Nadine Gordimer … has a great subject [for The Burger's Daughter]—a country playing out an historical tragedy—and it is astonishing what a big subject will do for a writer. Although people who care intensely about such things might not care to hear it, one of the things that a big subject can do is relieve a novelist of the burdens of nicety of style. In the course of Miss Gordimer's longish novel I came across many a description that seemed to me very far off the mark; at any rate I often simply could not visualize what she was describing. (p. 101)

Yet style is not utterly negligible in Burger's Daughter. As a reader, I must report that Miss Gordimer's novel is a mighty slow read…. Miss Gordimer puts many another obstacle in a reader's way. Points of view shift in her novel. Characters are often mentioned who...