July's People

By: Nadine Gordimer

Narrated by: Nadia May

Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

For years, it was called a "deteriorating situation." Now it is war. All over South Africa, mobs of fugitive white people scramble to board departing flights. But Bam and Maureen Smales have no such option. They take up their servant July's suggestion and seek refuge in his remote home village, forever altering the relationship of servant and master. Now it is the Smales who are dependent on their host, their savior - their keeper. Nadine Gordimer is the winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Please note: This is an older title that has been sourced from tape and is the only available version of this title with this narrator.

©1981 by Nadine Gordimer (P)1993 by Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"It is so flawlessly written that every one of its events seems chillingly, ominously possible." (Anne Tyler, The New York Times Book Review)

Some technical failures

there's somw trouble with the sound quality - it oftens sound like there's a second voice recorded. That's quite clear in the beginning of the book .

Enhanced format clears up some sound issues

I tried several times to listen to this in the format in which I first downloaded it circa 2007 - but like other listeners found the audio so poor that I abandoned it.

Because I started a South Africa listening theme, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the novel is now available in Enhanced format - a big improvement. However, note that it is still a speculative novel of its time (1981?) about the Apartheid era so it may not appeal to all listeners today. AND although my new download was quite "audible," it still has the sound of an older book-on-tape converted to digital.

I like narrator May's attempt at South African English, but May seems to be one of those narrators listeners either love or hate - Make sure you like Nadia May/Wanda McCadden/Doneda Peters by listening to a samlple from ANOTHER book -Listening to the sound clip for this one may not help because to me, at this date, it sounds like old format version, not the improved Enhanced version.

The story

Amazing. Purely and simply amazing. I am supposed to have more that 15 words, but I think that this sums it up, for such a complicated book, its definition is simple.

Complicated and incomplete story

This book left me with that awful feeling that I wanted to have the time back that I spent listening to it. Great descriptive writing, but so little explanation of what the characters are like, what they are thinking and the surrounding circumstances, that I felt like I was reading an abridged version of a mediocre book. Didn't care about any of the characters, and the ending was completely unsatisfying. During a scene in which a main character is escaping some kind of helicopter raid (not particularly clear by whom) and the book just . . . ended. I wanted to learn more about apartheid and the relationships between the races during the most contentious times, but this book added nothing to what I already knew.