until their escape, less privileged than them.
One of the things that stuck with me from this story is how freedom for the oppressed has to go beyond sentiment. That small gestures and well meant thoughts are never enough in the face of systematic oppression.
It is only after I finished reading did I notice how well written and multidimensional the characters are. Even the minor characters that breeze in and out of the story, have been written so well, and all within 160 pages.
Read
January 12, 2022“The transport of a novel, the false awareness of being within another time,
place and life that was the pleasure of reading.”
I'm not a fan of Nadine Gordimer's and I never will be. Her style of writing is bland, colourless, devoid of any emotion. Not only did it bore me to pieces, it confused me more than anything. Thoughts, feelings and events blurred into one another and I had difficulties keeping them apart. Similarly, it felt like the plot was not moving forward. However, after reading an essay about apartheid, inequality and postapartheid utopia in July's People, I know that this is far from the truth. The novel examines these three topics in an eye-opening way and I learned a lot about what it would take - and what it took - to free South Africa from their racist administration. Gordimer points out that as a white person being against the inequality between blacks and whites in SA is only effective when one actively tries to dismantle this imbalance. Cultural assimilation, power and wealth distribution need to happen before we can talk about fairness and equality. All of this is shown in the ever-changing relationship between the formerly wealthy, white family and their black servant turned saviour. Now it is them who depend on him, not the other way around. It's an allegory of a utopian vision, one that eventually took place 13 years after this book was written.
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place and life that was the pleasure of reading.”
I'm not a fan of Nadine Gordimer's and I never will be. Her style of writing is bland, colourless, devoid of any emotion. Not only did it bore me to pieces, it confused me more than anything. Thoughts, feelings and events blurred into one another and I had difficulties keeping them apart. Similarly, it felt like the plot was not moving forward. However, after reading an essay about apartheid, inequality and postapartheid utopia in July's People, I know that this is far from the truth. The novel examines these three topics in an eye-opening way and I learned a lot about what it would take - and what it took - to free South Africa from their racist administration. Gordimer points out that as a white person being against the inequality between blacks and whites in SA is only effective when one actively tries to dismantle this imbalance. Cultural assimilation, power and wealth distribution need to happen before we can talk about fairness and equality. All of this is shown in the ever-changing relationship between the formerly wealthy, white family and their black servant turned saviour. Now it is them who depend on him, not the other way around. It's an allegory of a utopian vision, one that eventually took place 13 years after this book was written.
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August 15, 2023
July, in this context, is the name of a person, not a month – the first thing one needs to know about Nadine Gordimer’s excellent short novel July’s People. The National Party apartheid regime still held power in South Africa when Gordimer wrote this novel in 1981, and it is understandable that the Nobel Prize-winning author would want to set for herself the task of imagining what might happen in her native country if resistance to apartheid expanded into full-blown civil war. Yet July’s People is not a political novel first and foremost; rather, it is a thoughtful and perceptive study of how societies, families, and individuals change under stress.
The novel’s main characters are architect Bamford Smales and his wife Maureen, affluent suburban whites, and their erstwhile servant July. What had seemed like “normal” rioting in the black townships has suddenly morphed into something much more dramatic – “the gunned shopping malls and the blazing, unsold houses of a depressed market…the burst mains washing round bodies in their Saturday-morning garb of safari suits, and the heat-guided missiles that struck Boeings carrying those trying to take off from Jan Smuts Airport” (p. 9).
Appropriately, the details that one gets regarding the civil conflict are fragmentary and uncertain, capturing that sense of a society in breakdown. Maureen wonders what shape the future will take, listening to sporadic radio broadcasts from the urban frontlines of the civil conflict, including “reports of an RPG7 rocket-propelled grenade attack on the Carlton Centre [Africa’s tallest building], followed by occupation of the five-star hotel there by black forces” (p. 37). The Smaleses’ only hope lies in July, who has “turned out to be the chosen one in whose hands their lives were to be held; frog prince, saviour, July” (p. 9), and who spirits them out of Johannesburg to his ancestral village.
That movement from the Smaleses’ world to July’s, from a wealthy suburb to a humble village, is the first of many reversals that occur throughout July’s People. Indeed, the title reminds us that the Smaleses, who once might have referred to July as “their man,” are now “July’s people,” dependent upon him for protection and preservation. And then there is the additional irony that the Smaleses don't even know the real name of their saviour; "July" is a sort of convenience name that he has used when interacting with white South Africans. His true name, the name he was given at birth, the name he holds among his people, remains - like so much else in the book - a mystery.
The Smaleses were never adherents of apartheid – “They had fled the fighting in the streets, the danger for their children, the necessity to defend their lives in the name of ideals they didn’t share in a destroyed white society they didn’t believe in” (p. 51) – but Maureen still wonders what kind of society will exist after the conflict is over, and whether they will be able to go back, and whether they will want to.
Bam, gradually losing the artifacts that have always marked his place in society – his money, his vehicle, his rifle – becomes a passive shadow of his former self, spending more and more of his time among, and almost as one of, the children. July becomes more conscious of the power he wields: “Me? I must know who is stealing your things? Same like always. You make too much trouble for me” (p. 151). And Maureen, who has always fancied herself a gracious and tolerant liberal, must confront the limits of her own liberalism – “How was she to have known, until she came here, that the special consideration she had shown for his dignity as a man, while he was by definition a servant, would become his humiliation itself, the one thing there was to say between them that had any meaning” (p. 96).
When I visited South Africa in 2013, I saw a multicultural society of proud people working together to build a country that is much more powerful and important now as a democratic regional power than it ever was as a tyrannical bastion of white-minority rule. The novel’s scenario of a South African civil war – “several Sam missiles fell on the city in a rocket attack late on Friday night…Prudential Assurance Company building was the worst hit…an attempt to take over the SABC-TV studios in Auckland Park was repulsed” (pp. 50-51) - seemed only too possible at the time of the novel’s publication in 1981, the time just after the Soweto student uprising of 1976 and the Soweto riots of 1980.
Today, by contrast, one can walk in Johannesburg and see South Africa’s Constitutional Court, a symbol of democracy built upon the site of the apartheid regime’s much-feared Old Fort Prison. In Soweto, once a site of riots and necklacings and secret-police commando raids and unspeakable misery, visitors of all backgrounds are welcome to experience the community’s vibrant culture, to enjoy the food and music, to visit the historical sites and museums, and to walk along Vilakazi Street, the only street on earth to be home to two Nobel Peace Prize winners (President Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu).
That is how things turned out. July’s People, by contrast, captures how things might have turned out, and indeed demonstrates how many observers in those earlier times expected things to turn out. From its intense beginning through its marvelously ambiguous conclusion, July’s People is a great novel.
The novel’s main characters are architect Bamford Smales and his wife Maureen, affluent suburban whites, and their erstwhile servant July. What had seemed like “normal” rioting in the black townships has suddenly morphed into something much more dramatic – “the gunned shopping malls and the blazing, unsold houses of a depressed market…the burst mains washing round bodies in their Saturday-morning garb of safari suits, and the heat-guided missiles that struck Boeings carrying those trying to take off from Jan Smuts Airport” (p. 9).
