The Pickup

by Nadine Gordimer

When Julie Summers' car breaks down in a sleazy street, a young Arab garage mechanic comes to her rescue. Out of this meeting develops a friendship that turns to love. But soon, despite his attempts to make the most of Julie's wealthy connections, Abdu is deported from South Africa and Julie insists on going too - but the couple must marry to make the relationship legitimate in the traditional village which is to be their home. Here, whilst Abdu is dedicated to escaping back to the life he has discovered, Julie finds herself slowly drawn in by the charm of her surroundings and new family, creating an unexpected gulf between them ...'As gripping as a thriller and as felt as a love song' IRISH TIMES

Genres: Fiction, Africa, South Africa, Nobel Prize, Book Club, Contemporary, Novels

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2001

About the author

Nadine 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.

Reviews

[°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ʜᴇʟᴇɴ Ροζουλί Εωσφόρος ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° ★·.·´¯`·.·★ Ⓥⓔⓡⓝⓤⓢ Ⓟⓞⓡⓣⓘⓣⓞⓡ Ⓐⓡⓒⓐⓝⓤⓢ Ταμετούρο Αμ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Πες Μου Εσύ Το... ΝΑΙ!

"Ποτέ όμως δεν ψάχνουμε «οποιονδήποτε». Όσο κι αν δεν το αναγνωρίζουμε, όσο κι αν διστάζουμε να το παραδεχτούμε, βαθιά μέσα μας είναι πάντοτε, συγκεκριμένα ΚΑΠΟΙΟΣ".

Ο μελαμψός Άραβας Αμπντού-Ιμπραήμ που έχει ξεφύγει απο τα θρησκευτικά και πολιτικά δεσμά της τριτοκοσμικής πατρίδας του,διωγμένος απο τις δυτικές πολιτισμένες χώρες,ζει παράνομα ως λαθρομετανάστης στα περίχωρα της Νότιας Αφρικής.
Έιναι πτυχιούχος οικονομολόγος μα εργάζεται κάτω απο άθλιες συνθήκες -χωρίς άδεια και απαραίτητα έγγραφα- ως μηχανικός αυτοκινήτων.
Ο Αμπντού ειναι ο .. τυχαίος εραστής της ιστορίας μας.

Η Τζούλι είναι πλούσια,χειραφετημένη,βολεμένη και ανεξάρτητη. Κόρη λευκού ζάμπλουτου Ευρωπαίου επιχειρηματία τρίτης γενιάς που έχει εδραιώσει επιχειρήσεις και κάθε είδους επιρροές και γνωριμίες στην κοινωνία της Νότιας Αφρικής.


Τυχαία γνωριστήκανε, τυχαία "ψωνιστήκανε", τυχαία αγαπηθηκάνε, τυχαία ταυτιστήκανε σε μια σχέση ζωής.
Μέχρι που φτάνει η στιγμή της απέλασης.


Αρχικά τα κοινωνικοοικονομικά εμπόδια και η πολιτιστική και θρησκοληπτική απόσταση δοκιμάζουν αυτή τη σχέση που φαίνεται ιδανική απο την πλευρά της Τζούλι.
Εκείνη, ερωτεύεται,αφοσιώνεται,σχεδιάζει,
ικανοποιείται σεξουαλικά μέχρι δακρύων και υποτάσσεται σε έναν άγνωστο στην ουσία άνδρα που κατά τα λεγόμενα φίλων και συγγενών δεν είναι κατάλληλος γι'αυτήν.
Αδιαφορεί για την γνώμη των τρίτων και λατρεύει τον τυχαίο εραστή της με όλη της την ψυχή.

Ο Αμπντού καθυστερεί να ξεφύγει απο το μίσος της δουλοπρέπειας που αναγκάζεται να βιώνει,αλλά όταν ξορκίσει τους φόβους κατωτερότητας η σχέση τους αποκτά υπόβαθρο αναγκαίο και πλήρως βάσιμο,εως μοιραίο.
Βέβαια ως το τέλος εκείνος δεν παύει να σκέφτεται με ιδιοτέλεια και υπολογισμό,κάτι που δικαιολογείται συγκριτικά με τις φυλετικές και
ταξικές-κοινωνικές χαώδεις διάφορες τους.

Ο τυχαίος εραστής είναι μια τρυφερή και κοινότοπη ιστορία ερωτικής πλήρωσης ανάμεσα σε δυο άτομα του πλανήτη γη που ανήκουν σε ετερώνυμα ημισφαίρια νοοτροπιών,αντιλήψεων και εγγενούς ποιοτικής ανατροφής και διαβίωσης.

Η συγγραφέας με γλαφυρό τρόπο χτυπάει αντιρατσιστικά σήμαντρα συνείδησης και εγκωμιάζει τη δύναμη της αγάπης και της ερωτικής πληρότητας.

Σε αυτή τη σχέση η βάση για το οικοδόμημα που προκύπτει είναι η κατάργηση φυλετικής προέλευσης,γλώσσας,θρησκείας και στερεότυπων προκαταλήψεων. Τα θεμέλια όμως είναι η ερωτική ικανοποίηση που προσφέρουν ολοκληρωτικά ο ένας στον άλλον.

Η βαθμολογία 4/5 που αξιολόγησα αυτό το συνηθισμένο και εύπεπτο ανάγνωσμα έγκειται στο γεγονός πως ο Αμπντού, αυτός ο τυχαίος,έγχρωμος,χειρώνακτας, κυνηγημένος και αποστασιοποιημένος εραστής είναι
εξ αρχής ένας "ξένος" προς την ίδια του τη ζωή.
Είναι συναισθηματικά σακάτης,παγερά εγωιστής,ψυχρά συνειδητοποιημένος και αδιάφορος σε ότι δεν έγκειται στην αυτιστική του εμβέλεια.
Συγκινείται βαθιά μόνο στη σκέψη της μητέρας του που τον περιμένει σε κάποια έρημο του πλανήτη.

Αρνείται να πιστέψει,ακυρώνει θερμές φιλικές προσεγγίσεις,κυριαρχείται απο το ένστικτο της καταπιεσμένης ελεύθερης βούλησης και ουσιαστικά ειναι ένας τυχαίος "ξένος" που αδιαφορεί για ότι δεν πληροί τη συνειδητή του εσωστρέφεια.

Επομένως με παρέπεμψε σε κάποιον άλλο αξιολάτρευτο και αξεπέραστο "ξένο" δικό μου φιλαράκο που αγάπησα γλυκά και σεμνά. Και θα αγαπώ πάντα.

Σε αυτόν οφείλεται και η πολύ καλή βαθμολογική αξιολόγηση τούτου του βιβλίου.

Καλή ανάγνωση
Πολλούς ασπασμούς!!

[Sawsan · Rating 3 out of 5]

تكتب نادين جورديمر عن الاغتراب ما بين الوطن والحب
في محاولة لتخطي الحدود والفوارق البشرية .. العرق والطبقة والدين والثقافة

في جنوب افريقيا يتحول لقاء عابر لعلاقة حب وزواج بين اثنين من عالمين مختلفين
الفتاة الثرية البيضاء والعامل المهاجر من بلد عربي صحراوي
بعد ترحيله يعود مرغما إلى قريته الصغيرة البدائية
تبدأ هي في التأقلم مع البيئة الصحراوية وتقاليد الحياة اليومية والعلاقات الانسانية المختلفة
بينما يظل هو متعلق بقوة بالهجرة والسعي بكافة الطرق للسفر لأي بلد أجنبي أيا كان
كل منهما يشعر بالاغتراب المادي والمعنوي في بلده وبين أهله ويبحث عن وطنه في مكان آخر
وقد يتغلب الحب أحيانا على الاختلافات والعقبات لكنه لا يصمد إذا قرر أحد الطرفين التخلي عن الآخر

تتناول جورديمر الأولويات الحياتية والاختلافات الفكرية وخاصة ما يتعلق بالخيارات والحرية الفردية
الهجرة غير الشرعية والبحث عن الهوية والرغبة في الشعور بالانتماء والأمان
وتباين النظر لأحكام ومقاييس التفوق والامتياز الفردي والمجتمعي
سرد يعرض ملامح من الواقع.. هادئ وبسيط ومُطول أحيانا

[emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

please......for the love of all that is good and holy....stop making me read books for school

especially when I don't have time to read non-school books. it's just upsetting.

