SOURCE: "Pale Ghosts," in London Review of Books, Vol. 17, No. 1, January 12, 1995, pp. 20-3.

In the following excerpt, Harding assesses the narrative strengths of None to Accompany Me.

… Nadine Gordimer's novel [None to Accompany Me] is set in the period after Mandela's release. It is about homecoming and transition. The heroine, Vera Stark, who works for a progressive legal foundation, is not an exile as such, but she has lived at a distance from herself, which is slowly closed by her encounter with a black land rights spokesman, courageous, ambitious but unpretentious—virtues that are not confined to Mandela, but which try a novelist's skills, and occasionally a reader's patience. Didymus and Sibongile, old friends of Vera, have returned from Europe and Africa. Didymus, an ANC worthy, fails to land a senior post at home—his wife gets one—and it transpires that he has been involved in the...