Appropriately, the details that one gets regarding the civil conflict are fragmentary and uncertain, capturing that sense of a society in breakdown. Maureen wonders what shape the future will take, listening to sporadic radio broadcasts from the urban frontlines of the civil conflict, including “reports of an RPG7 rocket-propelled grenade attack on the Carlton Centre [Africa’s tallest building], followed by occupation of the five-star hotel there by black forces” (p. 37). The Smaleses’ only hope lies in July, who has “turned out to be the chosen one in whose hands their lives were to be held; frog prince, saviour, July” (p. 9), and who spirits them out of Johannesburg to his ancestral village.
That movement from the Smaleses’ world to July’s, from a wealthy suburb to a humble village, is the first of many reversals that occur throughout July’s People. Indeed, the title reminds us that the Smaleses, who once might have referred to July as “their man,” are now “July’s people,” dependent upon him for protection and preservation. And then there is the additional irony that the Smaleses don't even know the real name of their saviour; "July" is a sort of convenience name that he has used when interacting with white South Africans. His true name, the name he was given at birth, the name he holds among his people, remains - like so much else in the book - a mystery.
The Smaleses were never adherents of apartheid – “They had fled the fighting in the streets, the danger for their children, the necessity to defend their lives in the name of ideals they didn’t share in a destroyed white society they didn’t believe in” (p. 51) – but Maureen still wonders what kind of society will exist after the conflict is over, and whether they will be able to go back, and whether they will want to.
Bam, gradually losing the artifacts that have always marked his place in society – his money, his vehicle, his rifle – becomes a passive shadow of his former self, spending more and more of his time among, and almost as one of, the children. July becomes more conscious of the power he wields: “Me? I must know who is stealing your things? Same like always. You make too much trouble for me” (p. 151). And Maureen, who has always fancied herself a gracious and tolerant liberal, must confront the limits of her own liberalism – “How was she to have known, until she came here, that the special consideration she had shown for his dignity as a man, while he was by definition a servant, would become his humiliation itself, the one thing there was to say between them that had any meaning” (p. 96).
When I visited South Africa in 2013, I saw a multicultural society of proud people working together to build a country that is much more powerful and important now as a democratic regional power than it ever was as a tyrannical bastion of white-minority rule. The novel’s scenario of a South African civil war – “several Sam missiles fell on the city in a rocket attack late on Friday night…Prudential Assurance Company building was the worst hit…an attempt to take over the SABC-TV studios in Auckland Park was repulsed” (pp. 50-51) - seemed only too possible at the time of the novel’s publication in 1981, the time just after the Soweto student uprising of 1976 and the Soweto riots of 1980.
Today, by contrast, one can walk in Johannesburg and see South Africa’s Constitutional Court, a symbol of democracy built upon the site of the apartheid regime’s much-feared Old Fort Prison. In Soweto, once a site of riots and necklacings and secret-police commando raids and unspeakable misery, visitors of all backgrounds are welcome to experience the community’s vibrant culture, to enjoy the food and music, to visit the historical sites and museums, and to walk along Vilakazi Street, the only street on earth to be home to two Nobel Peace Prize winners (President Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu).
That is how things turned out. July’s People, by contrast, captures how things might have turned out, and indeed demonstrates how many observers in those earlier times expected things to turn out. From its intense beginning through its marvelously ambiguous conclusion, July’s People is a great novel.
November 28, 2021
At once you're a servant, living on the property of your Master(s) and then, when they need you the most, when they are thrust from their homes, left abandoned because of war, you are the one to be thankful for; not for your servitude, but for your caring nature, for your allegiance to a people that treated you well.
This poses the question: When do leaders become followers? When they have no other choice.
My first exposure to the Nobel Prize winning author Nadine Gordimer was at times an enlightening one, but also a 'scratch-your-head wondering about the style of prose' one. I can't say that I was brought in to her world easily, but perhaps only scratched the surface. A story with an interesting premise that involves the changing of the usual point of view where servant becomes the master of 5 people's lives, not in the sense of telling them what to do, but by holding their lives in his hands.
This is a novel that, if interested in the subject matter, leads you to learn about the conflict of the people of South Africa in the past and present time. This left me satisfied and I will read more of her in the future.
This poses the question: When do leaders become followers? When they have no other choice.
My first exposure to the Nobel Prize winning author Nadine Gordimer was at times an enlightening one, but also a 'scratch-your-head wondering about the style of prose' one. I can't say that I was brought in to her world easily, but perhaps only scratched the surface. A story with an interesting premise that involves the changing of the usual point of view where servant becomes the master of 5 people's lives, not in the sense of telling them what to do, but by holding their lives in his hands.
This is a novel that, if interested in the subject matter, leads you to learn about the conflict of the people of South Africa in the past and present time. This left me satisfied and I will read more of her in the future.
February 12, 2019
A short, but multi-layered novel. A white middle-class family, with a liberal world view and living in South-Africa at the time of apartheid, has to flee for a black military upraising with the help of Cubans and Russians. They are sheltered by their black servant July, in his little village.
Two theme's are worked out: the difficult process of adaption of the white family to living in a strange, 'uncivilized' environment, without their certainties. And the reversal of power-relations: the white family is dependent on their former servant, and their liberal world vision suddenly doesn't seem that morally superior any more.
Gordimer brings all this (and much more) in a masterly way, transferring the feeling of desorientation the white family suffers from, on the reader. One downside though: just as in Burger's Daughter, I had some difficulty with the writing style of Gordimer; there's something rough-unpolished in it, and that made the reading at times a bit stiff.
Two theme's are worked out: the difficult process of adaption of the white family to living in a strange, 'uncivilized' environment, without their certainties. And the reversal of power-relations: the white family is dependent on their former servant, and their liberal world vision suddenly doesn't seem that morally superior any more.
Gordimer brings all this (and much more) in a masterly way, transferring the feeling of desorientation the white family suffers from, on the reader. One downside though: just as in Burger's Daughter, I had some difficulty with the writing style of Gordimer; there's something rough-unpolished in it, and that made the reading at times a bit stiff.
June 16, 2010
I know, I know....I am supposed to have had some great cathartic experience from reading this book but it just did not happen. I don't particularly enjoy this style of writing. It seems disjointed and confusing and was like trying to read something written on a bumpy ride in the country. The story was okay, could see parts of where it was going. All in all, not enjoyable. I read it mainly because it was on my list of have to reads and I was very glad it was a short book and was very glad when I finally reached the end of the 184th page.
November 20, 2014
Published in 1981 during the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, Nadine Gordimer imagines a civil war where blacks overthrow whites. It's a fictional time of terrible violence where whites have to go into hiding to avoid being killed in Johannesburg. The Smales, a liberal white couple with three children, have employed July for fifteen years as a servant. They have treated him well so he takes the family to his rural black village to keep them safe.
In the village, a master/servant role reversal occurs where the Smales are now totally dependent on July for everything--their hut, their food, even their lives. July slowly loses his subservient attitude, and the Smales feel powerless and vulnerable. Having the keys to the vehicle, a yellow bakkie, symbolizes who has the power. In addition, the Smales had the problem of not understanding the language and culture of the village. Of course, July and other blacks had been experiencing the reverse problem when they went into the cities to work for English-speaking whites.
The ending was ambivalent which disappointed me in the sense of not having closure. But it was probably a very fitting and realistic ending for that time in South Africa. No one knew what the racial tensions would bring while ending apartheid.
7/14/14 Rest in Peace, Nadine Gordimer. The 90-year-old Nobel Prize winning author, known for her books about racial tensions in apartheid-era South Africa, has died.