I don't normally find certain writing styles hard to read, at least not to an extent that it's off-putting, but this...hoo boy. this one was a toughie.

also there was a weird treatment of whiteness in this. like, recognition that imperialism is bad, but also a concept that a wealthy white woman is able to step away from her privilege and operate totally outside of the processes of globalization. which, uh, no.

bottom line: this was unpleasant!!! and I just forced myself through half of it in a sitting!!! and I am exhausted, emotionally and physically!! that is all.

[Jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me some time to really appreciate Nadine Gordimer’s writing style. Once the reader gets used to the uniqueness of her style they are captured in her prose and an understanding between reader and author slowly develops. Gordimer’s style has sometimes the quality of Hemingway’s minimalism and at the same time there are poetic patterns which reminded me of Fitzgerald’s lyricism. Nevertheless, I don’t think everybody would appreciate her style as the reader must get engaged with the rhythm and flow of writing.

‘The Pickup’ was published in 2001 and has lost nothing of its topicality. It describes the relationship between a privileged South African woman, Julie, and a so-called ‘illegal Arab immigrant’, who has more than one name. Gordimer deliberately does not mention his country of origin, and in my interpretation, he stands as a representative for the majority of ‘illegal’ (*) immigrants. Her story is an impressive example of how a person goes to great lengths because they happen to be born with the ‘wrong’ nationality. In the meantime, Gordimer reminds us that wealth does not always mean material wealth.

I read ‘The Pickup’ shortly after Andrea Cassee’s philosophical plea for open borders (Andreas Cassee: Globale Bewegungsfreiheit: ein Plädoyer für offene Grenzen), unfortunately only available in German. In his work of political philosophy, he states that the owner of a German passport is allowed to travel into 173 different countries, without having to apply for a visa, whereas the owner of an Afghan passport, for example, is allowed into 25 countries (p. 183). Since the beginning of this millennium 30,000 men, women and children died while trying to immigrate to Europe (p. 9). This is a shocking number which is often forgotten and which makes me wonder why our lifestyle is so enviable: Is the main incentive for emigration really an economical one? Do social constraints enhance motivation for migration in the same way? What about women’s and LGBT rights? Are they a motivator for emigration as well? (I speak here of ‘migrants’ and not of ‘refugees of war’, their motivation should not be questioned.)

Nadine Gordimer tries to reveal the drive which lies behind the male character in her story. While reading I dared to ask myself if a white South African woman of rather privileged background would be the right person to reveal the inner thoughts and motives of our ‘illegal immigrant’. Wouldn’t it have been more adequate to write just from Julie’s perspective whose motivations and inner migration are depicted in a more convincible way than those of her lover? Well, I think that’s where you are going to separate the wheat from the chaff: A gifted writer should (at least to some extent) be able to immerse herself into the intellectual world of her characters and Gordimer does fulfil this task satisfyingly. Nevertheless, I think she did a better job with the depiction of Julies’ character and maybe it would have been more convincing if she wrote from her perspective entirely. Having said that, I admit complaining on a high level and I am happy to have once more found a new author whose writing style intrigues me. I very much look forward to reading her other novels such as July's People and My Son's Story.

(*) I put the word illegal intentionally in quotation marks: Whereas I agree that a person can act illegally I don’t think that a person can be illegal per se.

[Zanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

New millennium, new rhythm. I think that's what's going on here. South Africans walking to the beat of hyphenated identities, flow and stutter, bounce and glide, at the mercy of beauty and ruthlessness… Gordimer's ear to the ground heard this as it heard the sweet cadences of Ibrahim's unaccustomed English and the mashed jerkiness of Julie's cosmopolitan consciousness. The style! Attractively typeset to soften the mess all these pauses and interjections make of the page, it rushes, it breaks, it drives along like we're in bad traffic, the enervated tailbacks of the millennial mind.

I think that white authors need to write diverse books, so props. It's hard to do because you don't want to continue the long crappy tradition of speaking for people you've prevented from speaking for themselves, taking the place of people you've disenfranchised. Before I even start I think, why am I writing this, I should leave it to people of colour to write about themselves... and here we go round the mulberry bush. Anyway, no matter how carefully and subtly it's done, having a brown guy from a Muslim country end up being an agent of regressive patriarchy while a white woman's freedom and superior judgement (or is it?) carrying the day feels problematic.

What's this superior judgement about? That's what's really interesting, the lifeways and worldviews on offer to a economically privileged white woman in South Africa end up seeming equally spiritually unsatisfactory. There's entry into the heartless hypercapitalist overclass, or the soulless camaraderie of rootless hipsters. Confronting the desert, Julie meets a silence so sweet it melts into poetry in her eyes and mind, it speaks to something buried, transforms her. She responds to the lure of a life of cooperation and mutuality with an expanded family and in communication with the land; she finds the rhythm her soul can dance to. Meanwhile Ibrahim values the stress on individual success that defines the milieu of Julie's father. When they fell in love, he overlooked their incompatibility on such a deep philosophical basis and Julie lacked the awareness to formulate it. The upshot of betrayal puts the confrontation between individualist and communitarian values in a framework of gender dynamics, posing a thought provoking dilemma for feminist thought.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wouldn't say I enjoyed reading this book, however, I had to finish it. I was piqued to see how it would pan out, and the second half - is a lot easier to read -this probably is where the writer's main interest lay.

Most people are going to struggle with the style - and I can see a fair number of bad reviews - 'didn't understand, difficult to get into' - there are several stylistic elements that account for this:

1 - complex sentences:

"Julie took careful note, in full attention, of all advice about what these good friends who knew how to look after themselves suggested should be done."

2- Abdu - is Arabic and he speaks to Julie in a beginner's style English. Here he is presenting his view of Julie's parents and their class of people:

"They are people doing well with their life. All the time. Moving on always. Clever. With what they do, make in the world, not just talking intelligent. They are alive, they take opportunity, they use the (snaps his tongue against his palate in search of the word) the will, yes, I mean to, the will. To do. To have."

3- the writer's focus on differentiating the background and status of all the characters - here Julie and Abdu discuss with Julie's friends at the EL-AY cafe, the dilemma of Abdu's non-legal status.

"Thinking of her father, yes; there's always been an undercurrent of keen awareness of her father's money The Table concealed from Julie, in contrast with the lack of vintage Rovers in the background of this speaker and others among the friends. The exceptions - her fellow escapees from the Northern Suburbs - know that Nigel Ackroyd Summers would not approach a cabinet minister with whom he dines to ask that this illegal alien from a backward country should continue to sleep with his daughter. From one of them a quick dismissal: -That's just not on, Andy.-"

The social interaction is very complex, the above is Julie critical of a friend who doesn't understand the delicacy of her father's position and yet it is Julie who has asked these friends for suggestions. She has money and privilege that she is not aware of in relation to some of her white Johannesburg comrades and yet she demands sympathy and understanding for her problem with Abdu who is "black", foreign, penniless and illegal.

4 - The long, densely packed sentence; a stylistic device common through about 70% of the book. I had this image in my mind as I tackled endless numbers of these - Mr Wonka, zooming through his chocolate factory with the golden ticket winners imploring them to "Keep up, keep up; so much to see; so much to do."

"The Uncle's house has everything to the limit of the material ambitions that are possible to fulfil in this place-if his nephew, entering, needs to be reminded of this, which is always with him, implacable warning that prods and pierces him, flays him to rouse the will to carry on washing dishes in a London restaurant, swabbing the floors of drunken vomit in a Berlin beer hall, lying under trucks and cars around the block from the EL-AY Cafe, and emerging to take the opportunity-what choices are there-to become the lover of one of those who have everything (the Uncle could never dream of) and who could be a way to fulfil a need-a destiny!-to realize one's self in ambitions hopeless in this place."

The author is undermining ideologies left, right and centre. Here she questions the value of the poor illegal immigrant working for meagre sums, in a foreign country, because the ideal life-style back home is to be able to squander money on whatever material possessions the local economy offers and thereby lord it over your neighbours.

Nearly every sentence is a political deconstruction; or otherwise an inducement on the part of the reader to catch up, to swiftly understand and take in all the background that is necessary to recognize the present scene, which, in her novel, keeps changing. Gordimer uses her long, dense, compact sentences a lot, but there again she is attempting to distill the historical and cultural differences of two very different countries/regions into the narrow frame of her novel. She is brave I think to tackle so many of the differences between a first-world developed country such as South Africa - with its multiple racial tensions and those of a third-world country in the Middle East, deprived of its oil riches through territorial disputes - I'm guessing Yemen. And into these extreme contrasts she throws the unifying situation of a marriage, a relationship between a man and a woman from each of the said countries.

