Accompanying Vera by Nadine Gordimer

A Review by Nancy Casey

There is much that is painful to watch in None to Accompany Me. We are led through its world by Vera Stark's eye. We are in South Africa. The prison doors have been flung open. White rule is ending. Injustice is rampant. Vera is a lawyer for "The Foundation," relentlessly taking up the causes of the dispossessed, not anticipating fundamental change, just resisting, buying time, levying attention so that a landholder cannot simply massacre a village of squatters.

It is a time of change, and she sees how, among her contemporaries--a circle of mixed ethnic backgrounds and sexual preference--lifetimes of struggle, imprisonment and exile are not necessarily good preparation for building new social structures. She watches her closest friends make horrible decisions, knowing that she hasn't lived the lives that led to these turning points, knowing she cannot condemn.

Always, she works, and she sees, gradually becoming comfortable in the understanding that she, like everyone, is alone. Alone in the richness of the lives that we make for ourselves among the other rich lives that surround us. The aging heroes of this novel do not pursue pie-in-the-sky happiness, or a love so true that all pain goes away. Instead, they seek dignity and ways to understand how all that they have known and lived weaves into the fabric of humanness.

Finishing None to Accompany Me sent me off to explore more of Gordimer's work. Read this one. The words are well-chosen; the sentences ring true. The world you enter may not be your own, but you won't feel cheated by your visit.

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