In the village, a master/servant role reversal occurs where the Smales are now totally dependent on July for everything--their hut, their food, even their lives. July slowly loses his subservient attitude, and the Smales feel powerless and vulnerable. Having the keys to the vehicle, a yellow bakkie, symbolizes who has the power. In addition, the Smales had the problem of not understanding the language and culture of the village. Of course, July and other blacks had been experiencing the reverse problem when they went into the cities to work for English-speaking whites.
The ending was ambivalent which disappointed me in the sense of not having closure. But it was probably a very fitting and realistic ending for that time in South Africa. No one knew what the racial tensions would bring while ending apartheid.
7/14/14 Rest in Peace, Nadine Gordimer. The 90-year-old Nobel Prize winning author, known for her books about racial tensions in apartheid-era South Africa, has died.
August 8, 2022
July's People, by Nadine Gordimer.
This novel, written in 1981, has a simple plot: after the black population rebels against the whites, there's a civil war in South Africa. As no one is safe anymore, the Smales family decides to leave Johannesburg. There's no support, the Smales have nowhere to go, and their servant July, a black man who's been at their service for the last 15 years, invites them to his village, 600 km away.
The plot could be redundant in other writers' hands, but not with Nadine Gordimer. Her style, very much her own, comprises medium-long sentences with a peculiar hierarchy of subordinations within, thus avoiding a much common yet often irritating staccato effect, rendering the story a complex and sometimes cruelly ironic character. The master-servant and black-white dominance relations get, logically, reversed. Gordimer knows how to build suspense, and she excels in the short episodes and tense dialogues by which she depicts the downfall of a liberal white couple whose three children, unaware of the dangers surrounding them, adapt more naturally to a life of extreme poverty. By the end, Maureen, the white woman, doesn't even recognize her man, and she barely feels the impulse to protect her children. In the bush, the society the white people once envisioned has no reach nor significance. There are no angels, no saints, no innocents, no justice. The ultimate relationship between people is not that much different from that one can find among other primates.
A grim short novel that proves once again that Gordimer was indeed a world-class writer and that one does not need to produce big chunks of books to get top literature rightly delivered.
This novel, written in 1981, has a simple plot: after the black population rebels against the whites, there's a civil war in South Africa. As no one is safe anymore, the Smales family decides to leave Johannesburg. There's no support, the Smales have nowhere to go, and their servant July, a black man who's been at their service for the last 15 years, invites them to his village, 600 km away.
The plot could be redundant in other writers' hands, but not with Nadine Gordimer. Her style, very much her own, comprises medium-long sentences with a peculiar hierarchy of subordinations within, thus avoiding a much common yet often irritating staccato effect, rendering the story a complex and sometimes cruelly ironic character. The master-servant and black-white dominance relations get, logically, reversed. Gordimer knows how to build suspense, and she excels in the short episodes and tense dialogues by which she depicts the downfall of a liberal white couple whose three children, unaware of the dangers surrounding them, adapt more naturally to a life of extreme poverty. By the end, Maureen, the white woman, doesn't even recognize her man, and she barely feels the impulse to protect her children. In the bush, the society the white people once envisioned has no reach nor significance. There are no angels, no saints, no innocents, no justice. The ultimate relationship between people is not that much different from that one can find among other primates.
A grim short novel that proves once again that Gordimer was indeed a world-class writer and that one does not need to produce big chunks of books to get top literature rightly delivered.
April 28, 2010
This novel is my 95th book in my quest to read all the 1,021 individual books included in the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die - 2010 edition. I read somewhere that if you really get the very basic plot of all stories already written, they can be grouped into just a handful or so. I think this is true. Reading July's People made me remember the following novels (most of these are also 1001 books):
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou - because July's People is anti-apartheid too. However, this is different because the race that is being oppressed is the white being the minority in Johannesburg when the majority blacks seized the control of the government from the migrant whites. Thus, this reversal of fortune reminded me of that part in Black Like Me when John Howard Griffin returned to his white color while still living inside the black community.
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky - because of the exodus by the white rich family to the province or rural area. In July's People, the white Smales family (Bam, Maureen and their 3 small children: Victor, Gina and Royce) left the city and took shelter in the rural house of their servant for 15 years, a black man named July. The change in the Smales family lifestyle reminded me of the family of Suite Francaise's Charlotte Pericand and her two small children fleeing Paris to hide in in rural parts of France. This dramatic change in lifestyle of a family was also effectively shown in 1982 critically acclaimed Peque Gallaga's movie here in the Philippines: Oro, Plata, Mata. The character of Maya Valdez mouthing: Ang bahay sa ibabaw ng bundok! is still vivid in my mind after almost 30 years!
Lastly, in terms of writing, reading July's People reminded me of my favorite ever John Steinbeck's opus, The Grapes of Wrath because of its enthralling lush sad tone. At the start of each chapter, Ms. Gordimer, 1991 Nobel awardee for Literature, referred to a particular character as black or white. For example, instead of referring Maureen by her name, she used "white woman". It reminded me of how Mr. Steinbeck, himself a Nobel laureate for literature, alternately wrote the chapter by having a generic description of what is happening with the succeeding chapter narrating the actual characters. Unforgettable writing style: very clever, very brilliant.
Being a combination of the above great novels is in itself a feat that makes, for me, July's People a classic. The different parts are not original but the sum of those parts is original and something that I will remember probably until my twilight years.
Ms. Gordimer truly deserves her Nobel Prize for Literature! More, more, more novels please!
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou - because July's People is anti-apartheid too. However, this is different because the race that is being oppressed is the white being the minority in Johannesburg when the majority blacks seized the control of the government from the migrant whites. Thus, this reversal of fortune reminded me of that part in Black Like Me when John Howard Griffin returned to his white color while still living inside the black community.
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky - because of the exodus by the white rich family to the province or rural area. In July's People, the white Smales family (Bam, Maureen and their 3 small children: Victor, Gina and Royce) left the city and took shelter in the rural house of their servant for 15 years, a black man named July. The change in the Smales family lifestyle reminded me of the family of Suite Francaise's Charlotte Pericand and her two small children fleeing Paris to hide in in rural parts of France. This dramatic change in lifestyle of a family was also effectively shown in 1982 critically acclaimed Peque Gallaga's movie here in the Philippines: Oro, Plata, Mata. The character of Maya Valdez mouthing: Ang bahay sa ibabaw ng bundok! is still vivid in my mind after almost 30 years!
Lastly, in terms of writing, reading July's People reminded me of my favorite ever John Steinbeck's opus, The Grapes of Wrath because of its enthralling lush sad tone. At the start of each chapter, Ms. Gordimer, 1991 Nobel awardee for Literature, referred to a particular character as black or white. For example, instead of referring Maureen by her name, she used "white woman". It reminded me of how Mr. Steinbeck, himself a Nobel laureate for literature, alternately wrote the chapter by having a generic description of what is happening with the succeeding chapter narrating the actual characters. Unforgettable writing style: very clever, very brilliant.
Being a combination of the above great novels is in itself a feat that makes, for me, July's People a classic. The different parts are not original but the sum of those parts is original and something that I will remember probably until my twilight years.
Ms. Gordimer truly deserves her Nobel Prize for Literature! More, more, more novels please!
October 12, 2016
The author of this book, Nadine Gordimer won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. I am of the opinion that all too often this is awarded on political or social grounds, not for the excellence of writing.
