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Burger's Daughter

Burger's Daughter

List Price: $62.95
Your Price: $62.95
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Proust move over
Review: Fascinating struggle the author speaks of, namely, escaping the confines of one's parents' life, ideas, and reputation. For me, the book's undoing is its language. Half-page sentences make it difficult to read, even boring at times.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not at her best!
Review: Having lived in the Apartheid, Nadine Gordimer knows a big deal about political and historical facts of that period. So don't we. In this book, she uses her knowledge to give us the impression of the power of history, overcoming life of normal people. But neither we leave the book with the feeling of being enriched by a talent psychological insight, nor can we avoid the frustration not to be able to follow her detailed but rambling historical picture.

The main character, Rose, is the daughter of an important anti-apartheid leader. Her childhood, her adolescence and her entire life will turn out to be completely affected by her origins. And that's fine with me, although I don't like the idea we can't change our fate. What I didn't like is that the character Rose's development is dropped little by little through the very long book and mixed up with a quantity of events regarding Apartheid and Rose's father connection with the communist party, which the average reader can't understand. There is no order in their happening and the book is not trying to explain them: they are just mentioned!

So, if you want to know more about Apartheid this is not the right book. Probably an essay would be more useful than this novel. And about Ms. Gordimer's psychological insight and characters living in the Apartheid, I would rather suggest "My Son's Story".

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Classic character study
Review: I can't understand the reviewers who have downplayed this book. I think maybe they should stick to the thrillers and bodice-rippers in the bus station rack. Gordimer's book is a classic study of the conflicts between ones duty to ones country - in this case, the struggle for a non-racialist South Africa - and ones duty to ones family. The story is told through the eyes of the daughter of a pair of white, South African activists. We watch her as she grows up, hurt and bemused by, then running away from, and eventually coming to her own very personal terms with, the burdens she bears because of her parents commitment. It's a wonderful character study, often enigmatic, due to the ambivalent feelings Rosa Burger experiences, but ultimately very satisfying.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: No Cheese On This Burger
Review: I have probably by now read almost everything Gordimer has written in her long and prolific career. I have defended her writing to those who have only dabbled in one or two works and form opinions. Gordimer's works are much more complex than one can dissect in one reading of a particularly book or in a reading of only one of her books.

Burger's Daughter was surprising, as all of Gordimer's works are. Gordimer has mastered the art of voice and gives her characters complex lives and thoughts without resorting to or relying on cliché or expectation. In Burger's Daughter, the protagonist lives a life that was created for her before she was even born. Her father's political activism created circumstances into which she would be born and in which she would be expected to live, much as royalty is born and expected to follow in the monarchy's traditions.

The book traces Burger's daughter through her literal and figurative explorations to find her own voice, which can be the most difficult thing one can do in life, particularly when overshadowed by the voices of everyone around you. This work is quite subtle and although surprising (only because I am always amazed that someone has such talent for breathing life into a page) it is very typical Gordimer. Well worth the time to read it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Finding one's own voice
Review: I have probably by now read almost everything Gordimer has written in her long and prolific career. I have defended her writing to those who have only dabbled in one or two works and form opinions. Gordimer's works are much more complex than one can dissect in one reading of a particularly book or in a reading of only one of her books.

Burger's Daughter was surprising, as all of Gordimer's works are. Gordimer has mastered the art of voice and gives her characters complex lives and thoughts without resorting to or relying on cliché or expectation. In Burger's Daughter, the protagonist lives a life that was created for her before she was even born. Her father's political activism created circumstances into which she would be born and in which she would be expected to live, much as royalty is born and expected to follow in the monarchy's traditions.

The book traces Burger's daughter through her literal and figurative explorations to find her own voice, which can be the most difficult thing one can do in life, particularly when overshadowed by the voices of everyone around you. This work is quite subtle and although surprising (only because I am always amazed that someone has such talent for breathing life into a page) it is very typical Gordimer. Well worth the time to read it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: What A Rotten Piece of Literature
Review: I read this book as part of a Contemporary World Literature course I took in college, and I thought it was the worst book I have ever read. The book is supposed to be about a white woman in South Africa whose father is in prison because of his anti-apartheid views. The strange thing is I learned NOTHING about South Africa, living conditions for whites and blacks in South Africa, and the effect that apartheid had on people in living in South Africa. This book was written in a hoity-toity, avant garde, stream of conciousness fashion that it was impossible to know what was going on. I found myself counting the number of pages until I finished the book. The author of this book should seriously consider writing a book that is coherent, informs people, and broadens their horizon of knowledge, which this book certainly does NOT do.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Kaffir Boy
Review: I think this book was pretty good. It tell the readers a lot about how the blacks live during the early years. I recommend this book to everything especially those who don't know much. SAF

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Weak story, characterization, themeless with poor writing
Review: It is rare to read a book in which the author seems to care so little about the quality or integrity of what she has written. More amazing is the respect critics have accorded this work. The author seems utterly indifferent whether the reader tracks the journey, so to speak, and is rewarded in the end. Solecisms abound, plainly not caught by Gordimer or her editors. The language is jarring and aimless, snippets of conversations half-heard, and it would be overly generous to one-half of the equation to call this "stream of consciousness." Sure apartheid was bad and capitalism is at times flawed, but that is the stuff of tracts, not literature, and it is tempting to think that this work, and perhaps more, receives plaudits for being politically correct, given Gordimer's role as a pillar of PEN. For literature about South Africa, Coetzee and Brink seem the way in, or most certainly, Alexandra Fuller's recent account of her childhood. Do not be a stooge to integrity as I have been after starting to read Burger's Daughter and plow your way all the way through this jumble of self-indulgence.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Weak story, characterization, themeless with poor writing
Review: It is rare to read a book in which the author seems to care so little about the quality or integrity of what she has written. More amazing is the respect critics have accorded this work. The author seems utterly indifferent whether the reader tracks the journey, so to speak, and is rewarded in the end. Solecisms abound, plainly not caught by Gordimer or her editors. The language is jarring and aimless, snippets of conversations half-heard, and it would be overly generous to one-half of the equation to call this "stream of consciousness." Sure apartheid was bad and capitalism is at times flawed, but that is the stuff of tracts, not literature, and it is tempting to think that this work, and perhaps more, receives plaudits for being politically correct, given Gordimer's role as a pillar of PEN. For literature about South Africa, Coetzee and Brink seem the way in, or most certainly, Alexandra Fuller's recent account of her childhood. Do not be a stooge to integrity as I have been after starting to read Burger's Daughter and plow your way all the way through this jumble of self-indulgence.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A challenging but ultimately rewarding novel
Review: Nadine Gordimer's prose can be difficult to follow at the initial read, but is full of thought-provoking allusions and is a book you will definitely think about for a long time. In this tale, Burger represents the man who was Nelson Mandela's lawyer in apartheid South Africa. Gordimer follows Burger's daughter as she copes with ties to her homeland, the complicated issue of white and black in South Africa, and with both the persecution and expectations she faces because of her name. Highly recommended!


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