List Price: £7.99 Price: £5.99 You save: £2.00 (25%)
Media: Paperback Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
This is writing at its best. Form and style are matched to content in this expertly crafted novel by Gordimer. 'The Conservationist' was my introduction to Gordimer's writing and I wasn't disappointed. Her Modernist style, with its rapid shifts of narrative viewpoints, stream of consciousness and insertion of flashbacks is exactly suited to the tragedy that is Mehring's life and times - capturing his increasing ennui, uncertainty and his inability to fit. It's not difficult to understand why they gave her the Nobel.
Disappointing Despite having won the Booker Prize, and Gordimer herself being a Nobel literature laureate, I found 'The Conservationist' rather disappointing. It's not terrible, but it's unexciting and often quite hard work to read. It does improve as it goes along and you become more familiar with the style, but it was one of those books I had to make a conscious effort to pick up and read. The story is set in South Africa during the seventies, and focuses on a rich white businessman who owns a farm as a weekend... more info