The book does well draw the disintegrating situation in South Africa in the 1980s. Not merely the strikes, violence and abuses inflicted, but also the mistrust between the races. One sees both how the Blacks viewed Whites and the Whites viewed Blacks. What people said and what they thought. You get under the characters' skin and into their heads. I was left appalled by some of the South African Whites' views of Blacks and their manner of speaking to them.
I am not giving it more stars quite simply because I don't find the writing exceptional in any way. I liked it, no more than that.
The circumstances described are squalid. There is absolutely no humor. Maybe that doesn't belong here? I don't know, but I certainly would have appreciated it. I have read books about war where humor has been thrown in. It takes talent to do this in a suitable fashion, but it is possible.
The audibook is read by Nadia May. Do you want to know what I really think, or should I just say something polite? Maureen Smales is a central character. Nadia May's intonation makes her sound so darn snotty, it drove me crazy! OK, maybe she should sound this way, but it was exceedingly hard to listen to. The other intonations were fine. I am giving both the narration and the book a three star rating, which means I consider the book good and also worth listening to.
The book does well draw the disintegrating situation in South Africa in the 1980s. Not merely the strikes, violence and abuses inflicted, but also the mistrust between the races. One sees both how the Blacks viewed Whites and the Whites viewed Blacks. What people said and what they thought. You get under the characters' skin and into their heads. I was left appalled by some of the South African Whites' views of Blacks and their manner of speaking to them.
I am not giving it more stars quite simply because I don't find the writing exceptional in any way. I liked it, no more than that.
The circumstances described are squalid. There is absolutely no humor. Maybe that doesn't belong here? I don't know, but I certainly would have appreciated it. I have read books about war where humor has been thrown in. It takes talent to do this in a suitable fashion, but it is possible.
The audibook is read by Nadia May. Do you want to know what I really think, or should I just say something polite? Maureen Smales is a central character. Nadia May's intonation makes her sound so darn snotty, it drove me crazy! OK, maybe she should sound this way, but it was exceedingly hard to listen to. The other intonations were fine. I am giving both the narration and the book a three star rating, which means I consider the book good and also worth listening to.
December 8, 2021
This turned out to be a much more challenging book than I had anticipated. Gordimer doesn't have the most straightforward style. I admit to feeling a little out of my depth on this, both in terms of South African history and in a more general sense that I didn't always know what was going on.
Much like my reaction to Damon Galguts The Promise there is something here that is quite aloof and clinical. South African history obviously doesn't lend itself to "easy reading".
July's People , in particular, is one of those novels that would benefit from being discussed in a class about South African literature and history to contextualise it. It's not for me a novel to pick up and immediately get lost in.
So those three stars are more a reflection of my lack of preparation than anything else.
( Edited to add: this review doesn't really convey the many excellent aspects to this book that should really be elucidated on but I just don't feel up to the task of doing that. )
Much like my reaction to Damon Galguts The Promise there is something here that is quite aloof and clinical. South African history obviously doesn't lend itself to "easy reading".
July's People , in particular, is one of those novels that would benefit from being discussed in a class about South African literature and history to contextualise it. It's not for me a novel to pick up and immediately get lost in.
So those three stars are more a reflection of my lack of preparation than anything else.
( Edited to add: this review doesn't really convey the many excellent aspects to this book that should really be elucidated on but I just don't feel up to the task of doing that. )
January 4, 2018
Nadine Gordimer was easily one of the best writers in the world, and it was fitting that she garnered the most prestigious literary awards during her lifetime, including the Nobel. She had a long career in writing or producing an astonishing amount of fiction, short and long. The glittering quality of her writings stunned many readers.
She created memorable characters in her work which was often weaved around the turbulent political and social mileau of her native South Africa. Many of her fellow writers who happened to be black believed that despite her commitment to the “struggle”, and her revulsion towards racial prejudice, she lacked warmth and was somewhat like a cold, detached, skilled operative - but this itself is a compliment.
Truth is, Gordimer created convincing characters across the board, and no matter the criticism, she did empathize with them. This is clear enough in this novel, July's People.
Here the author powerfully imagines some sort of holocaust in South Africa - this was before ANC, Mandela rose to power. The tables are turned on the white minority who flee, or try to do so with their tails between their legs. Hence July erstwhile Black "boy", servant of a particular white family becomes something of a benefactor to the Maubaum family, hiding and protecting them in his rural black community as all hell breaks loose.
The ironic rippling undertones here remind one of the great Ayi Kwei Armah who could depict such scenarios with wry satire and realism. As witness the end of The Beautyful ones are not yet born, where at the end the former minion and lowly man changes his respectful mien towards the erstwhile very powerful rich man, Koomson; realising that the party man now has been brought low, losing all his temporary artificial power and influence.
In this work, July is revealed as a good man doing his best under the circumstances for the Maubams whom he actually had affection for.
It should be stressed that where distrust, prejudice, even hatred based on race take place, those who go out of their way to help or reach out to other “beleaguered” races are often viewed with suspicion and enmity by many others. An example from South African history was the relationship between Steve Biko and Donald Woods, the editor. Woods pulled out all the stops fighting for justice for Biko and his travails; but at the time how many people across the board appreciated Woods' sacrifices?
Rather irritatingly, the myth of "human smells" is echoed in this work. Apparently whites believe that it is blacks who smell - and often badly! Here the white family begins to smell since they no longer have the facilities and accoutrements of white middle class - special soaps, deodorants and the like. One would have thought that people would realise that all humans have their own smell, and if they do not wash or bathe regularly they would necessarily “smell" regardless of race or colour...
This book happily enough is fiction that was not mirrored in the verisimilitude of South African history. But in this work we have glimpses into the vagaries of human life irrespective of colour, race, class etc. Perhaps the moral is that we should all strive to be better, more humane, decent and more understanding people. Then of course there will be no need for apocalyptic proclivities and fear.
August 11, 2023
I thought this was well-written, but I didn't love it. Some books you can't wait to continue reading, but this felt more like homework.
Gordimer does a good job of showing the misassumptions and misunderstandings between the white couple and the black villagers who have taken them in. Also, Maureen and Bam may consider themselves "good" whites, but it is clear some (perhaps unconscious) feelings of white superiority are lurking not very far beneath the surface.
I didn't like the ending.
Finally, I really hated the use of dashes instead of quotation marks. It blurred the lines between dialogue and narration, and caused extra confusion because the dashes were also used liberally within sentences.
No more than 3 stars, alas.
Gordimer does a good job of showing the misassumptions and misunderstandings between the white couple and the black villagers who have taken them in. Also, Maureen and Bam may consider themselves "good" whites, but it is clear some (perhaps unconscious) feelings of white superiority are lurking not very far beneath the surface.
I didn't like the ending.
Finally, I really hated the use of dashes instead of quotation marks. It blurred the lines between dialogue and narration, and caused extra confusion because the dashes were also used liberally within sentences.
No more than 3 stars, alas.
January 19, 2022
A powerful novel from 1981 banned in apartheid South Africa. When civil war breaks out, July takes the white liberal family he works for back to his village for safety. I was immediately drawn into this story. The writing requires concentration, there’s a lot of understatement and there’s plenty of tension in this tale of role reversal, now the family is dependent on their black servant. The ending is abrupt and ambivalent which makes it less satisfying.
