Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1983610 in Books
• Published on: 1999-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"There is no privacy more inviolable than that of the prisoner. To visualise that cell in which he is thinking, to reach what he alone knows; that is a blank in the dark."

Privileged whites in post-apartheid South Africa, Harald and Claudia Lindgard have managed to live the better part of 50 years without ever confronting the deepest shadows in their culture or in their own souls. Though they conceive of themselves as liberal-minded, neither has ever taken any active political stand; neither has ever been in any black person's home. Harald sits on the board of an insurance company; Claudia is a compassionate doctor. Neither of them has ever been inside a courtroom before; neither has ever been inside a prison. When their architect-son Duncan is arrested for murder, both know that the charge is preposterous. But Duncan himself fails to deny his guilt and his parents are brought by a harsh and ungainly process to accept the possibility that he has committed an unthinkable crime.

Nadine Gordimer's The House Gun is a gravely sustained exploration of their long-delayed but necessary descent into an intimate acquaintance with the culture of violence that surrounds them and that is "the common hell of all who are associated with it." The novel is a mystery, but not in the usual sense of the whodunit. Here the question of who quickly gives way to why and thence to other, still deeper quandaries of culpability, both immediate and ultimate. The enigmatic Duncan becomes a dark mirror in which his stunned parents must desperately grope for a new vision of themselves and their world--a vision that will not shatter, as their old one has, under a single blow from reality.

Gordimer's prose is mannered and severe; humour is rare or absent. "As the couple emerge into the foyer of the courts, vast and lofty cathedral echoing with the susurration of its different kind of supplicants gathered there, Claudia suddenly breaks away, disappearing towards the sign indicating toilets. Harald waits for her among these people patient in trouble, no choice to be otherwise, for them, he is one of them, the wives, husbands, fathers, lovers, children of forgers, thieves and murderers." This difficult exposition is the reader's own dark mirror, where we as spectators fumble from one dubious explanation to the next--a twisted reflection always reminding us that, underlying this social tragedy, there is a mystery play in the old sense, and an unanswerable question: What is a human being? Paragraph after paragraph, the reader is led into deeper and deeper perceptions of the sensibilities and the dilemmas of these characters--into a quiet intimacy with their trouble that is sometimes acutely uncomfortable, but which pays off richly in an ending that reconciles our sense of the horror of violence with our desire to believe in the value of each life. --Daniel Hintzsche

Review
'Gripping. So well written that it draws you into itself like a dream. I urge you to read it' Independent

Daily Telegraph
‘It is Gordimer’s gift for dispassionate analysis of passionate acts that makes her work remarkable’

Customer Reviews

gripping, tight, excellent
I thought this was an excellent book. The descriptions of Harald and Claudia's inner turmoil was such that you felt all of their emotions: shock; disbelief; the minor hopes and resignations.

I loved the way that it is seen from only their point of view- including their blind spots to every other characters actions. It is my first Nadine Gordimer book- and I will be buying more.

A missed opportunity
I expected this to be much better than it was. Nadine Gordimer has a great reputation and the idea is good but I can't say that I really liked it.
At the beginning the jerky style of writing to show how the parents feel is clever but she kind of shoots herself in the foot because it was so hard to read that I almost gave up.
Later on (much later, more than half way through) it gets a bit better and I started to get into it. The writing is more fluid and the details are interesting.
Sadly this doesn't last. The trial may be realistic but the constant repetition of the facts is just tedious to read. Fiction is fiction, it does not have to correspond exactly to reality and this is a prime example of a good place to veer away from it.
It's not the worst book I've ever read by a long way but I can't really recommend it except that some of the information about South African society is interesting and I did learn things from it about this subject.

Disappointing
After having heard so many good things about Nadine Gordimer I was looking forward to reading The House Gun. Unfortunately when I laughed out loud during the first few pages I realised that neither this book, nor the author, were for me. Preposterous, self important and completely misjudged I could not bear to go beyond those first few pages. The quickest and most unexpected abandonment of a book ever for me!