Scan barcode
A review by zeinm1980
The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer
5.0
Set during the Apartheid era, this is a book about Mehring, a white South African of British decent who is a successful business man in the mining industry. The story tracks his process of feeling more connected to the land in South Africa through his purchase of a farm and the time he spends there. When an African man is found dead on the farm, the police come to investigate, but simply bury him on site because the death of a Black man isn't important to them. After a series of vignettes, all told from an omniscient perspective in which the reader can sense the disconnect between how Mehring sees his actions and the disgust the reader can discern (for example, he has a sexual encounter with a 15 year old girl on a plane; he hits on the daughter of his friend only to learn that afternoon the friend is dead -- the funereal for whom he avoids; he pretends to run over his farm manager, which he sees as a joke), the body of the dead man is flooded out by the rain. Shortly after learning this during a visit to the farm, Mehring is returning to Johannesburg when he gives a ride to a prostitute and stops near an abandoned mine site, presumably to have sex with her. He is shaken when he detects that they are being watched, and he has what reads like a psychotic break. His life, and death, all play out before him and he realizes that he does not belong the beauty of the land that is his farm because he is responsible for making the abject condition of the abandoned mine site possible. The novel ends with a phone call from his farm manager asking for money to build a casket so they can give the dead man who has resurfaced a proper burial. We do not hear from Mehring, but we learn through his manager, Jacobus, that he gives permission for the funds. The ending confirms that Mehring does not belong to the land as he once thought, and he will never belong to it.
The Conservationist does not read easily and I wondered how much of the obtuseness of the language was because Gordimer wrote the book in 1974 during the height of political oppression in South Africa. But in the end, the difficulty is worth it as the book leaves you with a feeling of having experienced the events, rather than just read the straight-forward narration of them. The various characters are also worth paying attention to closely. There is an Afrikaner family, a Coloured family, Portuguese travelers, and Mehring's presumably gay son, all of whom are as foils to illustrate the mind-set of what the reader assumes is the typical, wealthy, white South African during the 1970s.
The Conservationist does not read easily and I wondered how much of the obtuseness of the language was because Gordimer wrote the book in 1974 during the height of political oppression in South Africa. But in the end, the difficulty is worth it as the book leaves you with a feeling of having experienced the events, rather than just read the straight-forward narration of them. The various characters are also worth paying attention to closely. There is an Afrikaner family, a Coloured family, Portuguese travelers, and Mehring's presumably gay son, all of whom are as foils to illustrate the mind-set of what the reader assumes is the typical, wealthy, white South African during the 1970s.