The house gun

Book Description

Critics

• Murder most secondary to everything else

  It's 1996, and South Africa is a changed country. The death penalty is still on the statute book, but its constitutionality is being challenged, and homosexual relationships receive a measure of protection under the law. In her new novel Nadine Gordi ... (read full critics)

  guardian.co.uk published on Sun, 26 Sep 2010

• A Murder in South Africa

  Two quotations seem to carry the main architectural load of Nadine Gordimer’s new book, whose design is strange and not entirely that of a work of fiction. One is from Dostoevsky. It is the voice of the satanic Rogozhin in The Idiot, speaking of doom ... (read full critics)

  nybooks published on Tue, 24 Aug 2010

2 Reviews

• 1 person find this helpful

  

  This was a strange book; it took me a while to get into, and I probably only finished it because I found the study of how parents feel so responsible for their children quite interesting. In short, the story begins with the parents of a young man discovering that their until then apparently complete ... (continue)

  This was a strange book; it took me a while to get into, and I probably only finished it because I found the study of how parents feel so responsible for their children quite interesting. In short, the story begins with the parents of a young man discovering that their until then apparently completely normal, average son has been arrested on a murder charge. Pretty much the rest of the book is taken up with the ensuing trial and sentencing, as seen through the parents' eyes (the story also takes place while the abolition of the South African death penalty is being discussed in the Constitutional Court, which gives it a parallel theme). There is a lot of self-examining on the part of the parents which was a real eye-opener for me; I'm not a parent, and the narrative had me thinking about how parents feel they influence their children all the way through life. On the down side, though, one has to get used to Gordimer's telepgraphic style: she's a fan of one-word paragraphs and statements as sentences, which I found really grated after a while.

  In summary? It's a good thought-provoking book about parents, racial relations, South Africa and (to a lesser degree) violence, though it wasn't exactly a page turner for me.

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  zbrntt said on May 18, 2008 | Add your feedback

• 

  A psychological sketch of parents

  I felt like I was holding my breath throughout the whole book, expecting something earthshaking to happen. But a third into it, I was still waiting ... halfway into it, still waiting... and when the moment arrived, arrrrggghhh, is that IT?

  Not exactly a page-turner, but an incisive look into t ... (continue)

  I felt like I was holding my breath throughout the whole book, expecting something earthshaking to happen. But a third into it, I was still waiting ... halfway into it, still waiting... and when the moment arrived, arrrrggghhh, is that IT?

  Not exactly a page-turner, but an incisive look into the psychology of parents to their child. How well do you really know your child? If your son were accused of murder, would you feel obligated to believe him as innocent? To what lengths would you protect your son?

  It also examines to a lesser degree white-black relations and power play in South Africa.

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  guiltlessreader aka screamingbanshee said on Feb 9, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Book Details

• Rating:
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• English Books
• Others 294 Pages
• ISBN-10: 074753666X
• ISBN-13: 9780747536666
• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Pub date: Jan 01, 1998
• Dimensions: 1548 mm x 1032 mm Just how big is that?
• Also available as: Paperback, Hardcover and eBook

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