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kim_hoag 's review for:
July's People
by Nadine Gordimer
I have been wanting to read this South African author for a while so I picked up this book. Wow. It reminded me a bit of Graham Greene's writing: very vivid and character-driven with brilliant quotable lines. A white couple needs to hide out in the home village of their black servant during the war between the blacks and whites. Death is all around and life is uncertain. The psychologies of all the characters are well portrayed, almost coldly, as they clash with each other and the cultures. What July is and what he becomes; what are the white couple and what do they become? The ending left me quite confused and I'll have to do a lot of thinking about it. I'm not sure what had happened. I'm taking off a star for it, but it may be the fault of me and not the novel; and something tells me confusion is not far from what Gordimer wants. Violence, and what it does to us, is always a terrifying confusion.