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): 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.
This was an interesting read that I enjoyed. The writer's style took a little getting used to but once I became familiar with her narration voice, I was able to get into the story and finish it pretty quickly. This book is about July, a black servant in a white home in South Africa, who takes his "people" to his village for protection against the fighting taking place in Johannesburg. The story seems to focus on the white couple and their struggles with adapting to village life, and I wish there was more discussion of July's feelings about having them there. The relationship between July and his people is a beautifully complicated one. It brings up thoughts of how well one can really know another. After 15 years, it seemed the couple only first start to comprehend the nature of their former servant after being his guest in his village. The couple experiences a difficult passive aggressive power struggle in the midst of an unknown wilderness. They are conflicted. They feel gratitude and appreciation for their former servant for saving their lives, but they also seem to have resentment at the power he now holds over them and to learn he wasn't the person they had always assumed him to be. It was interesting to me to read this book and keep the time period in context. When discussing tribes and fleeing to the wilderness it was easy to assume the setting was somewhere in the far past, but to know it wasn't that long ago blew my mind. To know there are places today where dysentery and cholera is a real concern is heartbreaking. I enjoyed the book but it wasn't one I would read over again. I'm not a fan of the way it ended and not much really happened over the course of the story.
Do You like book July's People (1982)?
Bamford and Maureen Smales along with their children Victor, Royce and Gina are a white family who live in Johannesburg. During one of the uprisings, they determine it isn’t safe to stay there any longer. It is their servant July who comes to their help smuggling them out in the family’s bakkie. They go to his village and live in his mother’s hut. It is the story of the change in their relationship with the change of location. I really wanted to enjoy this; it sounded so good to me. I had a hard time at the beginning figuring out what was happening. Once I did, it was the writing style that continued to slow me down. Instead of using “ “ to indicate conversation, -- are used instead. Once I caught on to that, it helped but it was still very difficult for me to follow who was actually talking. But in terms of this being a story of white / black relationships in the time of apartheid, I’m glad I read it. I’ve been interested to read various things about it, and this adds another piece to the experience.
—Sue
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.
—Petra X
In Luglio Nadine Gordimer ci fa riflettere sul tema della sopraffazione in un modo piuttosto originale: e se in un futuro ipotetico fosse la popolazione nera del Sudafrica a sollevarsi, costringendo la classe borghese dei sudafricani bianchi a fuggire? È il caso della famiglia Smales, costretta a fuggire dai disordini di Johannesburg per trovare rifugio nel villaggio del loro domestico di colore, Luglio. Il romanzo diventa così un gioco di ribaltamento delle parti, dove il padrone diventa servo e il servo padrone. E mentre i bambini si adattano con facilità a questa nuova vita, gli adulti fanno fatica ad abbandonare le proprie abitudini e convenzioni, identificando il quel bakkie giallo in cui hanno viaggiato per fuggire dalla loro abitazione l'unica speranza per ritornare alla loro vita precedente. Un romanzo pregevole per la sua capacità evocativa, che non smette di far riflettere il lettore anche a lettura conclusa.
—Sara
