Disgrace

Rating:
Summary: I remember now why I read
Review: Half way through this book I thought " I remember now why I read." At once suspenseful - I wanted to know page by page What Next? Why? Who? When? How? - and philosophical - not philosophical in the sense of "How many angels will fit on the end of a pin?" but philosophical in the sense of " What is a human? Does life, including animal life, matter?" cf Primo Levi, as well as forcing the reader to reflect on one's own motives, desires, attitudes, values. I remember that reading provides the richest source of answers to all questions, and adds much to one's own journey. I'm going to leave it for a month and reread this work.

Rating:
Summary: Desolate, beautiful, deeply affecting
Review: It is rare that I finish a novel, and then promptly re-read it cover to cover. But that is what I have done with this book, and honestly, have returned to it still again. It is that good.

As other reviewers have said, it is a novel about power. It is also a deeply spiritual book. David Lurie, the lecherous and vaguely anxious protagonist (one has trouble calling him that) defiantly tells those who question his sexual ethics that he "rests (his) case on the gods of desire". It is as perfect an encapsulation of the nature of human sin that I have found in modern literature. Just as his student, prostitutes (and presumably his former wives) are victimized by his refusal to recognize that desire is not, in and of itself, moral grounds for action, our hero eventually discovers, bitterly, just how powerless he ultimately is against the ruthless nature of OTHER'S desires.

And the redemption comes in his relationship with the helpless, unwanted, doomed dogs whom he cradles in their last moments before they are euthanized. He cannot protect them -- he recognizes and, ultimately, accepts his own powerlessness -- but he can love them unconditionally, which involves giving them up to their fate. The only thing he can do is love them for a moment, without expectation of reward, and in the absolute certainty of loss. Unlike other reviewers, I thought the richly symbolic ending was absolutely perfect. I wept.

At first glance, this is not a Christian novel -- but the elements of a very old, very important story are here. Beneath the bleakness and the disgrace, there is something very, very beautiful here.

Rating:
Summary: This ain't "Chicken Soup"
Review: This is a book about power. Professor Lurie (lurid? leery?) has power over his student lover. He argues she, the embodiment of Eros, has power over him. The University exercises its power to sack him; the media, the power to hound him. At his trial he invokes - or tries to - the powerful right of silence. Socially, he accepts his disgrace. He almost wills it. That, too, though self-destructive, is a display of power.

But there are other powerful forces in post-apartheid South Africa that exempt neither the self-destructive - nor the idealistic. Taking sanctuary in the country with his lesbian, hippie daughter, they both get a shocking education in what it means to be vulnerable, to be without power of any kind.

Greatly reduced, David Lurie's redemptive outlet, finally, is to comfort unwanted dogs as they take the fatal needle. But Coetzee is far too disdainful of novelistic convention to make even this a matter of comfort to us. What if this work, wonders the fallen professor, is itself nothing more than an exercise in power?

Coetzee's achievement, I think, comes to two things. He is ruthless in extinguishing easy answers. He also, as a writer, has an unparalleled capacity to compress complex issues into a narrative, without slowing the flow.

He has created a book which is painful and challenging at every turn and yet utterly compelling to read.

Rating:
Summary: Gritty
Review: This book is eloquently written and Coetzee's skill with words is apparent. The story follows a father and daughter adapting to new circumstances and dealing with very different kinds of disgrace. The harsh reality of life in the New South Africa do not make this book an easy read but it is thought provoking and ultimately extremely enjoyable.

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended
Review: I enjoyed this honest and compassionate book. Coetzee doesn't ask us to solve the world's problems, and he doesn't make his characters the best, cutest, nicest people on earth. He puts flawed but well-meaning people in difficult circumstances and gives them just enough will to persevere. Since we're all just trying to make sense of what the world hands us, a book that tells the unflinching truth deserves reading.

Rating:
Summary: Just Saw the Movie
Review: Technically, as a layman, I agree with most of the reader reviews that spurred me to read this book, "virtually faultless". A very readable book with charming, often poetic use of language and very informative on post apartheid South Africa. However, as I neared the end, I wondered just how the author would close this rather depressing chapter in the life of his protagonist and when it arrive, I felt it didn't supply the "goods" - the last enigmatic line, didn't satisfy. Also, as brilliantly written and constructed as where, the musical reference, they where far too reminiscent for me of another Booker winner, Ian Mc Ewan's Amsterdam. Whatever, a most enjoyable read with warts and all characters that are completely believable. A book I would highly recommend - real class; a book so graphic in its imagery, I feel as if I have just seen the movie.

