SOURCE: Newman, Judith. “An Analysis of The Lying Days, by Nadine Gordimer.” In Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 160, edited by Tom Burns and Jeffrey W. Hunter. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group, 2002.

In the following essay, Newman examines The Lying Days on a number of levels, assessing the plot, characters, evolution of the work, the novel's historical significance, and how the book has been studied since its publication.

Plot Summary

The Lying Days takes its title from a quatrain in a poem by William Butler Yeats, “The Coming of Wisdom with Time” (1910):

Though leaves are many, the root is one Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun Now I may wither into the truth. 

The quotation draws attention to the process by which Helen Shaw's life takes many branching paths and yet remains tied to one root, her native...