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    The Pickup
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    The Pickup
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    The Pickup
    Ebook334 pages5 hours

    The Pickup

    By Nadine Gordimer

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    When Julie Summers' car breaks down in a sleazy street, a young Arab garage mechanic comes to her rescue. Out of this meeting develops a friendship that turns to love. But soon, despite his attempts to make the most of Julie's wealthy connections, Abdu is deported from South Africa and Julie insists on going too - but the couple must marry to make the relationship legitimate in the traditional village which is to be their home. Here, whilst Abdu is dedicated to escaping back to the life he has discovered, Julie finds herself slowly drawn in by the charm of her surroundings and new family, creating an unexpected gulf between them ... 'As gripping as a thriller and as felt as a love song' IRISH TIMES
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateMar 15, 2012
    ISBN9781408832509
    Unavailable
    The Pickup
    Author

    Nadine Gordimer

    Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014), the recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in a small South African town. Her first book, a collection of stories, was published when she was in her early twenties. Her ten books of stories include Something Out There (1984), and Jump and Other Stories (1991). Her novels include The Lying Days (1953), A World of Strangers (1958), Occasion for Loving (1963), The Late Bourgeois World (1966), A Guest of Honour (1971), The Conservationist (1975), Burger's Daughter (1979), July's People (1981), A Sport of Nature (1987), My Son's Story (1990), None to Accompany Me (1994), The House Gun (1998), The Pickup (2001), Get a Life (2005), and No Time Like the Present (2012). A World of Strangers, The Late Bourgeois World, and Burger's Daughter were originally banned in South Africa. She published three books of literary and political essays: The Essential Gesture (1988); Writing and Being (1995), the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures she gave at Harvard in 1994; and Living in Hope and History (1999). Ms. Gordimer was a vice president of PEN International and an executive member of the Congress of South African Writers. She was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in Great Britain and an honorary member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was also a Commandeur de'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France). She held fourteen honorary degrees from universities including Harvard, Yale, Smith College, the New School for Social Research, City College of New York, the University of Leuven in Belgium, Oxford University, and Cambridge University. Ms. Gordimer won numerous literary awards, including the Booker Prize for The Conservationist, both internationally and in South Africa.

