 Cover of first UK edition | |
| Author | Nadine Gordimer |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Victor Gollancz (UK) Simon & Schuster (US) |
Publication date | 1953 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| OCLC | 10498531 |
The Lying Days is thedebut novel of Nobel winning South African novelist,Nadine Gordimer. It was published in 1953 in London byVictor Gollancz and New York bySimon & Schuster. It is Gordimer's third published book, following two collections of short stories,Face to Face (1949), andThe Soft Voice of the Serpent (1952).[1][2][3] The novel issemi-autobiographical, with the main character coming from a small mining town in Africa similar to Gordimer's own childhood inSprings.[4] The novel is also abildungsroman "about waking up from the naivete of a small colonial town."[5]
Helen Shaw, protagonist and first-person narrator is a young white, English-speaking adolescent growing up in a mining town nearJohannesburg. She befriends her classmate Joel Aaron, the son of working classJewish shopkeepers. Joel has integrity and is intelligent. He has progressive, enlightened views about apartheid. His ethical stances and sense of Jewish identity and ancestry impresses Helen: "His nature had for mine the peculiar charm of the courage to be itself without defiance."[6] He effortlessly accepts his parents and their poor background in Eastern Europe.[7]
Amid Helen's growing awareness of racial inequality in apartheid-era South Africa, she enters young adulthood and begins to question her place in South Africa. She is inspired by Joel, who makesaliyah toIsrael: "I envy you. A new country...Where do people like us belong? Not with the whites screaming to hang on to white supremacy. Not with the blacks - they do not want us. So where? To land up like Paul with a leg and an arm nailed to each side."[8][9]
Reviews ofThe Lying Days in 1953 were generally positive.New York Times criticJames Stern compared the novel favourably to the works ofAlan Paton, especiallyCry, the Beloved Country, describingThe Lying Days as the better of the two novels.[10] Stern described the novel as less "novel" and more "biography", following the style and form of biographical writing.[10] In a review in theFitchburg Sentinel, W. G. Rogers wrote that inThe Lying Days Gordimer shows that South Africa "is a land not of a single problem, race, but of many problems which that one central issue seems to magnify and intensify."[11] Rogers complimented Gordimer on the way she "brings her characters so surely to life", and on how she "writes so moving of love".[11]
Writing in theEl Paso Herald-Post, F. A. Ehmann calledThe Lying Days "not a bad novel", adding that once it got going, Gordimer's characters become "interesting", the plot "satisfactory", and her prose "good [and] honest".[12] But Ehmann was critical of her "experimental prose" at the beginning, saying that "this maladroit display of implied symbolism, disjointed reverie and rhetorical questions is both unnecessary and badly disjointed."[12] In a review in thePetersburg Progress Index, Joan Pollack describedThe Lying Days as "alive, bright and inquiring" and complimented it on its "handling ... the problems of youth [while] still maintaining the beauty and adventure of life."[13] Pollack said Gordimer "is an expert craftsman and her sensitive ability to portray the most delicate emotions should place her among the most promising newcomers today".[13]
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