Not a good day, so I returned to the books.
I recently finished Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People, and while it was not a page turner, it was so beautifully written that I’ve just ordered her The Pickup. Some criticism of her is that she’s a (gasp!) unconventional writer. I like that, her sentences are so poetic, her observations razor-sharp. The story follows the Smales family in South Africa, who escape terror in the city by returning to the village of their servant, July. The book is full of the subtleties of race and marriage relations, and how those weak links break. These don’t make much sense out of context, but they’re my favorite sentences in the book.
…
The subtlety of it was nothing new. People in the relation they had been in are used to have to interpret what is never said, between them.
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–African people like money.– The insult of refusing to meet her on any but the lowest category of understanding.
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She told him the truth, which is always disloyal.
…
