THE PICKUP

THE PICKUP is part cross-cultural love affair, part glimpse into an unnamed Arab village in the twenty-first century (complete with TV, cell phones, and a marketplace filled with the world's neon plastic discards). It is also a condemnation of stereotyping, piety, and prejudice. Nadine Gordimer's prose is hypnotic. Her use of image repetition lends a dreamlike quality to this fable for our time. Lisette Lecat navigates the intricacies of Gordimer's style with delicate understatement. As Julie, the rebellious daughter of a South African banker, her voice quivers with sudden intensity. In Abdu, the garage mechanic with a degree in economics, she creates a man whose distraction borders on indifference in his single-minded search for a place. Gordimer selects each word with a poet's care, offering an engrossing contemporary allegory. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 02]