Get a Life - Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer needs no introduction. She has won the highest accolades and fought for the worthiest causes.
Get a Life, her fourteenth novel and Booker prize longlistee for 2006, has been reviewed in several publications given the stature of its author. This novel tells the story of Paul Bannerman (an in-your-face name?) who becomes radioactive after being treated for cancer in the thyroid. Paul, in order to protect his wife and child from being affected by the radioactivity, goes to live with his parents for a few weeks.
As this Times Online Review puts it,
Apparently, this [radioactive iodine] will render him hazardous for weeks. It seems a bit drastic, but since Nadine Gordimer has the big gold medallion of the Nobel prize for literature on her sideboard you assume she is not just making it up for a laugh.The Christian Science Monitor review sums up the book in two very interesting ways - one: its story, two: its intended reader
...
Gordimer’s immense reputation earns her a certain amount of indulgence, but the story falls quite badly into two halves, the various themes are stated rather than examined, the characters have scant existence beyond name, age and occupation plus the odd stereotypical attribute, and the writing tends uncomfortably towards self-parody.
Gordimer's 14th novel puts a 'modern-day leper' in an upscale Eden where two marriages eat of the tree of knowledge.
[But] in the end, "Get a Life" is more for those who want to think about ideas than for people who love to read.