Rating:
Summary: 21st century Melville?
Review: Disgrace is not a book that can be grasped without some patience or reflection. It seems to have been written from some dark recess of the psyche, building up layers of meaning and symbolism. The narrative is a deceptively banal description of a personal crisis and drift in the life of a sybaritic professor. The dead calm at the surface, though, David Lurie's outward indifference to his disgrace, conceals a fierce undertow. Lurie is presented as a character in manifest possesion of his own fate. Generation and decay, intimacy and alienation, passion and violence are thematic contradictions which thread through the story. Coetzee sounds the romantic ideal of regeneration through nature, brilliantly personified by the spectre of Byron's mistress, Theresa. But this is ultimately sabotaged by the protagonist's dark volition. The prospect of redemption courses around Lurie. He recognizes it, considers it, then rejects it. He shuns lifelines, betrays all new trusts and systematically aggravates his humiliation. The momentum is to his own core, the real drama is played out on an internal pitch. Coetzee may have given us a modern Ahab, whose turbulent obsession is not a white whale, but his own soul. We watch Lurie's world collapse around him, following an exhausted conceit to the deep. He becomes entranced with and submerged in its desolate potential.

Lurie is not irrational or maniacal. He is objective and moderate, albeit determined in his actions. The tangible expression of the turmoil is represented only in his growing isolation. His perceptions become increasingly abstract and disassociated. In progressive passages there is a sense of a storm gathering around him, which he challenges with ruthless indifference or reckless provocation. Disgrace then becomes, in one respect, a disturbing tale of a self annihilating hubris. Coetzee inverts moral reference points to purely subjective space within Lurie. All of the sex is habitual, compensatory, joyless. Haunting images inhabit the pages. The crippled, doomed animals, outlaw renegades, alienated, uncomprehending relationships project a lonely, hellish wilderness, like a self inflicted prophesy. Coetzee immerses symbols of despair, and of hope, into his arid prose.

Hope?-- As with Moby Dick's Ishmael, there is spiritual survivor of the conflagration. Lucy's fight for life and persistence against all odds is in direct contrast to her father's wilful cynicism. Coetzee covertly, here, taps into primordial archetypes in literature. Time will tell if the book's mundane modernity, its minimalist phrasing and interior focus, provides a strong enough vehicle to carry it into the realm of classics. The language, though, treads a precise line of evocation, just enough to activate the imagination. I found it, as affecting, if illusive, as any contemporary novel I have read.. Within its genre it may be almost flawless. A book's worth, in part, can be ascertained from the variety of ways it can interpreted. Disgrace cannot be limited to a single message or metaphor, but among many, is a riveting vision of common destiny in South Africa's snarled history.

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Rating:
Summary: Harsh Look At The New South Africa
Review: A winner of this years Booker Prize,and a desrving winner at that.The new book by J.M. Coetzee is quite a harrowing read.There are very few happy or pleasant moments in this book.The story centres around a group of people who all seem to be invoved in failed relationships,from a romantic point of view and also from a family point of view also.This is all set against the backdrop of the turbulance that is the new South Africa. The main character of the story is a university lecturer who s seems to be going through a very depressing and lonely mid-life crisis.As the story progresses his already sad life seems to go from one grim situation to the next.It seems to me he digs a hole that just seems to get deeper and deeper,and there seems to be no way out.He's also got the ability to drag everyone he comes in contact with down with him!I have to say I found this character very difficult to like or even empathise with.In fact there is hardly any character in this story who has a pleasant or untroubled personality.Added to these cold and harsh characters is the brutal and turbulent scene of South Africa,where people no longer care about each other-survival is their only aim.The story is written from a white persons perspective and their daily lives seems to be one of total uncertainty.The author skillfully mirrors the man's life with that of the white South African,where both seem to struggle to find a role in this harsh world.At times the violence in the story is brutal,especially in a society where laws and order are a thing of the past.It is however very hard for me to have much sympathy for the central character as he has very few redeeming characteristics. The great thing about the book is that it grabs the readers attention from the word go.I found it a very easy read and I only ever found myself putting the book down because the content of the book was just so dark and depressing.A reccomended read but not for those who might be feeling a bit down who are need of some light-hearted relief!

Rating:
Summary: Dumbstruck
Review: Disgrace is one of those rare books that words cannot describe or pay homage to. In the way of humble comment I could add that it is written with humility, precision and terrifying insight!

Rating:
Summary: Imperfect (really 3 1/2 stars)
Review: I read this book because it did win the Booker Prize. I had read only one other book by Coetzee (The Life and Times of Michael K), but made myself the project of reading as many Booker shortlists as possible.

Coetzee's novel is thoroughly fascinating. It is a character study of a man who refuses to feel any regret or apology for his 'transgression', and refuses to deal with it. He visits his daughter, an adult woman living on a farm, where she has a 'disgrace' of her own. In a sense, she is as cold as her father, but the reason for it seems much more realistic. In fact, Coetzee succeeds with her where he failed with Lurie; he made a sympathetic character, who's choices one could understand. Lurie is a deeply flawed character, and he seems to be more a character, a figment of the authors imagination. This book reminds me of Amsterdam, 1998's winner of the Booker. They both had the same flaws and similar strengths. However, Coetzee's strength is his beautiful and very restrained prose. He doesn't write more than necessary, and that isn't very much (that's not to say longer works are too long, but if this book had been longer, it would have been quite poor). His language is masterful and unflawed.

All in all, this book is worth a read, but it didn't deserve the Booker Prize over Headlong (a deliciously funny tale) or Our Fathers (a wonderful, but under-rated book).