The Conservationist

Dry...but drought-like rather than acidic, the dryness of cracked Karoo earth rather than tart Cape chenin blanc. When reading this book, the mind is forced into an unfocused, baking landscape of shimmering images and strong, unidentifiable smells. At times there are shapes that bear resemblance to something familiar: a plot thread suddenly rearing up from the parched, sandy pages (suitably yellowed with age, untouched). Unfortunately Nadine Gordimer's driven and frankly inventive, yet schematically mindless prose doesn't justify the infrequency of these captivating bulges. Roughly half the scenes require some sort of straw-grasping analysis in order to generate coherence, far more than I'm prepared to indulge in.

The payout in the end was a benzo haziness borne of the African sun, a feeling I actually quite liked, whilst the protagonist's ennui was served generously alongside sketches of a lost place I still call home.