Rating: 
Summary: More than Apartheid
Review: Reading previous reviews, I can't help but think that the author might be disappointed to see so much commentary on apartheid and South Africa in general. The story did touch on these issues (how could it not... it took place there) but the central issues you see dealt with here are in no way exclusive to South Africa. In the case of the professor, you have an aging womanizer dealing with the consequences of stepping just over the line of what is acceptable to a man in his position. He's discovered and readily pleads guilty to the charges brought against him, but refuses to show repentance before a committee of his peers and acts offended that they even suggest it. However, when he is placed in the position of seeing his daughter as the victim of a vile act (although not exactly identical to the one he committed), he is shocked by the callousness of others in their refusal to act in any way repentant. The author packs a lot of substance packed into this engaging short book.
Rating: 
Summary: Well-crafted but bleak and stark
Review: The beginning started off intriguingly enough for me - a dispassionate middle-aged man with little responsibility and a large amount of power and lust abuses his power. David Lurie's detachment from the world and its social mores in the beginning of the book can be likened to the character of Mersuelt in Camus's "The Stranger". He is arrogant but fragile, full of pride but easily broken. However, Coetzee does little, in my eyes, to redeem this apathetic and chilled man. Some people may read the tale and feel compassion towards Lurie as he is disgraced, retreats to his estranged lesbian daughter's farm hosue in the South African countryside, but the book's character development left me cold. Lurie has no conscience. We aren't ever allowed to get close enough to his daughter to fully realize her strength, although it is clear that she possesses a vast amount. There is nothing particularly uplifting or redeeming about humanity in this book, it washes over you in a lukewarm way, prodding you to dig deeper to find something more. But maye this is what Coetzee is trying to say about life in post-apartheid SA...and about men like Coetzee in general. Still, I found the language a tad too sleek and methodical (some may say sparse, but seeing as Coetzee was a computer scientist before a writer, I'll stick with these adjectives!), the characters a bit too sketched and not 3-D. Worth the read, but is it worth The Booker? I don't think so.
Rating:
Summary: Not Sure How to Feel
Review: The book kept me until the end. its oddness and meandering was somehow a painful beauty like a symphony of broken instruments that somehow makes you cry because it hits just the right notes to make you feel something. The way it was written made you feel as if you were right there in the pocket of the main character, David. After the intial disgust with him, you begin to love and respect him especially since he proves himself to be human and real.
But the story has a note of futility. of the situation. and that is the real sadness- that people push on and struggle even though it seems like things are just getting worse. More importantly i think it changed my attitude about the violence in S.A. So often do we only think of the violence inflected upon the black Africans but there was violence against the white Africans also and that is just as much wrong and i never felt that way before.
In a way this story has helped me see the situation in Palestine/Israel in a new light. How Israelis must feel living in danger and have violence being threatened against them even though their regime is doing something fundamentally wrong. Who do we hold repsonsible for the actions of history and a governmental body? And how should they be punished? This is a serious question in a world where the alst remanants of colonialism is disintegrating.
But the book left me sad and confused and maybe that was the point. I felt if I had been stranded in the African wilderness. and sometimes i could not udnerstand why the daughter of David had the attitude she had and did the things she did after the violent incident. Why did both David and his daughter react so differently? Was it merely a generational gap? The father is part of the old thinking and the daughter is riddled with guilt of what the odler generation did that she will lay down as a sacrifice for people to take their vengeance?
Rating:
Summary: Waiting for a bombshell....
Review: The read is gripping but all through I was waiting for the sensational ending, which didn't materialize. I wouldn't say the book particularly deals with modern attitudes in South Africa one way or another as many reviewers are raving about, it's simply about a rather non-conformist academic with fairly liberal sexual attitudes. He's a believable fellow with makes him interesting. I got the feeling we are given hints throughout that all is not what it seems, especially around the violent incident at his daughter's farm, that some darker side to the main character would be revealed at the end, but it wasn't, it just fizzles out. In anticipation of this, I couldn't put the book down !!! So I have to say I enjoyed it.
Rating: 
Summary: 220-page White Suicide Note
Review: This book raises serious questions about the role of literature and culture. Homer wrote great, inspiring literature about the heroic deeds of his people, so did Tolstoy... but then, on the opposite end of the spectrum, along comes J. M. Coetzee, who pens this depressing novel about Whites throwing in the towel and giving themselves up (in every sense of the word) to a lower, debased society.
What makes this even more sad is that all the skill and intelligence Coetzee expends is just used to dig a metaphorical grave for South African Whites. The title operates on several levels. There is the 'disgrace' of the main character, a professor fired for having an affair with a student (although one suspects this was just a pretext by the new affirmative action authorities), there is the 'disgrace' that his daughter suffers when she is raped by several Blacks on her remote farm, where the professor has gone to escape his scandal, and there is the supposed 'disgrace' of former White ownership of the land which inspires acts of cruelty and repossession against the Whites. The disgrace here, however, is that White South Africans gave up the land whose relative prosperity in Africa was based on their control.
The biggest disgrace in the novel is the meekness with which the profeesor and his daughter submit to increasing Black dominance, as the daughter signs over her land and cohabits as a concubine with the man who probably arranged her gang rape. The highly negative character of this novel also reflects disgrace on the author himself, who has expended enormous talent in writing what is, in effect, a 220-page suicide note for White South Africans, himself included.
Rating: 
Summary: Captivating
Review: This is an incredibly insightful story. With its and deep exploration of the relationship between father and daughter, Coetzee successfully brought out a story that is difficult to forget. The characters are rich and portray deep, though extreme emotions, rationale and impulse. Though quite understated and subtle, the writing is nevertheless rich in so meaning. There is everything to learn from this book. Coetzee's writing style is superb, the setting is ingenious and the pace of the novel is fast and absorbing.
In this novel, J.M Coetzee's brilliantly tells the story of the 52 David Lurie, a professor of communications at a Cape Town University, who is twice divorced and went around with the notion that having a woman is no problem. But when he realest that he is no longer alluring, he sought the convenient service of a prostitute, an arrangement that eventually came to an end, leaving him with no outlet for his virility. David Lurie finally convinced himself that an affair with a young female student was not bad after all and went for it. But then the complaint of sexual harassment turned his academic life upside down as he is fired. The unwritten rules of the society ensured that he longer found a place amongst them.
With that realization, David Lurie travels to the country side to a dangerous and isolated farm to write and spend some time with her daughter who ran an animal refuge and sold produce and flowers. Lucy as she is called is violated by thugs and with that David's disgrace became complete. David suddenly finds himself re-evaluating his life, his ties to people, his relationship with his only daughter, as well as his relationships with women. In all of those, he learnt that love is two-sided, a matter of give and take. In this novel one makes sense of the universally acknowledged fact that a man can understand who he is only when he comes to terms with his past.
Similar disturbing but riveting tiles are: DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE, CRY THE BELOVED COUNTRY
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