The Burger's Daughter

One can describe a novel as "elegant" -- as something, as a made
thing that seems alive and yet controlled, aesthetized as a form,
extended from the subjective world of the writer's imagination as a
permutation of that which is essentially chaotic -- to objectivify the
essence of a subjective narrative is something elegant
indeed:


To distill the story of someone who leads an essentially
private life, a private life that is much more deeply imbedded in
oneself than the public facade, the public life she purports to lead?
is something that is difficult. In this novel, Nadine Gordimer carries
it off with a certain gravity and to add, even a sustained rhythm, a
charmed lyric:


On the bus, we may see someone and somehow, their face, the
way they dress, their cold and expressionless skin intrigues us. We
begin to look into those eyes, trying to figure out what is behind the
front. We wonder, "Who is she that she appears so familiar and yet,
unrecognizable?" This is the way that she begins her novel? we see a
stranger. Then, we see all the details that the author inserts as text,
as a text that subverts her face and draws one away from one's
predatory instincts, the desire to rawly destroy this stranger. She
builds a physical history of the person as a sum total of her reactions
to others or to repressions of her true feelings, thoughts. Here, one
enters the world of the public text and the private subtext? the
private self is submerged in the unconscious and is terribly afraid not
only of the objective world but also of the subjective
subtext.


She may, like many angry and psychotic souls delve into
nighmares, dreams, or even lunacy, but she does not. Instead, she takes
it step by step, learning how to dance with the very people who are
torturing her and her family for being Communists. It is not that she
really believes in Communism? it is that she wants to be free. Is this
possible for her though, as young as she is, unformed or even
developed. Learning to mature so quickly is not necessarily something
she has not seen. Women become mothers at the tender age of 12 or 13,
but to be bugged by the government, but to be watched, studied perhaps
as a prurient scientist studies ovaries under a microscope is something
that is putting too much pressure on the chaotic world of her inner
life.