January 25, 2012
In Gordimer's slightly-alternate South Africa, tensions between blacks and whites escalates until all-out violence erupts. Shops and buildings are blown up and the whites are fleeing - but even planes are being blown up as they take off, so how is a white family to escape? The Smales family - Bram and Maureen and their three young children, Victor, Gina and Royce - are rescued by their black servant, July, who leads them out of the city and through the countryside, dodging patrols of armed black men, to his own tiny village of extended family members, where they learn that he is chief.
It doesn't take long for Maureen and Bram, two upper-class whites who have long considered themselves egalitarian and non-racist, to have their sense of gratitude towards July slip into mistrust and suspicion. They have a car, but have nowhere to go. They have a shotgun, which Bram thinks no one in the village knows about that he keeps stashed in the leaky thatch of the mud hut that was July's elderly mother's. And they have a few supplies that they brought with them. But out here in July's world, they find themselves dependent on him and his family - for food, wood for the fire, knowledge of how to live like this, and to help them navigate the culture and traditions. As the world they knew slips farther and farther away, and misunderstandings grow, the relationship between servant and his master and mistress becomes strained and complex.
I've had this sitting around for a few years now and I used the Around the World in 12 Books Challenge to finally read it (January was South Africa). I don't know a whole lot about South Africa or apartheid, only what I've gleaned over the years and a bit of the back-room stuff from Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine , so I didn't know at first that this book describes what Gordimer thought could happen, not what actually did (first published in 1981, at that time there were heated protests but not the violence described here nor the evacuation of whites from the country); it's still hugely plausible, and it's hard to feel real sympathy for the whites (something similar did happen in Zimbabwe later, with white farmers evicted, but that's different again).
Told mostly from Maureen's perspective, the story jolts around a fair bit, changing perspectives and switching to the past with barely any heads-up to warn you. In fact, the writing style is distinctive and takes some getting used to - the first few pages were hard and I worried about reading the whole thing, but once the narrative settles down you get the hang of it and let it take you where it will. But it is, ah, unique, and instead of quotation marks for dialogue you get "m" dashes - which is more than you get with some other authors! (yeah I'm looking at you, Jose Saramago!) I'll give you a taste (this layout doesn't allow for m-dashes, only n-dashes, so the dialogue doesn't stand out as clearly as it does in the book):
There were many things I liked about this novel. I liked the situation, the premise: wealthy white family used to their modern comforts suddenly find themselves living rough in the bush amongst black people - as a white person sitting comfortably in my home beside a fire in Toronto's winter, I can feel something akin to smug at this, and the belief that in such a situation I would do better, have a better understanding - there're no grounds for this, but it's a good exercise to isolate such feelings and face them so I can see my own white privilege for what it is: there. Because one of the things I felt this book did really well was highlight white ignorance, and white prejudice, and white privilege, and throw it back in our faces. It's not high-handed, it's not lecturing or moralising or obvious. It's much more subtle than that, and yet crystal-clear at the same time. The relationship between the Smales and July is well-established and detailed, from giving him their cast-offs (and later resenting him for it, likening it to stealing in their minds) to thinking they were so much better than their white friends in the way they treated their black servants. Now, in his village, he is in charge, but his own training and years of service keep him servile - at first, until their lack of trust becomes clear.
I also loved the setting, the descriptions of the mud huts that sound so unbelievably uncomfortable, especially during rain when it leaked, and all the insects that lived in the thatch come flying out; the food, the vegetation, women's work - so matter-of-fact and organic. It's paralleled by Maureen's fast reversion to the organic, by the simple fact of never being clean and giving up on "looking good".
There are also references to Maureen's vagina and menstruation that you could probably read symbolism into, but at the very least merely emphasise how stripped down to the basics of life the Smales have become, in combination with other things. At its heart, the characters are unlikeable because they, too, are stripped down to their basic humanity, and that humanity is not necessarily very pretty. Neither the blacks nor the whites are presented in romantic terms, which was a relief (though I didn't really expect it of Gordimer), and the story - which at 160 pages is quite short - was written, I suspect, carefully and with great thought for each and every word - even if it is hard to read at times.
There were some new insights and things to learn here, but it wasn't about politics or even the underlying social issues of apartheid, not really. It was about the small interactions of whites and blacks in South Africa, their inability to understand each other and each other's culture - almost deliberately, obstinately so. Watching this play out on such a small scale, it's clear that July's People is a character study, not a social justice piece. Yet, of course, the two are linked. Understanding, seeing, how people from two very different cultural understandings as well as class and caste, bring only their own understanding of their own culture with them, that even when they try to do things the way the other does them, it is only pretend. Like July learning to drive, bringing back objects and picking up mannerisms from the city. Like Maureen picking food directly from the ground alongside the women. Even the children, who make friends and pick up words in the village language, are only playing. They still expect at any day to return to the life they're more familiar with.
And then there's the weird play on sexual infidelity that goes on between Maureen and July, where language contains double-meaning to imply sex, showing how sexualised our dealings along different class lines can be. There are scenes that seem at first sexually charged because of the language used, and yet there is no sexual attraction between the two.
It is the individual words and turns-of-phrase, as much as the overall reflection, that gives it that double edge - words like "circumstantial evidence", as if they're guilty of having an affair that might easily be discovered, now. The sense of each of them checking for other people, judging whether it's safe to say what's in their hearts. But there's nothing sexual between them at all. There is also a reversal of power, where Maureen seems to be asking July's permission to do this or that, which also reminded me of reversed positions: he the master, she the servant - or concubine.
This is one of those books, and the writing is that kind of writing, where as you read you get these impressions, and they're almost impossible to pin down - I know I haven't done it effectively. All I can say is, there were some weird dynamics going on, and I think the double-meanings and undertones/underplays were deliberate on Gordimer's part. It's clever, but slippery like smoke or silk.
I liked this book, but it at times repulsed me, the reader, it alienated me: like it didn't want to be liked. It wanted to be listened to and to shake you from your comfort zone. The narrative style is definitely never going to give you a chance to relax, but it's hugely thought-provoking, and there are a lot of things going on here that I haven't even mentioned. For such a short book, it packs quite a wallop. It has an abrupt, vague ending that implies danger and the end of their somewhat peaceful interlude in the bush, but it could also be rescue - we don't know. And that ambiguity, that "not knowing", is very much in tone with the whole novel. They don't know what's going on back in the cities, they don't know how they can get out of the country or even if they should. They are ignorant, here in July's village, of what's going on and how to live here. Displaced people.
Overall, a thought-provoking, artistic novel of depth and honesty, but one that needs to be read more than once to be fully appreciated.
It doesn't take long for Maureen and Bram, two upper-class whites who have long considered themselves egalitarian and non-racist, to have their sense of gratitude towards July slip into mistrust and suspicion. They have a car, but have nowhere to go. They have a shotgun, which Bram thinks no one in the village knows about that he keeps stashed in the leaky thatch of the mud hut that was July's elderly mother's. And they have a few supplies that they brought with them. But out here in July's world, they find themselves dependent on him and his family - for food, wood for the fire, knowledge of how to live like this, and to help them navigate the culture and traditions. As the world they knew slips farther and farther away, and misunderstandings grow, the relationship between servant and his master and mistress becomes strained and complex.
