Disgrace

Rating:
Summary: Disgrace
Review: Disgrace is one of the more recent works by our latest Nobel Prize winner, an unassuming book that chooses to quietly extol the virtues and limitations of the main character, Professor David Lurie.

David has always been something of a Casanova, able to seduce women into his bed with the most practised of gazes and, with an artful phrase or two, the conquest is his. Now, however, he is growing older, and finds himself unable to catch the beauties that seemed so easy to woo a decade ago; he finds he must resort to prostitutes for sex.

Enter Melanie. A student, he seduces her - rather forcefully, rather roughly - and a brief but intimate relationship begins. Here the first few flaws of David's character are exposed, he truly believes that Melanie's resistance's and tears are all part of a subtle flirtation on her part. Inevitably, the relationship crumbles, David is expelled from the University, and he travels to his daughter's tiny farm. His fall complete, David must now rebuild his life, discover what about himself he considers worthwhile, and act on the negative aspects. This 'self-help' is shattered when three African men attack the farm, with terrible consequences.

The book is written with a crisp, clear style; there are no needless embellishments, no overstated metaphors or similes. Literary comparisons and Latin sentences are scattered throughout - though mostly at the start - and these are clearly David's influence. A classically educated man, he has no problems with comparing himself to Byron, or a casual lover to Byron's Therese.

Often, it feels as though the book was first written as a 400-page book, then pared down to the slim 221 it is now. This works extremely well, giving the book a sense of depth and clarity it may not have had if it was always 'just' a 200 page book.

For David, the lesson of this story is not one of a fall from grace and a return to providence. No, for him it is learning how to be complete. Never do we get the feeling that David is sorry for what happened between him and Melanie, or that he thinks it was wrong, or in any way his fault. There are no crisis of conscious to be found, rather David learns to fit his round hole into the square peg of farm life. He ends complete, but not necessarily completed, as though, while his every want is satisfied, there is a better completion out there for him, but he does not need it. Consider a box full of apples versus a box full of diamonds. Both are full, but it could be argued that the box of diamonds is filled 'better'.

I recommend this story, it is short and quick, quietly elegant in its prose and style. As a young man, I perhaps don't understand the depth of David's fall from grace and subsequent satisfaction with a life that, two months ago, he would never have envisioned himself capable of.

Rating:
Summary: Not good enough for a booker
Review: Well, evidently I'll have to elaborate my statement stated in the title. So, here goes.
South Africa is on ***ked up country, what with the apartheid, what with the civil wars, economy and you name what not. But so is every other third world country novadays. By putting the "plot" of a novel in one such country one does not justify lack of, well I would not say imagination, but something very close to that. It's like Coetzee stated: "This is my world, and by merely mentioning it you're supposed to be enveloped by it, so i shouldn't talk more about it."
Well, sometimes you can pass with that attitude (like in Life & Times of Michael K.) and sometimes you just can't. Story of a academic proffesor who had afair with younger student, which evidently ruined his career-interwoven with constant fights amongst Black and White which culminated in rape of his daughter and forced "neighborhood life" with same persons who did that-is a story which could be placed almost anywhere in the world. Forget the Black and White, you can put any other group in their place. This novel was supposed to be about Digrace- which title kinda pointed to. And it really is. But it's just my feeling that he lacks some coherent thoughts-it just seemes like that mere feeling of disgracmenet is there simply by mentioning the word few times and with pathetic tale which we (in a hundred versions) heard before. If you like Coetzee's work-skip this book, it might dissapoint you. If you're new to this kind of writting also skip it-and start with somehing like Age of Iron or Life and Times of Michael K.
And don't say I didn't warn you :)

Rating:
Summary: grace in disgrace?
Review: I found the book to be very well written. We are following it in our contemporary fiction class. I was just wondering, how is grace, in your opinion displayed throughout the novel?

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Summary: Relationships and Abuse
Review: Coetzee explores the relationship of David Lurie with everyone around him but especially with his estranged daughter, Lucy. Coetzee is skilfull in understatement and is never sentimental. For another South African novel that explores disgraceful abuse of relationships and power, read A TELLING TIME, by Glynnis Hayward. Here is another storyteller who writes thought-provoking work .

Rating:
Summary: Disgrace
Review: As a 52 year old man I found a lot of similarities between Prof. Lauria and myself. I thought the book reveals a side of the male ego that needs exploring. Coetzee does a great job of he illuminating the tendency of self deception and blind insensitivity to how our actions effect others.
Its worth reading,

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.

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Summary: I hope that,,,
Review: I hope that the cruise-ships don't stop for the 'new' South Africa as portrayed in this tightly-written novel by J. M. Coetzee.

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Summary: Call no man happy until he is dead.
Review: This book has not the same depth as 'Waiting for the Barbarians'.
While 'Waiting' depicts the conflict between personal conscience on the level of the human race as a whole and the conscience of a clan member (a specific unit of the human race), here we encounter effectively a local (South-African) clan war ('the shock of being hated') between black and white.

The main character is a disgraced white man who is confronted with the black clan. The theme of the book is: will the white men with 'their history of wrong' survive, and if they do, under what 'disgraced?' circumstances?

Like Coetzee's other novels, the writing is intense, although I found the opera chapters rather melodramatic.
This book is also a reflection on all kind of 'enriching' (the author's own words) sex, from rape ('When you have sex with someone strange ... isn't it a bit like killing?) over prostitution to raw gymnastics.

A worth-while read, but not a masterpiece like 'Waiting for the Barbarians'.

Rating:
Summary: Decent but worth the hype?
Review: I appreciated that "Disgrace" gave me some insight into some aspects of modern South African social dynamics, but I wasn't too impressed with the narrative. It was slow moving and meandering, kind of like the main character, but it was frustrating to read as my attention kept drifting off in other directions. Yes, there are some "shocking" moments in the latter half of the book, but whether that merits the book reaping in so many accolades is up for debate in my opinion. Still, a worthy read regardless.

Rating:
Summary: che?
Review: I just didn't get this book. Can someone explain to me what was so interesting about it?