Book Reviews - Get a Life by Nadine Gordimer
This seems to be my time for encountering extraordinary wise women. Nadine Gordimer’s Get a Life (2005) is the amazing product of an octogenarian South African writer and Nobel Laureate.
Get a Life begins with Paul Bannerman, a South African ecologist, being treated for thyroid cancer with radioactive iodine. To spare his wife and child any peril from the radioactivity, he returns to his parents’ home to recuperate. He’s returned to his childhood state, being cared for by his mother, a civil rights lawyer, and the black housekeeper who’s been with the family his whole life. Paul’s wife, an advertising executive, realizes that her clients are facilitating the foreign corporations who want to take advantage of liberal land use laws for their own interests. Paul’s illness forces them all the re-evaluate both their lives and the new challenges facing their country.
You will find multiple reviews on the site above.
It is somehow fitting, given the current state of Australia, that the chief environmental vandals in the novel are Australian.
And speaking of wise women: I had a wonderful conversation with Dorothy McRae-McMahon yesterday at South Sydney Uniting Church.
