Bloomsbury £16.99 pp189

Paul, a South African ecologist, has become, by a glum irony, radioactive. He has just had thyroid cancer. It was the rare kind that happens to be treatable, but after surgery the doctors decided to give him a dose of radioactive iodine to make sure. Apparently, this will render him hazardous for weeks. It seems a bit drastic, but since Nadine Gordimer has the big gold medallion of the Nobel prize for literature on her sideboard you assume she is not just making it up for a laugh.

To avoid putting his wife and small son at risk, Paul goes to stay with his parents, Adrian and Lyndsay. Although only around 60, they are old enough not to be bothered about any long-term effects. Besides, he never goes into the same room as them, and they are mostly out at work. His little boy is allowed to wave to him through the gates once, but finds the visible separation so distressing that there are no repeat visits.

The situation symbolises quite well the fact that life is essentially solitary, something made all the plainer to someone who has had to confront his mortality, because nobody can cross that threshold with you. Paul ponders death: “‘Passing away’ is the euphemism, but to where?” This is perhaps meant to sound more profound than it does. He considers his isolation, with his wife and parents going about “their daily business. Busy-ness”. It looks as though the idea of disease as “dis-ease” may surface, too, but, in fact, it does not.

Meanwhile, in the world of busy-ness, his wife, Berenice, also known as Benni (Gordimer stresses that the two names represent two distinct aspects of her, but it is never clear which is which, as they are used interchangeably), is on a roll at her advertising agency.

“Her professional persona, carrying on for her. That had to be. She drank champagne someone brought to celebrate the triumphant contract, quipped and laughed in shared pride.”

Some of Benni/Berenice’s clients are developers whose projects Paul is dead against. He reflects: “The emanation irradiates the hidden or undiscovered.” Meaning that his present state makes him rethink his marriage. “That unit of being that is sexual fulfilment within the other conditions of being, being in the world, commitment of political or religious faith, commitment of values (can ’t weigh them in year-end bonus), what you live by in what matters, idea of what is meaningful for each in the aims of work, beyond the common needs it meets — can it be divided.” (Gordimer often spurns the question mark, by the way.) It is a bold move to put things in note form like this, but not a wholly successful one.

Paul concludes: “Living in isolation all along.” But his black colleague Thapelo comes to see him and is quite happy to sit in the garden with him. “The question of his continued exposure to Paul’s Chernobyl — the nature of relations with officialdom in the work they do makes him dismissive of the controlling edicts of authority as hidden agenda.” Primrose, the housekeeper, puts down the drinks tray at a distance, sceptical of a danger she can’t see, but too loyal to disobey her employers’ instructions.

Paul and Thapelo discuss various dodgy eco-hostile schemes they hope to prevent, such as a new coastal highway, an Australian mining enterprise, a “pebble-bed” reactor, whatever that is (“a reactor based on the harmless pebble a small boy takes home from the beach” — really?), and the battery of 10 dams that will destroy the lush Okavango delta in neighbouring Botswana. Presumably they work for a university department that takes on consultancies, but this is never explained. They’re just, um, you know, ecologists.

Halfway through the book, Paul’s quarantine period is over and normal life resumes. The marriage problems never arise and he and Benni/Berenice get on with work and planning another baby. The focus shifts to Adrian and Lyndsay, who take a holiday in Mexico, cue travelogue. Lyndsay, a top lawyer, has to come back early for a court case, leaving restless, virile alpha-male Adrian in care of that nice lady tour guide. Uh-oh.

Gordimer’s immense reputation earns her a certain amount of indulgence, but the story falls quite badly into two halves, the various themes are stated rather than examined, the characters have scant existence beyond name, age and occupation plus the odd stereotypical attribute, and the writing tends uncomfortably towards self-parody.

Available at the Sunday Times Books First price of £15.29 on 0870 165 8585 and www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

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