Pickup by Nadine Gordimer

Pickup

by Nadine Gordimer

Who picked up whom? Is the pickup the illegal immigrant desperate to evade deportation to his impoverished desert country? Or is the pickup the powerful businessman's daughter trying to escape a privileged background she despises? When Julie Summers' car breaks down in the sleazy street where she meets her Retro-Sixties friends, a young Arab garage mechanic emerges from beneath the chassis of a vehicle to aid her. Out of this meeting develops an extraordinary story of unpredictable and relentless emotions that turn on its head each one's notions of the other. No action by either is what the other expects. She insists, against his know-how of the rules of survival, on leaving the country with him when he is deported. The love affair becomes a marriage - that state she regards as a social convention appropriate to her father's set - but decreed by her 'grease-monkey' (as her friends privately dub him) in order to present her respectably to his family.
In the Arab village, while he is dedicated to escaping, again to what he believes is a fulfilling life in Western-style countries, she is drawn by a counter-magnet of new affinities in his close family and the omnipresence of the desert.

Reviewed by ibeforem on

2 of 5 stars

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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.

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  • Started reading
  • 11 February, 2011: Finished reading
  • 11 February, 2011: Reviewed