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No Time Like The Present (2012)

by Nadine Gordimer(Favorite Author)

3.15 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0374709122 (ISBN13: 9780374709129)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

review 1: Although this is a somewhat difficult book to read in that Ms Gordimer has deviated from her normal writing style, it in no way detracts frim what is an excellent book.The stilted narration of the lives of 2 ex ANC comrades, one white and one black, set against the backdrop of contemporary, post apartheid South Africa is compelling in its depiction of the betrayal of the struggke by Zuma and his corrupt cronies.The novel also accurately identifies the irony of the black on black violence through the explosion of xenophobia that now exists in a country which is now the most unequal on the planet in terms of wealth distribution.After having spent a lifetime of writing bravely about the injusticies of the Afrikaaner led government, the author's disallusionment with the latter... more day beloved country is evident.
review 2: He is white and she is black. They were comrades and then lovers and then married (illegal in South Africa) and then parents of a little girl. At the home of another 'comrade', "They're all young but it's as if they are old men living in the past, there everything happened. Their experience of life defined: now is everything after. Detention cells, the anecdotes fromo camp in Angola, the misunderstanding with the Cubans who came - so determinately, idealistically brave - to support this Struggle at the risk of their own lives, the clash of personalities, personal habits in the isolation of acadres, all contained by comradeship of danger, the presence of death eavesdropping always close by in the desert, the bush."And now? In South Africa what can take place in the life of this small family in the new democracy with the new political leaders with the old antipathies just as real?Gordimer's writing style is very terse and repetitive and initially annoying. Eventually I found myself skimming the repetitive bits. It was if she had to remind you why some event was more significant to one of the main characters by reminding you again that they had been part of The Struggle against apartheid. I think it is worth reading because in the end it is about ordinary, real, not perfect life and how we approach it in our thoughts and do or don't respond with action. less

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