Raul's Reviews > July's People

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.