5 - Note-type writing, condensing very complex social interactions between the main characters.

"Even had seduced the son again, now in his family home restored to him, in the forbidden days. Did the face of the mother conceal she knew that, as well. He's absolved: 'He needs rest.'
This foreign woman gives it to him."

This, is Julie projecting how the mother could criticize her and wondering if she has guessed what has happened between her and Ibrahim (they had sex during Ramadan). Then she refers to something spoken, something definite, and she tries to interpret this spoken word, in a way favourable to herself, because despite the obvious blunder, what she really wants, is to be accepted by this stern matriarch and welcomed into the Arabic household. It's complex.

6 - Here is some effective descriptive writing, plain, straightforward, just to show she can do it.

"Sometimes hand in hand they moved a short way into the desert from the stump of masonry, a smooth dragging gait imposed by depth of sand, and sat down, cross-legged both of them, in the sand. It sifted up, sidled round their backsides, her fleshy one and the child's neat bones. Go farther and even that undulating scarf of sound, the muezzin's call from the mosque, is taken in, out of hearing. But she doesn't go farther, with the child."

The change of writing style of course is used to reflect the peace that our main character, Julie finds in the desert.

7 - Considering that the outside blurb on the book says: "A bittersweet Romeo and Juliet for our cynical age..." and yes, there are sex scenes - several, but there is only one scene where I felt that Gordimer really conveyed the powerful attraction between the two lovers. This attraction is important because it is the raison d'etre for the entire book. Without Julie and Abdu's passionate attraction, call it love if you must, there is no novel. Anyway, here is the paragraph where I actually felt the love. I suppose this is my only true structural criticism.

"She picked up the jeans and shirt, and the simple gesture, could have been that of his mother or sisters, sent him over to her. His naked feet covered hers, his naked legs clasped her and he smothered her head against his breast as if to stay something beginning in her."

Simple writing - very effective.

8- And to finish - some very beautiful writing. It is when Julie first arrives in the Arabic country, and must live with her husband's family. She does not know the language and is left alone, while Ibrahim is off trying to procure visas to get them out of this place which is, not of the world.

"A child gentle as a moth came in to the lean-to and stood watching her read.
The second time, the child sat down on the floor, so quiet that even her breath was no intrusion. Then the child brought with her the young woman who spoke a little English.
* * *
It must have been the young sister's day off - Friday, yes, Julie had seen her prostrate, praying beside her mother that morning. The book was put aside and they began to talk, bridging hesitancy with gestures-Julie, with mime-and laughter at each other's attempts at being understood. Her Ibrahim had taught her nothing of the language, dismissing even the conventional polite exchanges. ...But this young sister seemed to enjoy having the foreigner repeat these banalities become achievements, correcting the awkwardness of a throat producing unfamiliar sounds and lips shaped to expel them. In turn, the young woman slowly arranged the sequence of her English words, and waited attentively to hear of her mistakes. For the meal after midday prayers the child put her hand, a delicate frond of fingers, in Julie's and led her along with Maryam to where in a room with no defined purpose the women of the house cooked for everyone on two spirit burners-"

That "delicate frond" of the child's hand is really a metaphor for the sensitive reaching out for understanding between the two young women, Julie and Maryam.

[Tamara Agha-Jaffar · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do you define home? Is it where you were born? What about family? Is it the people who raised you? These are some of the issues Nadine Gordimer explores in her novel, The Pickup.

Meet Julie Summers. Born into an affluent white South African family, she is the poor little rich girl skirting through life, working at an unfulfilling job, spouting pretentious jargon with liberal friends. Ashamed of her wealthy father and her social butterfly of a step-mother, she rebels against everything they represent. Although thirty years old, she has yet to find her place in the world. Then, one day, her car breaks down. And Julie’s life changes.

Enter Abdu/Ibrahim, a young Arab mechanic who repairs her car. It’s no surprise when the two become lovers. Abdu’s illegal immigration status is discovered by authorities. He has 10 days to leave the country. Julie decides to join him. They get married and board the plane to an unnamed country somewhere in the Arab world.

Abdu/Ibrahim is ashamed of the primitive conditions of life in his village. He is baffled by Julie’s cheerful willingness to acculturate to her adopted home, to embrace its rituals and traditions, its gendered roles and restrictions. He anticipates her announcement on any given day that she is heading back to daddy in South Africa. Meanwhile, he races from one consulate to another, desperate to obtain a visa to any western country that will accept him. Eventually, he obtains a visa to America and makes plans to leave his village, fully expecting Julie to accompany him. But Julie has other ideas. She refuses to leave. She has found home. She has found family.

In the hands of an inexperienced writer, the story borders on being cliché. Poor little rich girl falls in love. Marries a man beneath her social standing. Follows him to a foreign culture. Finds her place in the world. But the story is anything but cliché in the hands of Nadine Gordimer, the winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Gordimer treats her characters with empathy and sensitivity. Her portrayal of even tertiary characters is masterful and authentic. She captures the halting English and cadences of Abdu/Ibrahim; his desperate struggle to escape from his village; his eagerness to plunge headlong into a country he knows nothing about in the hope of a better life; his yearning for success within a capitalist society; and his complete inability to understand his wife. In Julie she captures her slow and bumpy transformation from recognizing the superficial life of white privilege that characterized her previous existence to an understanding that what constitutes home and family has little to do with material wealth. Julie immerses herself in the daily rituals of cooking and cleaning; of the muezzin’s call to prayer that punctuates the rhythms of the day; in the silence of the desert that speaks to her; and in the cooperation, community, love, and warmth she finds in her adopted family. Both Abdu/Ibrahim and Julie are searching for home, for a place to belong. Ironically, their search leads them in opposite directions.

Gordimer’s writing style presents some challenges. Fragments and incomplete thoughts abound. The language shifts from internal thoughts to spoken dialog without the usual indicators of quotation marks. Gordimer dispenses with, “he said/she said,” so one has to use context to determine who said what. But once you get accustomed to the writing style, the language flows seamlessly from thought to spoken word, from one character to another in a way that accurately captures the fragmentary nature of our thoughts and conversations.

This is a wonderful novel that slowly grows on you as it builds to its climax through the use of telling details. Offering a vision of how we can communicate and relate to one another across barriers of difference, The Pickup is a compelling story told by a master of the craft.

Highly recommended.

[Allie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hated it. In fact, it gave me a headache. I guess I'm not in the "Oh, we can't figure out who's saying what! How clever!" camp.

[Quo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nadine Gordimer is an author of the first rank, distinguished by multiple awards, a Nobel Prize for Literature among them. However, The Pickup can not be judged to be among her finest works.



Even beyond that, there are many areas that seem deeply in need of editorial guidance to allow this book to stand as a truly convincing story of a woman named Julie, the aimless 30 year old daughter of a wealthy, well-connected, post-Apartheid South African lawyer, someone who befriends (picks up) a North African garage mechanic & eventually proceeds to fly off to his native country.

My suspicion is that Gordimer, who had used her political opposition to Apartheid as her primary authorial vehicle attempted unsuccessfully to adapt to a new topical structure. There are many well-written passages in The Pickup but the novel seems disjointed and lacking in any coherent style. Oddly enough, the section portraying the author's native South Africa seemed far weaker than the 2nd half, set in an unnamed N. African land.

Gordimer credits a Professor at the Univ. of Oxford for assistance with details about Islam & the unnamed African country where Julie & her friend Abdu (who becomes Ibrahim Ibn Musa) on his return to the desert landscape where he was born, decide to flee to when Abdu, living illegally in South Africa is about to be deported.

There are rather too frequent references to "The Table" (at the El-Ay Cafe' in Johannesburg where Julie often met with friends), "the Suburbs" (of Johannesburg), "the lean-to" (part of desert home where Julie & Abdu live with his family) and "The Desert", invoked as if meant to take on some sort of totemic meaning that I found lacking.

It was quite reasonable that Abdu should latch on to Julie as a means of passage to a new country, any one of many that might offer an enhanced lifestyle & more opportunity if granted a visa; however, I wasn't able to glean what Julie gained from Abdu, with countless other possibilities for a new life at her disposal.



What seems not to be a part of the relationship is any inkling of love. And while there is a nod to "let hope be our passport", the framework of the Gordimer novel seemed hopelessly one-sided and even at times incredible, lacking a loving relationship between the two main characters.

