Success sometimes may be defined as a disaster put on hold – Nadine Gorminder, Get a LifeI thought the idea behind this novel was an intriguing one: after undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer a man—Paul Bannerman—needs to be quarantined from his family for sixteen days because he’s literally radioactive. His parents agree to care for him, not that they’re immune but they’re not young and that’s what parents do; both are in their mid-sixties. So, at the age of thirty-five Paul’s reduced to being a child once again. The only contact he has with his wife is by phone or sitting across the garden from her—his mini-Eden—when she comes to visit. I imagined this was going to be a South African Dangling Man which is a book I’ve failed to finish twice but I still like the conceit.I stumbled on the very first sentence:Only the street-sweeper swishing his broom to collect fallen leaves from the gutter. Not quite right, is it? I mean I got the idea but it’s an odd almost-sentence to open with. It only gets worse and I found myself having to slow down my reading to take account of her unusual narrative techniques. Take this short paragraph:A state of existence. Unimaginable. Because her son, belonging to the historical continuity, brings a state of existence, his, before her days and nights, there returns a chapter not written, included, that surely cannot be believed was possible; could never happen to her as the son could not be thought ever to emanate danger out of the dark of his body. In her review for The Observer Jane Stevenson says quite bluntly: “One of the most bizarre aspects of the book is that it seems not to have been edited or proofread.” And Sophie Harrison in The New York Times adds: “Paul communes with himself in paragraphs that would fatigue Heidegger.” I fully expected to get through this book in a couple of days but it proved a hard and not especially satisfying slog.Paul’s quarantine takes up the first half of the book and yet I felt we were kept at a distance from the man. His suffering was all intellectual. He gets time to take stock of his life but then drifts into the background for the rest of the novel which focuses mostly on his parents whose marriage undergoes an unexpected shakeup. And then there’s Paul’s wife, Bernice or Benni; Gordimer uses both and frequently even calls her Bernice/Benni so these are clearly titles and not merely formal and pet names: Bernice is the successful career woman whereas Benni is the loving wife. We get Bernice’s story too. They’re an odd couple: Paul is an ecologist; his wife is an advertising executive. In many ways their professions are at odd with each other and yet this doesn’t seem to interfere with their marriage.Gordimer is known as a political writer and politics does form the backdrop for this novel or at least geopolitics and ecopolitics do. Metaphors and symbols abound but I’m not sure Gordimer is saying anything especially new in between the lines here. I’ve not read any of her other books but from what I have read about her it does seem that she’s had her say and there’s nothing more to say. A bit like Solzhenitsyn who said it all in his early novels but kept on writing to the bitter end. Maybe I’m judging her unfairly. I just didn’t feel that the personal received the attention it deserved here but then neither did the political. Certainly as far as Paul goes who, for me, promised to be the most engaging character but then really wasn’t. The relationship between his parents takes centre stage as the book progresses and is more interesting that Paul and Bernice’s since in their old age they’re the two who do end up getting new lives.The book felt poorly researched—a number of reviewers have criticised her treatment of this particular type of cancer—unfocused and badly edited (if at all). Because a Nobel Prize winner wrote it doesn’t mean she can get away with what anyone else would be pulled up for. One reviewer was kind calling her style “grammatically eccentric” but I kept asking myself: What’s she gaining here? I feel the same when it comes to Beckett’s late prose but, again, he’s a Nobel Prize winner and so you persist and assume they’re writing at a level just beyond your reach and you have to step up. Or then it could just be experiments that don’t quite succeed. Not every work by a genius is a work of genius.