I've had this sitting around for a few years now and I used the Around the World in 12 Books Challenge to finally read it (January was South Africa). I don't know a whole lot about South Africa or apartheid, only what I've gleaned over the years and a bit of the back-room stuff from Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine , so I didn't know at first that this book describes what Gordimer thought could happen, not what actually did (first published in 1981, at that time there were heated protests but not the violence described here nor the evacuation of whites from the country); it's still hugely plausible, and it's hard to feel real sympathy for the whites (something similar did happen in Zimbabwe later, with white farmers evicted, but that's different again).
Told mostly from Maureen's perspective, the story jolts around a fair bit, changing perspectives and switching to the past with barely any heads-up to warn you. In fact, the writing style is distinctive and takes some getting used to - the first few pages were hard and I worried about reading the whole thing, but once the narrative settles down you get the hang of it and let it take you where it will. But it is, ah, unique, and instead of quotation marks for dialogue you get "m" dashes - which is more than you get with some other authors! (yeah I'm looking at you, Jose Saramago!) I'll give you a taste (this layout doesn't allow for m-dashes, only n-dashes, so the dialogue doesn't stand out as clearly as it does in the book):
July broke into snickering embarrassment at her ignorance of a kind of authority not understood - his; and anyway, he had told them - everybody - about the vehicle.
--Told them what?-- She was confident of his wily good sense; he had worked for her for years. Often Bam couldn't follow his broken English, but he and she understood each other well.
--I tell them you give it to me.--
Bam blew laughter. --Who'll believe that.--
--They know, they know what it is happening, the trouble in town. The white people are chased away from their houses and we take. Everybody is like that, isn't it?--
--But you can't drive.-- She was anxious, for their safety, he should be believed.
--How they know I'm not driving? Everybody is know I'm living fifteen years in town, I'm knowing plenty things.-- [p.13]
There were many things I liked about this novel. I liked the situation, the premise: wealthy white family used to their modern comforts suddenly find themselves living rough in the bush amongst black people - as a white person sitting comfortably in my home beside a fire in Toronto's winter, I can feel something akin to smug at this, and the belief that in such a situation I would do better, have a better understanding - there're no grounds for this, but it's a good exercise to isolate such feelings and face them so I can see my own white privilege for what it is: there. Because one of the things I felt this book did really well was highlight white ignorance, and white prejudice, and white privilege, and throw it back in our faces. It's not high-handed, it's not lecturing or moralising or obvious. It's much more subtle than that, and yet crystal-clear at the same time. The relationship between the Smales and July is well-established and detailed, from giving him their cast-offs (and later resenting him for it, likening it to stealing in their minds) to thinking they were so much better than their white friends in the way they treated their black servants. Now, in his village, he is in charge, but his own training and years of service keep him servile - at first, until their lack of trust becomes clear.
--You say I can come inside?-- He used to have the habit of knocking at a door, asking, The master he say I can come in?, and they had tried to train him to drop the 'master' for the ubiquitously respectful 'sir'. He had an armful of wood under a torn fertilizer bag; of course (and he was right) it would not have occurred to them to bring some wood into shelter when the rain began. --You make small fire inside today, s'coming little bit cold.-- Royce was coughing himself awake. --Yes, you see-- The child's gaze came to consciousness on him, restfully, confident. He had dropped his city plastic raincoat and was the familiar figure bending about some task, khaki-trousered backside higher than felted black head - he began at once to lay a hearth-fire. [p.53]
I also loved the setting, the descriptions of the mud huts that sound so unbelievably uncomfortable, especially during rain when it leaked, and all the insects that lived in the thatch come flying out; the food, the vegetation, women's work - so matter-of-fact and organic. It's paralleled by Maureen's fast reversion to the organic, by the simple fact of never being clean and giving up on "looking good".
The sun brought the steamy smell of urine-wet cloth from the bundles of baby on the mothers' backs. The women hitched up their skirts in vleis and their feet spread, ooze coming up between their toes, like the claws of marsh-birds; walking on firm ground, the coating of mud dried matt in the sun and shod them to mid-calf. [Maureen] rolled her jeans high, yellow bruises and fine, purple-red ruptured blood-vessels of her thighs, blue varicose ropes behind her knees, coarse hair of her calves against the white skin showed as if she had somehow forgotten her thirty-nine years and scars of child-bearing and got in the brief shorts worn by the adolescent dancer on mine property. [p.92]
Her neck was weathered red and over-printed with dark freckles down to a half-circle bisected with a V, the limits of the T-shirt and cotton blouse which were her wardrobe. [Bam] would never have believed that pale hot neck under long hair when she was young could become her father's neck that he remembered in a Sunday morning bowling shirt. [p.90]
There are also references to Maureen's vagina and menstruation that you could probably read symbolism into, but at the very least merely emphasise how stripped down to the basics of life the Smales have become, in combination with other things. At its heart, the characters are unlikeable because they, too, are stripped down to their basic humanity, and that humanity is not necessarily very pretty. Neither the blacks nor the whites are presented in romantic terms, which was a relief (though I didn't really expect it of Gordimer), and the story - which at 160 pages is quite short - was written, I suspect, carefully and with great thought for each and every word - even if it is hard to read at times.
There were some new insights and things to learn here, but it wasn't about politics or even the underlying social issues of apartheid, not really. It was about the small interactions of whites and blacks in South Africa, their inability to understand each other and each other's culture - almost deliberately, obstinately so. Watching this play out on such a small scale, it's clear that July's People is a character study, not a social justice piece. Yet, of course, the two are linked. Understanding, seeing, how people from two very different cultural understandings as well as class and caste, bring only their own understanding of their own culture with them, that even when they try to do things the way the other does them, it is only pretend. Like July learning to drive, bringing back objects and picking up mannerisms from the city. Like Maureen picking food directly from the ground alongside the women. Even the children, who make friends and pick up words in the village language, are only playing. They still expect at any day to return to the life they're more familiar with.
And then there's the weird play on sexual infidelity that goes on between Maureen and July, where language contains double-meaning to imply sex, showing how sexualised our dealings along different class lines can be. There are scenes that seem at first sexually charged because of the language used, and yet there is no sexual attraction between the two.
But as soon as [Daniel] was ten yards off [Maureen and July] both knew it was a pretext to get him out of the way. Maureen felt it had been decided she had come to look for July; helpless before the circumstantial evidence that they were now alone, again, as they were when he came to the hut and she was aware he was looking behind her to see if anyone was inside. [p.95]
It is the individual words and turns-of-phrase, as much as the overall reflection, that gives it that double edge - words like "circumstantial evidence", as if they're guilty of having an affair that might easily be discovered, now. The sense of each of them checking for other people, judging whether it's safe to say what's in their hearts. But there's nothing sexual between them at all. There is also a reversal of power, where Maureen seems to be asking July's permission to do this or that, which also reminded me of reversed positions: he the master, she the servant - or concubine.
--Anyway, I don't want the other women to find food for my family. I must do it myself.-- But here they both knew the illusion of that statement, even while they let it stand. July's women, July's family - she and her family were fed by them, succoured by them, hidden by them. She looked at her servant: they [the Smales] were their creatures, like their cattle and pigs.
--The women have their work. They must do it. This is their place, we are always living here and they are doing all things, all things how it must be. You don't need work for them in their place.--
[...]
--I like to be with other women sometimes. And there are the children, too. We manage to talk a bit. I've found out Martha does understand - a little. Afrikaans, not English. It's just that she's shy to try.--
The pleasant smile of her old position; at the same time using his wife's name with the familiarity of women for one another.