It seemed unclear as to why Julie was so desperately clinging to Abdu, especially when with her assistance in gaining a coveted visa, he suggests that they live apart, in different cities in the new land:

The capacity returned to him, for this foreigner makes him whole. That night he made love to her with the reciprocal tenderness--call it whatever old name you like--that he had guarded against--with a few lapses--couldn't afford its commitment, in his situation, must be able to take whatever the next foothold might offer. That night they made love, the kind of lovemaking that is another country, a country of its own, not yours or mine.

Nadine Gordimer was 77 when The Pickup was written & I don't mean to suggest that some things were completely foreign to her at that point but rather that many descriptions seem less than convincing, even evoking an estrangement from reality.

In spite of that, some of the portraits of the desert environment and the small village in that unnamed North African country where the couple take refuge are very evocative, rich in color & texture. The manner in which Abdu's family in time befriend Julie is also full of memorable detail. And Julie eventually seems to experience a kind of awakening via her life in an impoverished African community.

I think I gathered what Gordimer was endeavoring to describe with this novel but so many of the passages seemed to betray her:

Whether she dreams or whether a streaming profusion of thought was what she decides she must have dreamt, does not much matter. On the moment of moving out of some tentative anchorage it is either way the natural return of comparison, attempting the matching, somehow fitting together images, years, days moments.

The relative duration of these may be reversed in their significance. The moment is longer than the year. Whether this is the raided store of the subconscious or a wakeful night--when so-called dreams are recounted to yourself in the morning, how much is being invented in the urge to find the coherence between the conscious & the subconscious; that must exist; is unattainable? Must be found. And if it could be found--there would be certainty. Of what? What does this mean?

To my mind, there is another serious problem with the book, namely the odd use of grammar & syntax. Someone at Goodreads suggested a comparison with Hemingway's Spartan use of language but E.H. never used words like "etiolated" or a phrasing like "twittering susurration".

If the often peculiar use of language had been consistent, that would have been more acceptable. But in this novel, Gordimer's particular use of language is often quite distracting from the story at hand.



Nobel awards are often rather political in orientation and Nadine Gordimer received the Nobel Prize in the year that Apartheid was ended in South Africa. While the award may have been well-deserved, the author forever continued to be linked to the fight against Apartheid as much as for her literary output.

One has to confront the possibility that not many authors can cross dramatically new & different literary frontiers, especially late in life. Faulkner's reference points remained rooted in in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County even when teaching at the Univ. of Virginia in Charlottesville.

And, many have argued that when Steinbeck left the Salinas Valley for the East Coast, his literary frame of reference was never able to adapt to the geographical shift. In spite of my dissatisfaction with Gordimer's The Pickup I look forward to reading some of her earlier, more heralded novels.

*Within my review are 3 images of Nadine Gordimer, the last with fellow Nobel laureate, Nelson Mandela.

[Nood-Lesse · Rating 2 out of 5]

L’unica certezza di una vita si conosce solo quando all’improvviso non c’è più

C'è stato un momento in cui Nadine Gordimer mi ha agganciato? Forse solo nel promettente preambolo
Ecco: avete visto. Ho visto. Quel gesto. Una donna in uno dei tanti ingorghi che sono all’ordine del giorno in città, in qualsiasi città. Non ricorderete l’episodio, né saprete chi è la ragazza.
Io sì, invece, perché a partire da quell’immagine scoprirò – nella forma del racconto – le conseguenze di quella banale disavventura della strada; dove l’avrebbero portata, e come. Le sue mani alzate, aperte

La forma del racconto mi ha tediato per una serie di ragioni che hanno a che fare con me come lettore
-Ambientazione
-Cultura
-Religione
Una miscela di temi che trasporta chi legge del Sudafrica ad un paese ignoto che potrebbe essere l’Iran, l’Afganistan, lo Yemen.. non viene mai specificato, l’informazione determinante è che i protagonisti sono ai confini con il deserto. Chi lo ha visitato parla di un silenzio lunare, di un posto affascinante. Sono le considerazioni del turista che lo vive con un ampio margine di sicurezza, non credo che i piloti della Paris-Dakar si siano mai espressi in modi simili. Fra i personaggi di Nadine Gordimer, il deserto risulterà il migliore. Accanto a Julie giovane e agiata, figlia di genitori divorziati, orbitano una serie di coetanei alternativi e progressisti nella Spritz Cape Town. Ad essi si aggregherà Abdu, il clandestino che ha ghermito il cuore di Julie. Nadine Gordimer ci presenterà le famiglie di entrambe i ragazzi e farà in modo che essi si misurino con le notevoli differenze dei due nuclei. Uno degli agganci a cui il titolo si riferisce è quello fra le due culture, l’altro è quello fra i due ragazzi la cui differente estrazione sociale impedisce di vivere il sentimento in modo analogo.
Possibile che io sia così marcatamente occidentale da provare disinteresse assoluto nei confronti della cultura musulmana? Gli sforzi della scrittrice per mostrarmela da dentro sono stati vani, ho letto le ultime cento pagine con irritazione crescente, aumentata da un certo gusto tipicamente femminile per il dettaglio, per il superfluo, per la paccottiglia.
Il finale è abbastanza sorprendente, romanzesco, ma sorprendente.
Le due stelle non vanno alla prosa Nobel di Nadine, sono l’esito dell’impatto di un lettore blindato contro una cultura che lo è altrettanto.

[Neal Adolph · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I become a more and more weathered reader, and I realize that word suggests that I am eroded and scorned and maybe even a little grey less attractive after sun and heat and wind and rain and snow and ice but that is not my intention at all, I use the work "unrivalled" less and less to describe the writers that I admire. I'm less concerned about using that word to describe Nadine Gordimer. She has the prizes and awards to suggest she is unrivalled, or, at least, her rivals are limited to those who have also won the Nobel Prize. But some of her company is less impressive than others, and I can't imagine any literary critic who suggests that some people are not missing from that exalted pantheon of writers. Anyways, word after word after word, I think I'm prepared to call Nadine Gordimer unrivalled (I'm bound to regret this in the future though).

And this is a conclusion I've come to after reading a book that largely disappointed me. That felt almost cliche and simple, but never was presented as such. In The Pickup we are told the story of Julie and this odd romantic, loving relationship she develops with an illegal immigrant in South Africa who repairs her broken car. The one gets deported, and she follows him to his home country - some unnamed nowhere surrounded by deserts, Arabs, and simple traditional lives that are in a process of quiet change.

It almost sounds like it could be a pitch for a Hollywood movie; something about this story is too familiar. In fact, at one point, after about 80 pages, I almost put the book down because I figured it probably was cliche. I battled through and continued my reading. I'm glad I did, but, again, this book is not spellbinding or incredible or perfect or anything that I would recommend over any of the other books I have read by Gordimer. But it is still good. And like good books, it has so much that it can teach us.

The thing I love about Gordimer is that she reminds us of the things that divide us and that bring us together. No cleavage is too grand for us. But the way she talks about this isn't in the grand ways that journalists manage to - the ideas too big for their goals or their goals too big for their ideas. Rather, Gordimer catches the divide in silent monologues and hidden thoughts as her speaker/narrator moves from one man's mind to another woman's mind to another woman's to a child's to another man's and we hear the confusion and frustration that is never shared. The essential question is, "Why can't they be more like us?". And it is through the small things - the tiny giant things - that we discover this in Gordimer's writing. The way somebody takes up a space, shares a home, uses a bed, talks, wants to learn, imagines their future, makes promises. Its the way somebody smiles and hugs and kisses, when where how why a person permits themselves or is permitted to other to behave in a given way. Life is complicated Gordimer says, and it is always dramatic, Gordimer says, but it is the human desire to smooth over the uncertain by forging friendly, loving relationships that makes us human, Gordimer says. And this is always complicated. It is always marred by power. And that power, those relationships of one having strength over another, is in flux and it is ancient and it is written into a stone that might, just might, crumble sometimes.

Gordimer is unrivalled in seeing this, and writing this, and bringing it into clarity for the reader. There are no surprises in The Pickup. That's not the point. Plot is important, but it is only a vehicle for further exploration - and so everything is foreshadowed plenty. The reader knows more than the characters, and this is why Gordimer matters. She offers the world empathy, and a vision of how humanity can relate in times of difficulty.

Forgive me for taking the chance to write about Gordimer more than The Pickup. There is nothing extraordinary about this book, and it doesn't present itself as extraordinary - another trait of Gordimer's writing - but it is quite an accomplishment regardless. Read her work. Read other works before you read this one. But make time in your life for Gordimer - it is always worth the effort.

