The Pickup: A Novel

So first we have Julie, a virtue signaling 30 year old who rejects her background and hangs out with similar friends. She picks up Abdu – a man from an unnamed country that must be like hell according to Julie (can we say s*** hole country?) – who got an economics degree in said country but apparently could not work there in his field.He meets her family and – unlike her- admires them. He clearly has no problem with capitalism and wants to be as successful as they are.He gets deported and she decides to go with him. He insists they marry first – telling her that his family will not accept her otherwise, but probably more likely because he has been told by an attorney that he is more likely to gain entrance to a capitalist country if he is married beforehand to someone who would be easily accepted in said country.She falls in love with the desert and when he is accepted into the US refuses to accompany him. She wants him instead to accept his uncle’s offer of work as an auto mechanic (the same work that was humiliating him in SA, but apparently is fine for the unnamed country in her view.) Still not clear why he could go to university in this unnamed country, but could not work in his field, but whatever.Neither character is particularly likeable. They seem to be using each other. Her love for his country is not believable as she looks down on its major cultural feature – Islam. Yes, she forgoes food during Ramadan (yet does not get up early enough to eat with the family) but scoffs as the prohibition of sexual relations even knowing it would be a scandal if discovered.For an author so concerned with the plight of the “other,” Gordimer seems to look down on Abdu and his unnamed country as much as it is implied that Julie’s parents do. In fact, it seems disrespectful. in itself. that she doesn't name the country - just one of those hell holes where people are oppressed (unless, of course, like the evolved Julie, they can commune with nature in the desert).I guess, like Julie, we are supposed to judge Abdu’s striving negatively and expect him to be happy fixing cars. And Julie’s self imposed “otherness” is to be admired.

Two people, in lust, eventually love, knowing almost nothing about each other's culture or how people think in the other's language system, marry and move to the man's home. The man, Abdu/Ibrahim, wants to leave his home, his powerful Mother and large supportive family and seek a life elsewhere in the world. BUT, which country would take a man from this country so impoverished that no other country could/will possibly want him--what in the world would/could Ibrahim contribute to the new country? Julie, white, from a weathy family, living in rebellion in her own country, accommodating herself to Ibraham's family, culture, language, loving though unable to understand her husband's system of thinking, wants to stay with Ibraham's family, not immigrate. Within this complex story, written in sentences that burst with information, with emotion, with explanations of varying cultural and personality differences, gets to the reader. What will happen next? How do we live, knowing just the surface of each other, wanting to love and NOT to hurt our beloved, also needing to be a couple yet trying to satisfy our own personal needs? This book was for me, a most unusual immigration story, and I have read many immigration stories in my long lifetime. To understand the way in which Nadine Gordimer wrote the book, her sentence structure, her ability to move back and forth from personal to cultural thinking and back again, to give us the essence of a person in just a few words, one must read this book to appreciate its structure and its power. I wish that I were better able to express to you how powerful I found this book, which I am sure will stay with me for a long, long time. NanS

I have only read a few books by Nadine Gordimer so I am not sure what her style is. I have found that she starts out to tell a good story and then gets bogged down in her ideals while the story and character dissolve. This was slightly less the case in this book, although I found the principal character unbelievable and unlikeable. This book, like the others of hers I have read, lacks immediacy. She breaks the rule I have always heard from my English teachers about writing, which was , " Show it to me, don't tell me about it." Gordimer is telling, in the third person, much of the time. I found the detailed description of the uncle gynecologist completely unnecessary as well as the pointless diversion of the lawsuit against him. My last difficulty with the book is probably not fair as it was written at an earlier time, but I find it difficult to believe that an independent Westernized woman like the one in this book would be so welcome, or so safe in the nameless community that is depicted here, wherever it might be. I think she would give grat offense by the failure to cover her head or otherwise dress properly and the failure of even a fictional character to behave with simple respect makes her unpleasant for me.

Ms. Gordimer's skill as a storyteller is most evident in the writing style of this book. the relationships of the main characters are not expressed though dialog, but through thoughts, self-reference, and emotion. The cultural differences and lack of a common language reinforce the inability of the strong, primary characters to communicate what matters most to each of them. The PIckup is told with honesty and clarity, however, it is not told with sympathy. fortunately, the author allows each reader to form their own opinion about the characters and their complicated lives.

A skillful account of the perils of immigration from a poor country, and the contrasting scars involved in a privileged childhood upbringing in a portion of a upper class, western society. A small percentage of the novel contained language that was difficult to follow.

Well written but ending not very credible

My first Nadine Gordimer and certainly not my last. Gordimer knows how to set the tone, shape the characters and walk you slowly through someone's experience. She writes beautifully and although this is Romeo and Juliet, it is without cliche because of the depth and quality of her writing and originality.

It is a very nice book, although I bought it for my friends, she likes it very much. it is a great book.

this nadine gordimer knows what a novel is. knows what structure is. knows what meaning to chase down, to capture, knows the shape of the trap that will snare it.one reads The Pickup thinking it like a Y; two people from different places brought accidentally together, who go on living as one complicated strand made of two, the stem of the Y. but it is not a Y. it is an X. and the author has known it and known where it goes and what she is after nailing to the earth, to the page, and she does nail it, artfully, carefully, letting out just enough at every turn, to cause that wonderful novelistic thing —— the inevitable surprise.you think you know, even for quite a time, until coming up from underneath there is emerging another knowing, the right one this time, to surprise you. this woman born of, emerging from, a cold materialistic world of privilege, which values privilege over justice, who seeks the enveloping warmth of family. this man born of family, emerging from a stifling, formal, inflexible set of meanings and imperatives that yet better values human warmth and care, though in poverty, who seeks the expanding potential of success unbridled, of privilege, security, worldliness, even wealth — everything he sees embodied in her. everything that she wishes to abandon in favor of the family he seeks to abandon — how can it be anything but a perfect X?first with her friends at the L A café and then with his relatives in africa, she has sought the enclosing warmth of a family she has never known. he has sought a kind of privilege he has heard of but never known. they have been forced by the author to confront one another, and to confront the ideas they each represent. how inevitable. how perfect.like life in a crystal glass, we get to see it clearly, in the clarity of the novelist's singular unswerving vision.if life were as visible as this we would never need novels.

Prodotto conforme. Spedizione puntuale.