from my review I posted on Amazon (a year back)I can't really call this a review - as due to the nature of the book, I found myself deeply lacking interest in it whatsoever around 40-50 pages in, and had to give up. It's sad as I'm a great fan of Gordimer's short stories - the ones included in Jump and Other Stories really enthralled me. I turned to Get A Life in the hope of getting to a flavour of what those skills applied to a novel might read like.From the blurb the plot is contemporary, engaging, thrilling even - Bannerman, an ecologist, struck down with cancer, requires radiation treatment, the idea of a life-threatening illness/treatment vs. preservation of threatened water bodies he deals with, the conflict with his wife's work, his parents' own anxieties and eventual questioning of their own marriage.But it doesn't develop as it should - the characters are flat and 2-D - I couldn't empathise with any of them, least of all Paul, surely the first rule of successful novel writing? I couldn't get a flavour of who or what was Paul, or Benni until a good way into the novel.The main reason for this is the convoluted nature of the prose - big sections with no real focus. There are some horribly difficult passages which make you arch your eyebrows in confusion while reading. The whole of it works against building up a clear, focussed storyline - eg the opening section for the novel doesn't really introduce us to the state of play, but skips between different points of view of Paul, Benni and his parents. Not that I'm saying this is a bad plot device - but it doesn't introduce the plot/storyline clearly enough to us.The sentence structure is long-winded and unclear - while I loved, for example, his meditation while in the garden, reminiscences of childhood and other experiences, I'd quickly forgotten what had happened before, as sections don't lead on from one another, and had to re-read whole sections again to remind myself of the plot.So, for now, a temporary abandonment - I might return to it again, but friends have recommended her other novels, The House Gun, July's People, the Conservationist, or I may just stick to her exquisite short stories and vignettes.
What do You think about Get A Life (2006)?
It seems rather harsh, a one-star review for a Nobel prize winner, but instead of trying to gauge its merits, I opted for providing just my personal opinion: I didn't like it.The first 60+ pages I found extremely difficult to read and I entertained the thought of abandoning the book. However, other reviewers said it gets easier after that section and it does. Still, I continued for the sake of finishing the book, out of a sense of 'obligation' so to speak, not because I enjoyed it.The story opens with one main character, diagnosed with cancer and exposed to a radiation treatment that makes him dangerous for human contact for a few days. He spends that time in his parents' house. This is the hardest part of the book to read,possibly written in a long-winded, disjointed, almost incoherent way to mirror his introspection. The few days he stayed at his family home feel to the reader like months. The rest of the book follows the story of the family (his family as well as his parents) after he returns home. It is mainly exposition, no 'showing' but 'telling', which I'm not very keen on.It's a shame that the first book I read of hers had to be this one.Nonetheless, I am looking forward to reading more of Gordimer's work.
—Κατερίνα
My first time reading Nadine Gordimer. It took me a while to feel comfortable with her writing style-- the spare punctiation, the long sentences, the unclear shifts in perspective from character to character to narrator. Occasionally I had a very tough time with the language, particularly when Gordimer's unusual style was mixed with professional jargon. But the story was unexpected, surprising, engaging. It's about a man who begins the book recovering from radiation therapy, himself radioactive for a time. But it ends up saying a lot about marriage, loneliness, parents and children, life pursuits, and nature. Very cool. Hopefully with the next Gordimer read I'll have an easier time with the language.
—Chelsea
This is a book about an environmentalist fighting nuclear expansion diagnosed with thyroid cancer. The treatment for thyroid cancer includes ingesting radioactive iodine making one (briefly) a radioactive threat to others. As an environmentalist with thyroid cancer, this aspect of the novel intrigued me the most. I found the book's depiction of thyroid cancer over-dramatic. The main character is in his thirties and has papillary thyroid cancer. His chances of dying are slim - yet the book repeatedly claims him to be on the brink of death (until the first treatment miraculously cures him). It even explains that papillary thyroid cancer is the most serious type of thyroid cancer. Papillary thyroid cancer is actually the least serious type. From the types of treatments he had (significantly less than mine) he was never at any real risk, just inconvenience. Secondly, after ingesting the large dose of radiation, Paul is quarenteened for 16 days. This is not inaccurate but the book describes it as if months passed by. The book depicts the weeks and weekends that pass. Months seem to happen in those 16 days --a length of tortuous separation that traumatizes everyone. The book ultimately however was not about the cancer or about the environmentalist protagonist's quest to save an environmental eden. They are just wrinkles of complexity and symbolism in the background of a book about human romantic relationships. A large focus is on the protagonist and his wife (a relationship I did not find to be mature or believable) while the other key relationship is between his mother and her husband (more true to life, more engaging, a romance you want to believe in - I won't say more as to not ruin the plot). The language of the book was disappointing. The sentence structure was as overdramatic as the plot itself, and the language was obtuse rather than poetic. I read the book in a few hours. I found it intriguing and thought provoking. It was worth reading, but it was not a very accurate picture of thyroid cancer.
—sdw