He settled stockily on his legs. --It's no good for you to go out there with the women.--
She tackled him. --Why? But why?--
--No good.-- [pp.96-7]
This is one of those books, and the writing is that kind of writing, where as you read you get these impressions, and they're almost impossible to pin down - I know I haven't done it effectively. All I can say is, there were some weird dynamics going on, and I think the double-meanings and undertones/underplays were deliberate on Gordimer's part. It's clever, but slippery like smoke or silk.
I liked this book, but it at times repulsed me, the reader, it alienated me: like it didn't want to be liked. It wanted to be listened to and to shake you from your comfort zone. The narrative style is definitely never going to give you a chance to relax, but it's hugely thought-provoking, and there are a lot of things going on here that I haven't even mentioned. For such a short book, it packs quite a wallop. It has an abrupt, vague ending that implies danger and the end of their somewhat peaceful interlude in the bush, but it could also be rescue - we don't know. And that ambiguity, that "not knowing", is very much in tone with the whole novel. They don't know what's going on back in the cities, they don't know how they can get out of the country or even if they should. They are ignorant, here in July's village, of what's going on and how to live here. Displaced people.
Overall, a thought-provoking, artistic novel of depth and honesty, but one that needs to be read more than once to be fully appreciated.
March 21, 2022
Published before the end of apartheid, this book imagines the white Smales family, living in South Africa, taken in by its black servant, July. July rescues the family from the violence in Johannesburg and has taken them to his remote village. They are now living in a one-room mud hut on July’s property. Their experiences are narrated from the perspective of Maureen Smales, wife of Bamford and mother of three children.
It is a role reversal that highlights the inequities of apartheid. Maureen, though she considers herself liberal, cannot let go of her privilege, even as her family depends on July for the basic necessities of survival. I found it realistic that the children accept the changes readily, while the adults struggle. The novel explores themes of race, identity, loyalty, and equality.
It is a role reversal that highlights the inequities of apartheid. Maureen, though she considers herself liberal, cannot let go of her privilege, even as her family depends on July for the basic necessities of survival. I found it realistic that the children accept the changes readily, while the adults struggle. The novel explores themes of race, identity, loyalty, and equality.
August 28, 2023
You wake up one morning and you realize you and your family are in danger. You are no longer safe in your home in Johannesburg because of the popular uprising against the apartheid. You consider yourself to be a liberal white, someone who supports civil liberties and equality for all. But that makes no difference. You will be targeted if you stay in your home. What do you do? Where can you go?
This is the situation of the Smales family in July's People by Nadine Gordimer. Mother, father, and their three children are out of options. So July, their servant of 15 years, offers to take them back to his village. For the first time in their lives, the Smales find themselves living under primitive conditions in a barely habitable dwelling with no running water and no proper sanitation. They have nowhere else to go and are entirely dependent on July for their survival. The balance of power has shifted. How July and the Smales navigate this shift is the subject of Gordimer’s novel.
The tension surfaces most clearly in Maureen Smales’ interaction with July and in her attempts to navigate a space for herself in July’s village. It does so initially in the details of everyday life. It is no longer relevant to sustain the master/servant relationship when the daily routines of eating, sleeping, cooking, and personal hygiene are shared on an intimate level. Eventually, the tension comes to a boil when July confronts Maureen because of her past treatment of him as her house boy. She is shocked by his accusation since she considered herself to be compassionate and humane toward July. But what she comes to realize is that no matter how compassionate or humane she had been, the very nature of their relationship and the context under which they operated deprived July of his dignity. In the face of systemic oppression, kind gestures are ultimately meaningless.
Gordimer’s exploration of the July/Smales relationship is a microcosm of the shift in power that occurs on a large political scale. The two sides struggle to find a balance, to ascertain how to view themselves, how to view each other, and how to interact with each other under these new circumstances. Gordimer does not provide any easy answers. The patterns of behavior are so ingrained that it is not easy to transcend them. The novel ends inconclusively with Maureen running toward the sound of a helicopter which may or may not be their salvation. The future is uncertain for the Smales and for July and his people.
Gordimer packs a lot in this very short novel. The characters are complex and multidimensional. They show their anxieties, conflicts, and struggles as they try to adjust to their new circumstances and shifting power structure. The dialog was authentic. July’s cadences and diction were especially effective in conveying his voice. The imagery captured the sights, sounds, and smells of a primitive village lacking in all modern conveniences.
This is not a light read, but it is a powerful one. Recommended.
This is the situation of the Smales family in July's People by Nadine Gordimer. Mother, father, and their three children are out of options. So July, their servant of 15 years, offers to take them back to his village. For the first time in their lives, the Smales find themselves living under primitive conditions in a barely habitable dwelling with no running water and no proper sanitation. They have nowhere else to go and are entirely dependent on July for their survival. The balance of power has shifted. How July and the Smales navigate this shift is the subject of Gordimer’s novel.
The tension surfaces most clearly in Maureen Smales’ interaction with July and in her attempts to navigate a space for herself in July’s village. It does so initially in the details of everyday life. It is no longer relevant to sustain the master/servant relationship when the daily routines of eating, sleeping, cooking, and personal hygiene are shared on an intimate level. Eventually, the tension comes to a boil when July confronts Maureen because of her past treatment of him as her house boy. She is shocked by his accusation since she considered herself to be compassionate and humane toward July. But what she comes to realize is that no matter how compassionate or humane she had been, the very nature of their relationship and the context under which they operated deprived July of his dignity. In the face of systemic oppression, kind gestures are ultimately meaningless.
Gordimer’s exploration of the July/Smales relationship is a microcosm of the shift in power that occurs on a large political scale. The two sides struggle to find a balance, to ascertain how to view themselves, how to view each other, and how to interact with each other under these new circumstances. Gordimer does not provide any easy answers. The patterns of behavior are so ingrained that it is not easy to transcend them. The novel ends inconclusively with Maureen running toward the sound of a helicopter which may or may not be their salvation. The future is uncertain for the Smales and for July and his people.
Gordimer packs a lot in this very short novel. The characters are complex and multidimensional. They show their anxieties, conflicts, and struggles as they try to adjust to their new circumstances and shifting power structure. The dialog was authentic. July’s cadences and diction were especially effective in conveying his voice. The imagery captured the sights, sounds, and smells of a primitive village lacking in all modern conveniences.
This is not a light read, but it is a powerful one. Recommended.
February 16, 2017
The crazy thing is that this is fiction: apartheid in South Africa somehow didn't end in war. People actually got together and said this isn't going to work, and they had an election, and Mandela won, and that was that. (This is the short version, okay?)
So July's People is sortof science fiction. Written in 1981, about a decade before apartheid fell, it presents how Gordimer, a white anti-apartheid activist and a Nobel prize winner, predicted the fall would go. Her white protagonists (also anti-apartheid) flee their home in Johannesburg when war breaks out and take shelter with July, who had been one of their servants, in his village. It's a small-scale story, focusing on the two families far from the main conflict. The balance of power shifts. There is confusion over who now owns the family car. It's a metaphor! It's fun to think about whether it's a utopian or dystopian novel.
The style is cold, a little removed, sometimes hard to follow. You start in media res, unsure of what's going on. I wasn't fully engaged. It's been accused of being patronizing toward blacks. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It's complicated: no one is entirely good or bad. The white family's heart is in the right place, but they're way out of their element. July himself is opaque, purposefully but frustratingly. Gordimer doesn't tie the story up for us:
I liked this but I didn't love it.
