Discussion date: May 9, 2005

What we thought:
Nobody liked reading this book. It was difficult to follow -- especially with the lack of quotation marks -- and the characters were universally unappealing. But we did grant that it raised some important, thought-provoking issues, and led to an interesting discussion about racial relations.

We understood that the author was probing questions of power -- turning the traditional power relationships upside down, with the white family suddenly transported to their servant July's village, where he held all the cards (or to use the symbolism of the book, the keys to the car). But because Gordimer chose to tell her story by keeping us at an emotional distance from both the white and black characters, we had difficulty sticking with the book, even though it was short. In fact, we all agreed that its brevity was a virtue, since as one person said, "I'd sure never have finished it if it was 'War and Peace.'" We discussed the ambiguous ending, and mostly agreed that Maureen was attempting to escape from her situation, but if we had to select the most likely outcome, it wouldn't have been a happy one for her!

We all rated it low as a reading experience, with some points given for the value of the subject matter.

Interview with the author