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The House Gun: A Novel, by Nadine Gordimer
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"With the scaffolding of a courtroom drama and the moral underpinnings of the state's responsibility, the novel infuses an isolated crime of passion with the atmospheric pressure of a country reeling from its own past." --The Boston Sunday Globe
A house gun, like a house cat: a fact of ordinary daily life. How else can you defend yourself against intruders and thieves in post-apartheid South Africa? The respected executive director of an insurance company, Harald, and his doctor wife, Claudia, are faced with something that could never happen to them: Their son, Duncan, has murdered a man. In this powerful and disturbing anatomy of a murder, Nadine Gordimer examines the effect of violence on the complicated web of love that holds together parents and children, friends and lovers.
- Sales Rank: #1224347 in Books
- Brand: Gordimer, Nadine
- Published on: 2012-07-03
- Released on: 2012-07-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.24" h x .84" w x 5.54" l, .59 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
Review
“Elegantly conceived, flawlessly executed . . . Gordimer tells a love story unlike any other I have ever read.” ―Jack Miles, The New York Times Book Review
“As the moral anatomy of a murder, The House Gun will seem to American readers closer to their own existence than many Gordimer books.” ―The Washington Post
“An intellectual thriller with a soap opera engine . . . Nothing short of epic.” ―The Baltimore Sun
“A memorable blend of the topical and the timeless, at once a profound, lingering meditation on the human heart and a story so gripping you can scarcely bear to put it down.” ―San Francisco Chronicle
“It feels like the reworking of pages from the notebook of an excellent journalist, an observer sitting for the first time on the Court's press benches and recording the historic scene as human rights are finally incorporated into South African supreme law.” ―Neal Ascherson, The New York Review of Books
“As complex, compelling, and memorable an account of race and class as any of her earlier works . . . A brilliant, beautifully crafted novel of betrayal.” ―The Dallas Morning News
“The House Gun is like a well-cut diamond. Its many angles and planes catch the light and illuminate understanding, laying bare the emotions of a people caught in the transition from one world to another.” ―The Orlando Sentinel
“Gordimer is a major literary figure, working at the peak of her craft . . . The House Gun is an awe-inspiring work.” ―The Cincinnati News and Observer
“Exquisitely drawn . . . Passionately intelligent, it's more complicated than any detective story. Complicated not so much by plot, it's about the mystery of the human heart, the ‘mystery that is the other individual, even the one you have created out of your own flesh.'” ―Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today
“A passionately schematic moral anatomy of a murder.” ―Kirkus
From the Back Cover
A house gun, like a house cat: a fact of ordinary life, today. How else can you defend yourself against losing your hi-fi equipment, your TV set and computer? The respected Executive Director of an insurance company, Harald, and his doctor wife, Claudia, are faced with something that could never happen to them: their son, Duncan, has committed murder. What kind of loyalty do a mother and father owe a son who has committed the unimaginable horror? How could he have ignored the sanctity of human life? What have they done to influence his character; how have they failed him? Nadine Gordimer's new novel is a passionate narrative of the complex manifestations of that final test of human relations we call love - between lovers of all kinds, and parents and children. It moves with the restless pace of living itself; if it is a parable of present violence, it is also an affirmation of the will to reconciliation that starts where it must, between individual men and women.
About the Author
Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014), the recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in a small South African town. Her first book, a collection of stories, was published when she was in her early twenties. Her ten books of stories include Something Out There (1984), and Jump and Other Stories (1991). Her novels include The Lying Days (1953), A World of Strangers (1958), Occasion for Loving (1963), The Late Bourgeois World (1966), A Guest of Honour (1971), The Conservationist (1975), Burger's Daughter (1979), July's People (1981), A Sport of Nature (1987), My Son's Story (1990), None to Accompany Me (1994), The House Gun (1998), The Pickup (2001), Get a Life (2005), and No Time Like the Present (2012). A World of Strangers, The Late Bourgeois World, and Burger's Daughter were originally banned in South Africa. She published three books of literary and political essays: The Essential Gesture (1988); Writing and Being (1995), the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures she gave at Harvard in 1994; and Living in Hope and History (1999).
Ms. Gordimer was a vice president of PEN International and an executive member of the Congress of South African Writers. She was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in Great Britain and an honorary member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was also a Commandeur de'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France). She held fourteen honorary degrees from universities including Harvard, Yale, Smith College, the New School for Social Research, City College of New York, the University of Leuven in Belgium, Oxford University, and Cambridge University.