So July's People is sortof science fiction. Written in 1981, about a decade before apartheid fell, it presents how Gordimer, a white anti-apartheid activist and a Nobel prize winner, predicted the fall would go. Her white protagonists (also anti-apartheid) flee their home in Johannesburg when war breaks out and take shelter with July, who had been one of their servants, in his village. It's a small-scale story, focusing on the two families far from the main conflict. The balance of power shifts. There is confusion over who now owns the family car. It's a metaphor! It's fun to think about whether it's a utopian or dystopian novel.
The style is cold, a little removed, sometimes hard to follow. You start in media res, unsure of what's going on. I wasn't fully engaged. It's been accused of being patronizing toward blacks. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It's complicated: no one is entirely good or bad. The white family's heart is in the right place, but they're way out of their element. July himself is opaque, purposefully but frustratingly. Gordimer doesn't tie the story up for us:
I liked this but I didn't love it.
February 7, 2017
This is a brilliantly-written novella, though the style takes a little getting used to. The writing is densely packed with meaning but at the same time quite spare; every word and its placement counts.
July’s People was first published in 1981, during the time of apartheid and unrest in South Africa, and it posited a violent near future for the country – one that did not, in the end, come to pass, but that might have under slightly different circumstances. A liberal white couple and their three young children flee the city to take refuge with their longtime servant, July, in his village in the bush. This book captures the subtle shift in the balance of power between the Smales and July, as the middle-class white family tries to adapt to subsistence life and the expectations and illusions of apartheid society break down.
This is a story that runs narrow but deep: but for a few flashbacks from Maureen Smales, it takes place entirely in the tiny village over the span of a few weeks, with a cast consisting only of the principals and a few villagers, yet it covers more ground than many a longer book. It is packed with vivid imagery, so that the reader can practically see, smell, and touch each location. And the characters are delineated with equal precision, entirely real and complex.
My reservation about the book is its abrupt ending, an ambiguous cliffhanger that doesn’t quite bring the plot arc to a close. I suspect such an open-ended finale carried more weight in 1981 (when its readers had to decide what direction to take their country) than it does 35 years later.
At any rate, this is an excellent piece of literature that I would certainly recommend. Do be aware that it provides more intellectual enjoyment than easy entertainment, but readers seeking the former will be richly rewarded.
July’s People was first published in 1981, during the time of apartheid and unrest in South Africa, and it posited a violent near future for the country – one that did not, in the end, come to pass, but that might have under slightly different circumstances. A liberal white couple and their three young children flee the city to take refuge with their longtime servant, July, in his village in the bush. This book captures the subtle shift in the balance of power between the Smales and July, as the middle-class white family tries to adapt to subsistence life and the expectations and illusions of apartheid society break down.
This is a story that runs narrow but deep: but for a few flashbacks from Maureen Smales, it takes place entirely in the tiny village over the span of a few weeks, with a cast consisting only of the principals and a few villagers, yet it covers more ground than many a longer book. It is packed with vivid imagery, so that the reader can practically see, smell, and touch each location. And the characters are delineated with equal precision, entirely real and complex.
My reservation about the book is its abrupt ending, an ambiguous cliffhanger that doesn’t quite bring the plot arc to a close. I suspect such an open-ended finale carried more weight in 1981 (when its readers had to decide what direction to take their country) than it does 35 years later.
At any rate, this is an excellent piece of literature that I would certainly recommend. Do be aware that it provides more intellectual enjoyment than easy entertainment, but readers seeking the former will be richly rewarded.
April 29, 2017
This fiction novel was first published in 1981, thus 10 years before the end of Apartheid in South Africa. Therefore, at that time, it would have been considered a futuristic fiction about what would happen to the White South Africans if their fellow black citizens would engage in a civil war against them and would chase them away out of the country or just killed them like it had happened in other African countries.
This novel follows a White couple and their 3 children, wealthy suburbans, civilians with beliefs of anti-violence against blacks, who when the civil war comes near to their house, have no choice, but to follow their black servant of 15 years to his native bush village and hide there. The author did a great job of demonstrating that the white couple were at loss on how to try to survive this unprecedented event and situation, were becoming dependent of their servant while he used to be dependent on them, and how their interactions changed now that the roles are reversed. This novel show the differences in understanding and interpretations the Whites have on the Blacks in South Africa despite some of the blacks work in the house for the White during many years and/or living in the same country.
There is one huge put-off in this book that almost caused me to stop reading. I had way too much difficulty reading the English language in this book, especially, the first two chapters. I've read many fiction and non-fiction novels in English and never had any problems until this book. From the beginning, many sentences have an awkward and complex structure making it difficult for me to read and understand that phrase. Many unknown or complex vocabulary were also used. Something was not right with the English used? Is it me? or is it the eventual translation from Afrikaners to English? or is the English language used in South Africa very different from British and USA's English? I don't know. After the first two chapters, I had less difficulty reading and understanding.
The fact that Nadine Gordimer wrote this futuristic fiction novel 10 years before the end of the Apartheid is very impressive. However, it might seem unnecessary to read this novel years after the end of the Apartheid.
This novel follows a White couple and their 3 children, wealthy suburbans, civilians with beliefs of anti-violence against blacks, who when the civil war comes near to their house, have no choice, but to follow their black servant of 15 years to his native bush village and hide there. The author did a great job of demonstrating that the white couple were at loss on how to try to survive this unprecedented event and situation, were becoming dependent of their servant while he used to be dependent on them, and how their interactions changed now that the roles are reversed. This novel show the differences in understanding and interpretations the Whites have on the Blacks in South Africa despite some of the blacks work in the house for the White during many years and/or living in the same country.
There is one huge put-off in this book that almost caused me to stop reading. I had way too much difficulty reading the English language in this book, especially, the first two chapters. I've read many fiction and non-fiction novels in English and never had any problems until this book. From the beginning, many sentences have an awkward and complex structure making it difficult for me to read and understand that phrase. Many unknown or complex vocabulary were also used. Something was not right with the English used? Is it me? or is it the eventual translation from Afrikaners to English? or is the English language used in South Africa very different from British and USA's English? I don't know. After the first two chapters, I had less difficulty reading and understanding.
The fact that Nadine Gordimer wrote this futuristic fiction novel 10 years before the end of the Apartheid is very impressive. However, it might seem unnecessary to read this novel years after the end of the Apartheid.
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November 3, 2014For whatever reason, I've become friends with a fair number of white South Africans lately. And while they are all deeply regretful of the apartheid era, there is a sort of tension there, a feeling that despite their modern, liberal attitudes, a lot is being unsaid to me, the outsider, about the issue of race.
And Gordimer, writing at the height of the apartheid era, was able to crack just that. Our primary characters are decent white people who suddenly find themselves in unfamiliar terrain. And while they're treated well enough by their hosts, the simmering resentments and misunderstandings and prejudices are all still omnipresent. Ambiguity is the name of the game for Gordimer. The ending is still a question mark in my mind. I have no idea what to make of it, but I know that I like it.
And Gordimer, writing at the height of the apartheid era, was able to crack just that. Our primary characters are decent white people who suddenly find themselves in unfamiliar terrain. And while they're treated well enough by their hosts, the simmering resentments and misunderstandings and prejudices are all still omnipresent. Ambiguity is the name of the game for Gordimer. The ending is still a question mark in my mind. I have no idea what to make of it, but I know that I like it.
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