[mai ahmd · Rating 4 out of 5]

أول تجربة مع الكاتبة الجنوب أفريقية نادين غورديمر والحاصلة على نوبل في عام 1991 لكنني قبل ذلك قرأت حوارا جميلا مع نادين كان مشجعا لكي أبدأ هذا المشوار مع هذا القلم الخصب
جولي ذات البشرة البيضاء تنتمي لطبقة برجوازية من أصحاب الإمتيازات في جوهانسبرج لكنها لا تشعر بهذا الإنتماء لذلك تنأى بنفسها عن هذا العالم تتعرف على شاب من أصول عربية مهاجر غير شرعي يعمل في كاراج للسيارات وتبدأ قصة الحب بين عرقين مختلفين وتسير الأمور سيراهادئا حتى يصل إنذارا من السلطة بترحيل الشاب إلى بلده التي لم تُعرّف الكاتبة عنه إلا إنه من خلال سير الأحداث يبدو بلدا عربيا وإسلاميا ملتزما
يضطر إبراهيم للرحيل غير إن جولي تتشبث به وتقرر الرحيل معه تاركة مجتمعها البرحوازي خلف ظهرها وسط دهشة الشاب وعدم رغبته في تحمل مسئولية شخص آخر في بلد فقير تنقصه مقومات الحياة الأساسية
لم يكن أمام إبراهيم إلا أن يتزوج جولي حتى يستطيع أن يقدمها لأسرته الملتزمة بوصفها زوجته

هذا هو الجزء الأول من الحكاية .. غير أن الجزء الثاني هو الجز ء الأهم والأجمل من قرأ السماء الواقية لبول بولز سيدرك تماما كيف يتغلب سحر الشرق وكيف يمكن أن يفتتن الأجنبي بالصحراء العربية للدرجة التي قد يختار أن يصبح جزءا منها وربما يختار أن يموت فيها أيضا

إن أهم فكرة تقدمها غورديمر من خلال هذا النص هو إشكالية الهوية والإنتماء فالمكان الذي ولدت فيه جولي لم يحقق لها هذا لقد كانت تلك البرجوازية المحيطة بها ترف بالغ لم يكن ليتماشى مع سمو روحها
في الوقت الذي كان إبراهيم يرى في هذه الصحراء الشاسعة سجنا له وهو يحاول الفرار كلما أتيحت له الفرصة فلا عائلته ولامكان النشأة حددا هويته مازال عالقا في المنتصف بسبب صعوبة الحصول على تأشيرة خروج بلا عودة

من أجمل الفصول التي كتبت فيها غوديمر هو فصل العودة إلى بلد إبراهيم ، حيث تتضح الصورة في الإختلاف الجذري بين العالمين العالم الذي هرب إليه إبراهيم والعالم الذي فرت منه جولي حيث حضن العائلة والقيم الروحية والتواطىء بين النساء بحكم الفصل بين الجنسين في اللقاءات الأسرية وما إلى ذلك حسب عادات وتقاليد المجتمع ، الحميمية بين الأخوة علاقة الأم بأبناءها تبدو أمورا جديدة على عالم جولي السطحي والمنحصر في لقاءات الإصدقاء في
مقهى
ظل في ذهني هذا التساؤل هل أقام إبراهيم هذه العلاقة من أجل تعديل وضعه في بلد أجنبي ولذلك كانت النهاية أكبر من إحتماله

من ملاحظاتي على النص هو أن غورديمر ركزت في بداية النص على بشرة إبراهيم السوداء وبياض جولي وكأنها أرادت أن تشير إلى التمييز العنصري لكنني وجدتها تتجه بعد ذلك إلى أصوله العربية مما أوقعني في حيرة
تجاوزتها لاحقا

شدني حقيقة أسلوب غورديمر فهي تكتب بلغة مركزة شفافة تفاصيلها مصقولة شديدة الدقة
لم تغفل دور الصحراء في البطولة
ركزت على إختلاف الثقافات وإصطدامها أو الإندماج بها
الإنسان وإختياراته هي من تحدد ذلك بلاشك


رواية شيقة

[Huy · Rating 5 out of 5]

sau cuốn này thì Nadine Gordimer đã trở thành một trong những nhà văn mình yêu thích nhất, vì bà viết hay quá, những câu văn trùng điệp, phức tạp giàu ngôn ngữ, giàu chất thơ mà đôi lúc phải đọc đi đọc lại vài lần mới hiểu bà đang viết gì, còn câu chuyện thì rất mực hợp thời khi mà kể về một chàng trai khát khao được thoát li khỏi đất nước của mình để xây dựng cuộc đời ở một nơi mà cậu hy vọng sẽ giúp cậu thoát khỏi nỗi ám ảnh là công dân của nước nghèo. Thật tiếc là Nadine Gordimer lại chưa được dịch và đọc nhiều ở Việt Nam.

[Evi * · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il fascino della schiavitù.
Siamo in Sudafrica e questa è la storia di un processo di emancipazione al contrario: Julie giovane ragazza bianca, libera, istruita, emancipata fa una scelta antifemminista decide di seguire Abdu Ibrahimn il suo ragazzo arabo, meccanico, clandestino nel suo paese d’origine e lì, sorprendentemente, Julie trova la sua dimensione: si chiude nell’universo femminile legato alla famiglia araba di lui.
Si capovolgono i rapporti fra occidente e terzo mondo.
Ma poi chi l’ha detto che i rapporti si capovolgono veramente, forse vanno semplicemente nella direzione da percorrere che non è mai già indicata.
Un libro anche molto sensuale, secondo me.

[Jaime · Rating 2 out of 5]

Truth be told, I really didn’t like this story. On a couple of levels.

First, the plot. I found Julie to be utterly insufferable. Every decision she makes is not real, it’s just another way for her to do exactly what everyone else doesn’t want her to do. At nearly 30, she’s way too old for the teenage rebellion. She and her "friends" at the cafe live their entire lives trying to meet some sort of moral code that they think makes them superior to everyone else while they are completely unappreciative of what they do have. Her relationship with Abdu is just a way for her to take her rebellion to its outer limits. Abdu’s family in the "Arab village" (more on that later) is infinitely more interesting than Julie or any of her friends. My only consolation is that Abdu also finds her insufferable from time to time.

I realize this assessment is entirely personal. People with these sorts of airs and pretensions get on my last nerve.

Second, the writing. Gordimer does her very best to make you need to read every passage at least twice to figure out what she is trying to say. It got to the point that I felt like I was watching a movie through a vaseline smeared screen; you have to squint to see what’s going on. And then there’s the matter of this "unnamed Arab village". The author is very determined that this "unnamed village" be mysterious and a stand-in for the average Arab village, but then she drops a clue that told me within 2 minutes of googling that they’re in Morocco. So if you want it to be unnamed and representative, why drop that clue? I don’t get it. And then there’s the brief side plot of Julie’s uncle being unjustly accused of sexual harassment. It had absolutely zero effect on the plot, so it felt like the author just wanted to make the point that "Hey! Some women lie about sexual harassment!"

Every drawn out, metaphoric passage felt like the author poking me in the eye and saying "Ha ha! I’m sooooo much smarter than you." What could be an interesting story about the nature of immigration is buried under all this…affectation. It wasn’t even a good love story.

So yeah. Thumbs down. One of the longest short books I’ve ever read. Only finished it because it was for my book club.

[Sara-Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second novel read by Gordimer. This was utterly engrossing, I really submitted to being lost. Her sensitivities to the complexities of all movements, expectations and responses blows me away--really her generous vision choked me up more than the plot oranything. I liked to look at the picture of Gordimers sparkling eyes and slight smile on the jacket cover whenever I read a passage (and there were many) that expressed normally well rehearsed concepts like east/west, love, desire, identity, displacement instead with such patient but pressing ambiguity. I maybe had a bit of trouble when I found myself following Julie’s needs (the seemingly privilged white South African woman) much more closely than Abdu/Ibrahim's, the "illegal" immigrant picked up by/picks up Julie. I don't usually seem to focus on the white people when reading but I identified with her a lot. Also, somewhat incidentlly, a nice compliment alongside reading Hegel and beginning to grasp dialectics, (realizing through and with the other who is not other). Anyways, I can't really review this book in a short paragraph, its too stunning.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m completely at a loss as to why this book is getting such acclaim. It’s not the worst book I’ve read, but it is a far, far cry from anything I would call great. I felt less like this was an insight into a love story about a couple crossing socio-economic boundaries and more like I was reading a story about two people infatuated with the idea of one another but not so much that they are unwilling to use one another for their own agenda. I found the tone of the writing highly aggravating. Sorry, but the coffee house group were a bunch of losers attempting to be philosophical but sputtering half-assed bullshit. Maybe I completely missed the point, but I’m sure as hell not going to read it again to look for it.