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    Reviews for The Pickup

    3.5/5

    131 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I still am conflicted about the ending and how the main conflict is (or rather is not) resolved, and what the deeper meaning of the desert and the hungry dog is, but overall, it was a fantastic, complex novel.
    • 4/5
      Two people, connected by attraction and convenience, share a year or two of their lives and during that time become more or less aware how great the differences between them really are, and how grave the misunderstandings. Strengthened by the harsh environment , their disparities sharpen out and develop, to finally separate them. In the end, they both have what they wanted, but at a cost of losing each other. Their path together ends.The writing style was difficult to read at times, it felt like stumbling and tripping onto itself, but that may have been an instrument, to heighten the language and cultural differences between the two.
    • 2/5
      Truth be told, I really didn’t like this story. On a couple of levels.First, the plot. I found Julie to be utterly insufferable. Every decision she makes is not real, it’s just another way for her to do exactly what everyone else doesn’t want her to do. At nearly 30, she’s way too old for the teenage rebellion. She and her "friends" at the cafe live their entire lives trying to meet some sort of moral code that they think makes them superior to everyone else while they are completely unappreciative of what they do have. Her relationship with Abdu is just a way for her to take her rebellion to its outer limits. Abdu’s family in the "Arab village" (more on that later) is infinitely more interesting than Julie or any of her friends. My only consolation is that Abdu also finds her insufferable from time to time.I realize this assessment is entirely personal. People with these sorts of airs and pretensions get on my last nerve.Second, the writing. Gordimer does her very best to make you need to read every passage at least twice to figure out what she is trying to say. It got to the point that I felt like I was watching a movie through a vaseline smeared screen; you have to squint to see what’s going on. And then there’s the matter of this "unnamed Arab village". The author is very determined that this "unnamed village" be mysterious and a stand-in for the average Arab village, but then she drops a clue that told me within 2 minutes of googling that they’re in Morocco. So if you want it to be unnamed and representative, why drop that clue? I don’t get it. And then there’s the brief side plot of Julie’s uncle being unjustly accused of sexual harassment. It had absolutely zero effect on the plot, so it felt like the author just wanted to make the point that "Hey! Some women lie about sexual harassment!"Every drawn out, metaphoric passage felt like the author poking me in the eye and saying "Ha ha! I’m sooooo much smarter than you." What could be an interesting story about the nature of immigration is buried under all this…affectation. It wasn’t even a good love story.So yeah. Thumbs down. One of the longest short books I’ve ever read. Only finished it because it was for my book club.
    • 4/5
      The Pickup was an easily accessible story to fall into. In little to no time, I found that Julie became a character that I felt familiar and at home with. Although engaged in a love story with an Arab Muslim man who grew up worlds apart in social standing, Julie somehow easily overlooked the structures put in place to separate them. Not once did I look at the couple and think, "Wow, this is odd," or "I wonder if Julie or Abdu feel out of place." In fact, I found Julie's complete lack of tension towards their relationship very interesting. The author really seemed to create a character that responded to her world the way we have idealized; Julie seemed to be unaffected by the judgments of society.Although I sometimes thought the quirky non-tension of the first half of the book to be odd, I enjoyed the suspension of conflict for our characters. There were observations made by Julie that showed that she recognized that Abdu was "different" for her, but not that she ever judged him or herself for those differences. It wasn't until they moved back to his desert home that an unseen tension crept in. This time, it seemed to be Abdu judging what they had together, fearing how Julie would face his harsh life and seeing it through her eyes.Racial and social tensions are present in The Pickup, but not in the explicit ways one would normally expect. There is a subtlety and softness in the stress that builds in the relationship between upper-class Julie and the immigrant Abdu, indicative of a control over language by the author. It is obvious that the two characters love one another, but not in an outrageous, over-the-top passionate way. The steady treading forward movement of the novel was delightful and one that was intriguing to explore with our two characters. Love was present and pressing forward, challenged as in all relationships, but by different forces.
    • 2/5
      Really a pretentious poo-pah that delivers pretty much exactly what the summary says it will. The detached way in which Gordimer treats her characters really doesn't flesh them out beyond the statements that she's making about imperialism/upper-middle-class/racism/culture-clash/Islamic-feminism/etc and that really undermines any insights it might offer.Especially painful is the style- there's no quotation marks and the prose consists almost entirely of egregious examples of run-on sentences. Rather than letting the reader infer or examine any situation objectively, the prose makes sure to tell you exactly what this says about society or how the characters are humanly flawed (or often, delusional).There are some good things buried in here. I like the somewhat grace note the female protagonist ends on finding a place for herself in another land (where her husband still reaches to the greener grass on the other side). But overall, a really belabored attempt. Rating: 2/5 stars
    • 4/5
      Nadine Gordimer is one of the pre-eminent writers of our time. She has published at least 30 novels. At the age of 85, she is still writing. Her style is spare and detached. We are not overloaded with unnecessary details, and are not manipulated to feel the emotions the writer deems important. The Pickup remains true to Gordimer’s unique style.Gordimer has lived her entire life in South Africa: before, and during, the era of apartheid, and afterwards. The shadow of those years continues to affect all the characters and their personal interactions.In The Pickup a young woman named Julie has car trouble. She becomes involved with the mechanic from the garage. He is an Arab Muslim, from a poor country in Africa which is never named. As an illegal immigrant to South Africa, he uses an assumed name and tries to live under the radar. Julie is from a wealthy “European” (aka white) family. As the relationship between Julie and Abdu develops, he becomes more noticed in the community. Eventually, he received a notice that he is to be deported.We learn much more about Julie and her family as she attempts to use her connections to allow Abdu to stay in the country. When she is unsuccessful, they marry quickly and she returns with him to his country. As Julie adjusts to life in a poor Arab village on the edge of the desert, Abdu tries to obtain visas to emigrate legally to any developed nation.This novel is beautifully written. It subtly raises a number of issues that important in the world today, without hitting us over the head with gory details or solutions to those problems. Once again, a great effort from a fine writer.
    • 5/5
      An exceptionally brilliant and creative book. Placed in two different countries that are perhaps on a different plane of life altogether, it is a story of a cultural swap, where the two protagonists reject their given identities, to persue adopted ones. The language is easy and inviting - the writing style even more so.