The Lying Days Lying Days" in 1953 were generally positive. "New York Times" critic James Stern compared the novel favourably to the works of Alan Paton, especially "Cry, the Beloved Country", describing "The Lying Days" as the better of the two novels. Stern described the novel as less "novel" and more "biography", following the style and form of biographical writing. In a review in the "Fitchburg Sentinel", W. G. Rogers wrote that in "The Lying Days" Gordimer shows that South Africa "is a land not of a single problem, race, but of many problems which that one central issue seems to magnify and
Beloved (novel) which estimate that approximately half of each ship's "cargo" perished in transit to America. Scholars have additionally debated the nature of the character Beloved, arguing whether she is actually a ghost or a real person. Numerous reviews, assuming Beloved to be a supernatural incarnation of Sethe's daughter, have subsequently faulted "Beloved" as an unconvincing and confusing ghost story. Elizabeth B. House, however, has argued that Beloved is not a ghost, and the novel is actually a story of two probable instances of mistaken identity. Beloved is haunted by the loss of her African parents and thus comes to believe that