[Eli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Απόλυτα ευθύ, βαθιά διαπολιτισμικό, χωρίς φιοριτούρες, αγγίζει την αλήθεια στο ερωτικό συναπάντημα δυο ανθρώπων από δύο εντελως διαφορετικούς κόσμους.

[Cititoare Calatoare · Rating 3 out of 5]

Iata o poveste de dragoste un pic diferita. Nimic siropos sau tipic love story, dar am scris ca este de dragoste pentru ca e vorba de viata unui cuplu.
La 30 de ani, Julie Summers, fiica unui om de afaceri sud-african, il intalneste intr-o cafenea pe Ibrahim ibn Musa. Aceasta idila se curma brusc cand autoritatile il descopera pe tanarul imigrant Ibrahim, ce sub o identitate falsa lucreaza intr-un service auto.
Vazandu-se nevoita sa se desparta de iubitul ei, Julie decide sa abandoneze totul si sa plece cu acesta. "Sunt gesturi care schimba viata."
Dar sa nu credeti ca doar atat este. Tocmai de aici incepe totul. Doi oameni casatoriti, uniti in dragostea lor, ce frumos suna, nu? Julia multumita ca se afla langa persoana iubita, indiferent unde se afla acest loc. Dar of... tocmai locul este vinovat pentru totul. Ibrahim se afla iar in locul din care isi doreste cu disperare sa plece

[Suhaib · Rating 5 out of 5]

“To continue in their present state: his situation in itself, alone determined this. He is here, and he is not here. It's within this condition of existence that they exist as lovers. It is a state of suspension from the pressures of necessity to plan the way others have to plan; look ahead. There is no future without an identity to claim it; or to be obligated to it. There are no caging norms. In its very precariousness the state is pure and free.”

I was looking for a postcolonial novel to read with The Location of Culture by Homi Bhabha, and I happened to find this book, which really illustrates some of the main concepts the critic talks about. The Pickup centers on the cultural and romantic collision between a British South African girl, Julie Summers, and an illegal Arab immigrant, whom we first get to know by the nickname Abdu. The ensuing relationship captures the most common struggles a love meeting between peoples from different cultures often entails: the foreignness of the other language treated as silence, the oral void, problems of being and belonging, cultural translation and negotiation, and needless bureaucratic hassle.

After her car breaks down in the middle of traffic, Julie is sent by her friends to a nearby garage, where a chance encounter comes to change the trajectory of her life. Julie falls in love with the mechanic, Abdu, an illegal Arab immigrant from an unnamed country. Far from reflecting a romanticized and pure version of love, their relationship is sexual from the start. And Julie’s emphasis on this is more pronounced compared to Abdu, whose character is marked by narrative suppression—we do get her perspective on all things, while his voice, in comparison, is shrouded with silence. This reflects the fact that he stands on the margins of society (the margins of the book), leading a nonexistence in the blind eyes of bureaucracy. The relationship develops and they decide to go to his home country, in which a drama on the perplexed nature of belonging comes about.

The problem of belonging takes centerstage. Julie and Abdu are constantly looking for an ever-elusive sense of belonging. She finds a glimmer of hope in the most unexpected place. He, on the other hand, looks for it elsewhere, anywhere but home. We can say that for both home is always elsewhere. A second conflict lies in fatherly relationships. Julie challenges her father and refuses to ask him for help. Abdu contends with his father more symbolically. He does not acknowledge traditions and refuses to lead a life that custom entails. In the absence of the father, the uncle takes up the role—as father surrogate, a metonymic substitution for the biological father. Archie and Abdu’s unnamed uncle stand to fill this void.

The narrative voice is contingent on the perceptions of Julie. She is the main character with whom we get to know and experience the text world and the other characters. Her love for Abdu isn’t imbued with undue romanticism or psychological projection. It is her intense sexuality that surfaces more often. Since Abdu’s narrative existence is seen as an extension to her own perceptions and being, we almost get the sense that she is the one who is objectifying him as her very sexual oriental prince. I love the subtle way Gordimer draws on this common stereotype of exoticizing the orient—something the western gaze has consistently done.

If we see Julie experiencing the world from the vertical psychological dimension of meandering thoughts and emotions, Abdu is stuck in his quest of finding a way in the horizontal more social realm. He struggles with the bureaucracy that does not acknowledge him and limits his spatial experience of the world. He wants to be recognized socially and develop financially. Pure bureaucracy is what stands in his way. Papers and paperwork. In South Africa, we see him standing on the periphery, the borders of existence. Gordimer’s narrator aptly captures his sense of estrangement by putting his voice and perceptions on the margins—the marginal notes and glimpses Julie’s experience permits us to see. His feelings for Julie do not surface enough. Perhaps they are hidden beneath his oral void and later underneath his hardy preoccupation with securing visa permits. However, I would have loved to see a more feeling side to his character, something Gordimer either overlooked or purposely neglected.

What makes this novel stand out is the way it exemplifies the main postcolonial struggles and concepts. Adding to this is the fact that the story is engaging and the writing is good¬—one of the best examples on postcolonial literature if you ask me. I do recommend it for anyone interested in the genre.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not infrequently I think of the job of writing fiction as picking at things that make us uncomfortable. This means novels, in particular, have changed a good bit in their function over the centuries. Once upon a time novels confirmed the social order--think of Jane Austen. Now we have writers like Nadine Gordimer who was born into the white discomfort of black South Africa, and she manages to write plausible, discomfiting stories that make us dissatisfied, appalled, sympathetic, and even, occasionally, energetic.
In the case of The Pickup Gordimer assigns herself a task that at first I found a kind of fairy tale, not every credible.
Reaching beyond South Africa, she places a man from the Arab world in South Africa, has a white South African rich girl take a shine to him, and then, in the first part of the novel, traces his descent into deportation--for he has come to South Africa, as he has gone elsewhere, illegally. And the authorities have caught up to him, and this time he can’t fight it, he has to leave.
Okay, but it’s challenging to believe in Julie’s love for Abdu. She is recognizable, a young p.r. professional who hangs out in cafes. He is intentionally vague, doesn’t want to be seen. What country does he come from? We’re not told. Where else has he been? Not told. Is there more here than Julie’s social rebellion and his fugitive’s allure?
The novel’s first 75 pages tumble along from past tense to present tense, first person to third, and are short on quotation marks, distinguishing who’s talking or thinking.
Sort of thin.
Where does this guy come from?
Well, Julie decides she’s going back there with him. What do you think of that?
It’s hard to know, but it happens. He’s deported and she goes right along with him.
My guess is that they go to Yemen. I could be wrong, and I’m not sure exactly how important it is that I’m right, but I find, as I read, that I like thinking, “They’re in Yemen. They’re in his home village outside the capital, on the fringes of the desert, in a ghastly place.”
Turns out his name isn’t Abdu, it’s Ibrahim, he has a family that has seen him deported back home before but never in the company of a white female non-Muslim.
This is where the novel becomes interesting. It doesn’t take a turn toward Ibrahim having been some kind of failed sleeper in an al-Qaeda cell. It focuses on him expending all of his energy trying to get a visa to some other country that might give him a chance in life. And it focuses, more importantly, on the crushing process of Julie learning how to be a woman in the cramped difficult confines of Ibrahim’s family’s house--and life.
I find myself highly skeptical. Experiences like this really don’t work very well. They turn out as Ibrahim constantly fears: she’ll decide to call Daddy and get a ticket back to South Africa. But Gordimer keeps pounding at the situation into which Julie becomes more and more embedded, finding a meaning in certain relations, times of day, beliefs, methods of preparing food that she never found in the emerald belt of South African suburbs where she was raised.
The territory we’re in is Paul Bowles’s territory, but that’s just one take on it. It’s also Gordimer’s. She’s got the right feeling for the desert, the trash, the dust, the limited options, the minor flashes of tackiness, the turbulent emotions within Ibrahim’s family, and Julie’s gradual realization that she has built a life for herself there.
I’m not going to take this description of the book to its narrative end. That would spoil it for you. I want to go back to where I started: the fiction writer today is bearing a burden that a lot of journalists, politicians, health workers, business people and scientists are bearing: how to bring the First and Third Worlds, the Christian and Islamic worlds in particular, closer together.
This isn’t Jane Austen, who is wonderful in her way. This is a writer of relentless intelligence and aesthetic vision.
One can “buy” a percentage of the ending in terms of believability and yet value this book; you don’t have to take it 100%; it could be less; would still be worth the time to read it.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll admit that I started this book with some trepidation because I’d read two books by Nadine Gordimer before, one which I liked very much, “The House Gun”, and one which I couldn’t stand, “The Conservationist”. (I don’t care if it won a Booker Prize, it was agony to read.) So, on which side of the divide would this book fall? Happily, this was a thumbs-up for me.