Ms. Gordimer won numerous literary awards, including the Booker Prize for The Conservationist, both internationally and in South Africa.
Most helpful customer reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
The House Gun is No Misfire
By Linda K. Crawford
I'm baffled by the negative reviews this book has garnered here; I suppose it's more of a reaction to Gordimer's subject matter than to her style or content. People are more comfortable with a revolutionary spouting rhetoric that they agree with: if you, as a reader, are still wrapping your brain around the reality of South Africa as it was, Gordimer's earlier works will ring more true with you. If, however, you are interested in the legacy of Apartheid as it is, The House Gun will resonate more. The House Gun, so to speak, will only fire in the direction in which you point it.
As with all Gordimer works, the pace is slow and deliberately so, the words carefully chosen not to describe action but to allow the reader into the minds and souls of people who have lived in circumstances of which the majority of us can hardly conceive. The plot, intriguing though it is, is really secondary to the introspection taken on by each of the accused murderer's parents; the most pressing question, that of choosing to support your child with whatever means you have at your disposal (financial, spiritual, intellectual, emotional)in the face of your indecision as to whether or not you believe his version of events (or if any version of events would be acceptable). If your child murdered someone else, how would you feel? What would you do? Is the social legacy of apartheid going to color your beliefs; what happens when you are "open-minded" (no one ever really is), and your child commits a race crime? Do you use the race card to exonerate him, even when you are repulsed by his choice and behavior? And while the stress of saving your child from what he or she deserves in the course of law taps all of your inner resources, what happens to your marriage, your career, your friendships, your faith? Do you question all of your motives, all of your beliefs, all of your emotions?
I believe that you do. Every crisis, by nature, requires self-examination. It is not always pretty, or easy to accept, what you find at the end of your questioning. Gordimer, here, takes this family's condition, in microcosm, to expose South Africa's current quandary, many years after the abolition of Apartheid. Where do they stand as a society? What do they believe? What is excusable, what is justifiable? Who pays for what has been done, and how? Where will they go? What will be possible? No one knows, and maybe that's too unsettling for most.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Disappointing
By A Customer
Gordimer is an excellent writer, but The House Gun finds her far from the top of her game. The plot of the story is certainly intriguing: in post-apartheid South Africa, a man is accused of murdering his lover; his affluent, supposedly liberal parents hire a black attorney to represent him, despite the fact that the parents have never interacted with a black person in their lives. Gordimer has a great deal to say here about the legacy of apartheid, its violence, and about liberal culture, but getting to these messages is arduous. Even by literary standards, the text is dry, devoid of humor and even emotion to the point of being painful, and Gordimer does little to help her cause by adopting such a difficult style, weighting down the text with unpunctuated dialogue and terse prose. Unlike other "challenging" works (read: Faulkner, Joyce, early Gordimer, etc.) that ultimately reward readers for their efforts, The House Gun has a promising start that languishes up to an unsatisfying ending. The reviewer who stated that this is not a work for "best seller" readers is certainly on the mark, but I would go as far as to say that this isn't really much of a book for those of us with high brow tastes. Gordimer has written a number of outstanding books (My Son's Story, Burger's Daughter, and Jump come to mind), but The House Gun falls short of Gordimer's standards. If you love Gordimer, you'll probably read this book anyway, but her new readers (and I highly recommend reading her) should start elsewhere.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
a very wise, very moving and insightful psychological drama, Gordimir's best novel
By Uzi I. Ben-Ami
Gordimer is a very serious 1991 Nobelprize winner poilitical writer, who put herself in harm's way and did not only write about the plight of the victims but also took action. She was arrested and spent time in jail for fighting against the Apartheid in South Africa. Much of her writing dealt with the ethical dilemas of the silent majorities in different ethical issues (not only but mostly Apartheid), not sparing the feelings of most of us who sympathize but do nothing or even avoid hearing about the plight of others.
This is a psychologically sophisticated book that deals primarily (not only) with the complicated relationship between parents, and between parents and an adult child in jail for murder. Very wise. One of the only books I read in decades that did stir a sense of guilt in me and provoked and evoked a desire to take action. Generally her stye is very sparing, quick, forcing me to willingly read passages more than once, full of ideas and intricate thoughts and dialogues. It is a stunningly insightful book, and if you read it at the appropriate slow pace will be unforgetable.
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