Reading the South African, Nadine Gordimer, is like getting an entirely different point-of-view on an issue that you thought was already decided, apartheid, and the unsettling confusion which followed its demise; this is why she won a Nobel Prize for literature. This book takes on the additional topic of undocumented immigrants, as told from two protagonists involved in a relationship. The auto of a privileged young white woman, Julie, breaks down in a run-down section of an unnamed South African city and it is towed to a nearby garage to be fixed by Abdu, an illegal immigrant from a village in an unnamed Arab country. (There’s a lot of conjecture among other readers but everyone seems to have this as North Africa because of the desert desolation.) She takes a shine to him, invites him up to her flat and we soon see that “the pickup” doesn’t refer to a truck.

There is the inevitable culture clash but it unfolds in entirely different ways than might be expected. She has a job but nothing serious, and spends her evenings in a near-by café/ bar with friends who are mostly in the same position; people work or don´t work, have relationships, break up, have problems that are sometimes serious but frequently just the quotidian things that everyone goes through, except the have this buffer of at least semi-privilege. She eventually asks Abdu to join them and he’s welcomed into the group as an equal. Of course, he’s not an equal because he doesn’t have this buffer and while some might receive money from home, he’s sending part of his meager salary back. This is a theme in other Gordimer books, whites now freely mixing with other shades of skin and empathizing but without the ability to truly understand.

Abdu has been deported from other Western countries for overstaying his visa and knows it’s only a matter of time; he’d like Julie to help somehow but she has an uneasy relationship with her divorced parents. Her father is remarried and lives with his socialite wife in the suburbs and her mother lives in California with her husband, and Julie prefers not to ask anything of anyone. She invites Abdu to her father’s home for a Sunday lunch and farewell party for a couple who’s “relocating” – first-worlders never “emigrate” and they are never “immigrants”, but “expatriates”, as I know from my own situation! – and they are a bit uncomfortable, while many of them are descendants of immigrants but sitting with someone who isn’t welcomed as the “re-locaters” will be is unknown territory for them. (At this gathering is also the black lawyer who played a crucial part in “The House Gun”, the only one who’s not at all ill-at-ease.) This epitomizes the difference between Julie and Abdu; she has privilege which she’s unwilling to use and he is forced to grasp at straws to survive.

Lest you think this is all a spoiler, it’s really only the beginning of the first half, but it develops in a similarly unusual way because immigrant stories are more commonly about adjustments to a new country and ties to the old, even when there’s a fight to stay. However, Julie is a different story, someone who’s somewhat adrift, and this is what opens up entirely new questions later in the book. I highly recommend this book to anyone that is looking for a different take on immigration and a lot of unresolved – and maybe unresolvable – conflict.

[Ashlyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m always interested to see why certain books win prestigious prizes like the Nobel Prize. I don’t really know after reading it other than the writing is definitely beautiful and poetic, and the story is unique (although a little slow), and the topic concerns immigration. I felt like I was starting to really get into the book in the second half. However, the last ten pages were such a surprise. I was like, What?! It just felt a little unbelievable for the character and for the book.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5/5

Several years ago, all the way back in 2014 in fact, I was in the midst of my Nobel Prize for Literature bent, and Gordimer's Burger's Daughter was one of the works I read that seemed to justify not only my obsession with that hallowed collection of names and works, but the institution itself. These days, I've slowed down quite a bit as the natural result of encountering tedium where I expected brilliance and bigotry where I looked for a deeper understanding (four Nobel laureate works read in 2020 compared to twelve in 2014), as well as the fact that, the world of the mainstream is nothing if not a petty, fad-stricken place, and the same goes ten times as much for its status quo pretensions towards academia. It's what helped Gordimer got her prize, writing what she did when she did and coupled with such names as Mandela and co., and with the word 'apartheid' coming back in certain circles of fevered argument in regards to Palestine and the IDF, I wouldn't be surprised if the Nobel committee has been muttering to themselves in this regard (I've already seen at least one article espousing the idea the US president, Biden, should get a Peace Prize for his handling of recent events, which goes right along with Obama not losing his over his hyperenthused drone strike/deportation programs I suppose). And yet, I wanted to see how far my tastes had come and whether Gordimer could continue to match them, and when one of her titles that didn't clog the lists of repute as much as do 'The Conservationist' or 'July's People' came my way (I also grabbed a collection of her nonfictional pieces), I thought it would do as well as any for a second time around the author bend. What I found was a piece as complicated and as awkward as any piece penned by a white person would be when confronting the 21st century politics that make one person illegal and another sacrosanct, but despite all the backtracking and tongue-biting and active refraining from the various tropes, I still feel only one half of the question was explored, if that. A thought bender for sure, but for all that, rather superficial, and I would like to think that the Gordimer I loved seven years ago was capable of more than that.

This is a weird, weird, weird book. It reads like those white people who feel that they can only occupy public space through constant apology but refuse to understand that it would be far more effective if they didn't occupy the public space at all. On the one hand, the Anglo market still so desperately needs portrayals of the Arab world infused with nuances cultured, domestic, and ultimately humanizing that I'm not going to throw out a piece that attempts that with a minimum of ostentatious oh-look-how-empathetic-I-am tone to it. So, if this is anything like the usual violent doom and eroticized gloom that tends to plague any white writer writing about the 'Middle East', I don't have the necessary level of perception to observe it. If anything, I thought it rather infantalized, especially when the venue switches from the settler state to the former colony. Probably part of my usual distrust of family scenarios that rarely dip below a peaceful, even happy, mutual accord, but, it is worth asking: would they be happy if she wasn't white and didn't speak English? Aka, if she wasn't playing the role of the 21st century missionary, with her trust fund capital as her cross and her middle to upper class white habitus as her bible?

On another note, I couldn't help but think of Al-Shayk's collection of short stories I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops, specifically her 'Unreal Life', which takes on the idea of cross-cultural marriage with the white partner being carried off to the Arab homeland with such a deeply incisive view of the topsy-turviness that is love in the time of oil wars and other facets of postcolonial disaster capitalism that I continue to take off my hat in a mental bow every time I think of it. In the end, this isn't a work that is going to do much as an introduction to Gordimer's work, but I also don't think it would measure up if you had read anything else of hers previous to it. Then again, this is only my second work of hers, but is the rest of her bibliography quite this apologetic without tackling the artificialities that make a white English person valued in a non-white non-English speaking domestic household? I hope not.

Strange as it may seem, I'm actually more keen on the idea of reading Gordimer's other works, even the ones touted on many of those lists of the 'canon,' after reading this than I was before. Previous to reading this, I was suspicious of my own inclinations towards the self-recrimination of the white woman in the face of anti-Black realities and thought that, as long as there was a good railing against the capitalist powers that be, I'd swallow it hook-line-and-sinker. Now that I've muddled through with a less than amazing mix of compliments and criticisms, I feel that I'm ready to take on the more officially lauded works and contemplate their mix of wizard and man behind the curtain without too much worry about the subconscious watchdogs lying in wait in the refuse of the kind of indoctrination required to get a degree in my country. And, even if I have my criticisms, Gordimer's willingness to take chances with both her ideologies and her writing style means that, when she is good, she is very very good, and that is more than can be said for much of the writing that calls itself literature these days. As such, not the best experience I've had in revisiting authors read long ago, but certainly not the worst.

For yourself. Always yourself. You think that is very brave. I must tell you something. You only know how to be responsible for yourself here—this place, your café friends, your country where you have everything. I can't be responsible. I don't want it.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Throughout her writing career, Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014) had demonstrated flexibility in the way that she had created her award-winning novels, but surely, welcome though the New South Africa must have been to a lifelong activist against apartheid, it must have been a challenge to create fiction that represented the new society.

In all three of the novels I’ve read and reviewed here, — The Conservationist, (1974) Burger’s Daughter (1979) and July’s People (1981) Gordimer was exposing the evils of the apartheid that had been entrenched for decades and there were no signs that anything might change. And yet in the 1990s it did, and the African National Congress (ANC) took power when multiracial elections were held in 1994. I haven’t read her first post-apartheid novel, None to Accompany Me (1994), but I read The House Gun (1998) before starting this blog, and found it interesting exploration of how a wealthy white family comes to terms with violence from which they’ve been insulated for so long by the apartheid power structure that has collapsed.

What makes The Pickup so successful is Gordimer’s characterisation: the people coming to terms with the new society are the young, and in this respect the novel reminded me of books and films about the collapse of communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was young people who embraced the change. In The Pickup Julie’s relationship with an illegal Arab immigrant takes place in the milieu of The L. A. Café…

"The young woman was down in a thoroughfare, a bazaar of all that the city had not been allowed to be by the laws and traditions of her parents’ generation. Breaking up in bars and cafés the inhibitions of the past had always been the work of the young, haphazard and selectively tolerant. She was on her way to where she would habitually meet, without arrangement, friends and friends of friends, whoever turned up. " (p.5)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/08/31/t...

[Nikolas Banos]

Ο αδελφός μου και εγώ δεν συνηθίζαμε να κάνουμε δώρο ο ένας στον άλλον. Δεν ξέρω γιατί. Ίσως να «φταίει» το γεγονός, ότι οι γονείς μας έπαιρναν από ένα δώρο στον καθένα μας, έτσι ώστε να αποφύγουν τις αδελφικές διενέξεις. Νομίζω ότι αυτό άλλαξε μετά τα φοιτητικά μας χρόνια. Λίγα χρόνια αργότερα, στα εικοστά έβδομα γενέθλια μου, ο αδελφός μου, μαζί με την τότε σύντροφό του, μου παίρνουν ένα βιβλίο, πόνημα ενός πολύ γνωστού συγγραφέα, ως δώρο γενεθλίων. Χάρηκα πάρα πολύ, ήταν μια υπέροχη κίνηση και, κυρίως, μια υπέροχη σκέψη. Το βιβλίο, όμως, το είχα διαβάσει.

Έτσι, και μη έχοντας άλλη επιλογή, πάω στα public, από όπου και είχε αγοραστεί το βιβλίο, και ζητώ από την πωλήτρια να μου το αλλάξει. Η πωλήτρια γουρλώνει τα μάτια και μου λέει: – «Μα καλά, θα αλλάξεις τον τάδε;». Με μια καταφατική κίνηση του κεφαλιού μου, της είπα πως το έχω διαβάσει, και αυτό, και άλλα αυτού του συγγραφέα. Σε αυτό το σημείο χάνεται η έκπληξή από τα μάτια της και μου λέει πως μπορώ να διαλέξω ότι θέλω. Μετά από καμιά ώρα της λέω: – «Ορίστε. Αυτά θέλω.» Ήταν ένα από τα λιγοστά πεζά του Νίκου Καββαδία, «η Βάρδια» και το «Ένας τυχαίος εραστής» της Ναντίν Γκόρντιμερ. Δύο στην τιμή του ενός.

Το «Ένας τυχαίος εραστής» ή αλλιώς το «The Pick Up», όπως είναι ο τίτλος του πρωτότυπου έργου, πραγματεύεται τον έρωτα δύο νέων ανθρώπων. Απλό; Καθόλου. Η «πλούσιας προαστιακής προέλευσης», Ιρλανδό – Εγγλέζα, Τζούλι είναι παιδί χωρισμένων γονιών, η οποία απαρνιέται την κοινωνική στήριξη και την κοινωνική τάξη του πατέρα της και τον, εύρωστο οικονομικά, κοινωνικό κύκλο της μάνας της, ζει απλά, προσπαθώντας να αντισταθεί στις αστικές συμβάσεις.
Ο Ιμπραήμ προέρχεται από τις χώρες της Νοτίου Αφρικής, είναι γόνος μιας αραβικής, σκληροπυρηνικά πατριαρχικής οικογένειας. Επίσης, είναι ένας άνεργος απόφοιτος πανεπιστημίου, ο οποίος εργάζεται, παράνομα, σε βουλκανιζατέρ αυτής της χώρας, έτσι ώστε να εξασφαλίσει ένα διαφορετικό μέλλον στον εαυτό του.

Read More: https://nikolasinbookland.wordpress.c...

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Description: When Julie Summers's car breaks down on a sleazy street in a South African city, a young Arab mechanic named Abdu comes to her aid. Their attraction to one another is fueled by different motives. Julie is in rebellion against her wealthy background and her father; Abdu, an illegal immigrant, is desperate to avoid deportation to his impoverished country. In the course of their relationship, there are unpredictable consequences, and overwhelming emotions will overturn each one's notion of the other. Set in the new South Africa and in an Arab village in the desert, The Pickup is "a masterpiece of creative empathy . . . a gripping tale of contemporary anguish and unexpected desire, and it also opens the Arab world to unusually nuanced perception" (Edward W. Said)

Opening: Clustered predators round a kill. It’s a small car with a young woman inside it. The battery has failed and taxis, cars, minibuses, vans, motorcycles butt and challenge one another, reproach and curse her, a traffic mob mount-ing its own confusion. Get going. Stupid bloody woman.

Idikazana lomlungu, le! She throws up hands, palms open, in surrender. They continue to jostle and blare their impatience.

She gets out of her car and faces them. One of the unemployed black men who beg by waving vehicles into parking bays sidles his way deftly through fenders, signals with his head—Oka-ay, Oka-ay go inside, go!—and mimes control of the steering wheel. Another like him appears, and they push her and her car into a loading bay. The street hustles on.

Not a fan of the writing style but the reverse migrant experience made for an interesting juxtaposition.

3* July's People
3* The Pickup

[Zoom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fellow book-lover at work gave me this one as a “blind date with a book.” I’d never read any of Gordimer’s work before, and I’m happy for the introduction.

I found her voice took a little getting used to, but once I got used to it I liked it very much. She captures the essence of conversation and thought and action, often without including details like who said what. She’s got her own rhythm - at times staccato - almost like point form - at other times like capturing butterflies in a net. You just need to get the general gist of what’s happening. The setting is extraordinary.

This book is about a woman and a man and their search for a place to be. It’s actually quite fascinating how they navigate the world and negotiate their relationship. It’s about family and belonging and outsiders and insiders and citizenship and home and culture and the many permeable boundaries that surround and separate us. It’s about motivation and privilege and priorities and perspective. It’s about leaving, being left, being sent away, staying, choosing your place in the world. It’s about finding what you need in the unlikeliest of places.

I think I might read this one again. I suspect there are layers I missed the first time around, things that will come into focus with a second reading.

Highly recommended.

[Marlena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won't get much into the story as I am racing today--after lying in my bed for the past two hours compelled to finish this great work. I'd read several of Nadine Gordimer's books long ago and thought she was a writer of the distant past. Well, no. I was wrong. She is one of the greats for all time. Such a refreshing change for me from current novels. The story is compelling, a young South African woman, white, falls for an impoverished illegal immigrant Abdu and we want to find out what happens to both. She keeps the pace going, hard. What is so astonishing is how Gordimer relates their inner thoughts, almost no dialogue. How she sets the story in real-world issues and in eternal (I almost said 'verities,' sorry). Deep and riveting. What is home? This is the profound question among many. I found this book in paperback at a local library sale and returned three days later to see if I could find another Gordimer story, and I did. This is what I will read next: "A Sport of Nature."

[Arnie Kahn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the 3rd book that I've read by Gordimer and I love all 3 of them. I can understand the negative reviews: Gordimer often writes dense, complicated sentences; and nothing "big" ever happens, no murder, no mystery, no physical violence. All three, this book, A Sport of Nature, and July's People, are about immigration and displacement, leaving one's home and finding a new home. The Pickup is a love story and the lovers' search for a home, a place of comfort: having lived in a big city with monetary freedom, the small town relationships can be a comfort; having lived within the confines of a small town, the lure of the possibilities of the big city are bright and shiny. All 3 books deal with race, ethnicity and social class. In The Pickup a 29 year old woman estranged from her wealthy family picks up a poor, black, illegal Moslem man, separated from his family, who faces eviction from the prosperous country. Julie and Abdul/Ibrahim are two unforgettable characters.