Disgrace

Rating:
Summary: Surprised me all around
Review: A friend recommended this book to me, and from the beginning, with its pitiful seduction scene, I was prepared to dislike it, and the primary character, intensely. This changed, however. Both David Lurie and his daughter consistently make choices and elect to live lives that are to say the least, uncomfortable, open to question, and painful to experience vicariously. But isn't this what opening ourselves to the challenges of literature is really about? It has been some time since I read a novel so well-crafted that I left with sympathy, but not affection, for the characters. This gave me the ability to really think about the book, both while and after I read it. I couldn't sleep for an hour last night when I finished, considering the implications, the carefully layered symbolism, the situations created by the author. It may sound odd, but for once I am pleased to have been made extremely uncomfortable by a novel.

Rating:
Summary: The failure of communication and the fall into disgrace
Review: "Disgrace", Coetzee's latest work, probes the psyche of post-Apartheid South Africa. We are introduced to Dr David Lurie, Professor of Communications (at a university that sounds surprisingly like UCT), who is having an affair with a student. When the inevitable scandal breaks, Lurie has the chance to save his career, but chooses not to do so. His failure to communicate sees him fallen into a state of disgrace.

He retreats to his daughter's Eastern Cape farm where he becomes immersed in the daily routine of farm life. But the former Professor of Communications is confronted everywhere by his inability to communicate: with his daughter, with his neighbours, with himself.

A brutal attack on the farm forces Dr Lurie to confront the demons lurking beneath the surface of his relationships. And in so doing, it shows us something about the country we live in.

Coetzee paints an intricate and powerful picture of the tensions and myriad complexities of post-Apartheid South Africa. His language is exact and exacting, his prose pointed and precise. Like Coetzee's previous works, "Disgrace" is an illuminating and compelling commentary on life in contemporary South Africa.

Rating:
Summary: cry, the beloved daughter
Review: David Lurie- Professor of Communications at Cape Technical University, twice divorced, 52 years old, admirer of Wordsworth and Byron, plier of prostitutes and coeds. All id and ego, constrained by a self-absorbed estrangement from any more meaningful or appropriate involvements. When an affair with a student becomes known that same alienated root leads to his ouster and disgrace, when less severe alternatives were available to him. He drifts to his daughter's township farm, where both become victims of a brutal crime. Disgrace presents a bleak picture of a spiritual stasis that grips an aging Lothario. One can glean, though, an exploration of post apartheid South Africa is being vaguely inferred, of exploitation, retribution-- destruction or salvation-- the outcome unresolved.

The emotional subsistence of the main character and his strained relations with his daughter is the main impulse. As with a lot of modern fiction, Disgrace, has a prosaic focus on a 'quality' of relationship and character, with no obvious wider purpose or destination in the theme. Here it is actuated by horrific but avoidable circumstances, by a wilful stubbornness in the father's and daughter's life decisions.

Coetzee's writing style is understated, nondescript, but dreamlike at its best. It can be cruelly symbolic, a mauled goat as the protagonist's own pitiful condition and ravaging by the university bureaucracy, or lyrically, as when Lurie conjures up Byron's mistress, Theresa, a ghost of his atrophied passion. There are allusions, though, of something more primordial and indistinct being pronounced, I'm not sure what. I might not have commented on the book had it not received one of the world 's top book prizes, the Booker. Then again, I might have given it 4 stars if I were not using that as the standard. As a previous reviewer stated the whole thing lingers, I may have been harsh, no less harsh than Coetzee's own reckless imagination though. - by some measures a brilliant book, but decidedly to taste!

Rating:
Summary: Bewilderingly overrated.
Review: I'm sorry. I don't understand this man's standing. He has won more Bookers than anyone else, which means he's better than Rushdie, MacEwan, Byatt, right? I have to be missing something - the prose is determinedly mediocre, the treatment of violence and its effects is crass, the analysis of modern South Africa unenlightening. The main character is less offensive than a bore. It's not all bad - the university showtrial is genuinely frightening, and the passages about the dogs, with their mixture of horror, tenderness and emotional blankness are almost moving. More of this and it could have been a tolerable novel, but, once again vast social and gender issues are reduced to the self-pity of a middle-class white male.

Rating:
Summary: Unwilling--Willing?
Review: I was unwilling to read this book, but still, I bought it anyway, after skimming over the first chapter. I thought it would be a quick easy book to read. The reading of it was fine. I plowed through it within four days, but am left with an uncertainty of myself--of my own reaction to it. I mean, I am left with a taste in my mouth, but I can't really say what this taste is. Is it distaste? Disgust? Is it disappointment? Initially I was drawn to this book because of the writing--its direct language; its ugliness, even. By the end of it, of reading it straight through--I wanted descriptions! Set in South Africa, I wanted words about the land, about the animals with some remnants of feeling; even the color of the characters were ignored. This book got to the heart of race without ever speaking a word about it. It could only be written by a white man living in South Africa. It was no mystery how it left me feeling . . . I felt tired of it. Of its meanings, and its lack of meaning. Its uncertainty. I give it four stars. Read it if you want longterm uneasiness and short-term unsentimental prose. Not sure what to make of it, but it's on my shelf nonetheless.

Rating:
Summary: It's Gives The Reader No Quarter, No Personal Space.
Review: The 220 pages that are this book are incredibly rich, and asone other reviewer has mentioned, a second reading isrewarding.

This story is beautifully constructed with layer upon layer of thoughts, customs, and societal structure and dysfunction. It deals with the conduct of Mothers, Daughters, or in the case of the Father and others, misconduct spanning from bad judgment to the reprehensible.

This book is uncomfortable to read. The cover itself shows the title, which by its size appears to want to hide itself, it forewarns of what waits inside. The Author goes into very dark places and writes brutally about relationships between men and women that are, in the case of The Professor perverse in the extreme. He makes the reader deal with violence inflicted by The Professor, and while there may not be a dead body as a result, his actions are violent, they nauseate. Even as he deals with the consequences of his prior actions, he does not hesitate to engage in a Pedophile Fantasy "fit for a king".

The Professor then is made a victim personally, and targeted again through his Daughter's experience. Further he must deal with her reactions to what was done to her. Are they illogical to him, or any man? Her experience becomes a tax, a form of retribution from the victims of Apartheid. She chooses to seemingly take on the role of a martyr who is assaulted for Apartheid's sins. Is this the way she chooses to cope? She could almost be called a physical bridge to the South Africa that is to come. Not as a role model, but for what she literally bears.

There are 2 reasons that kept me from a five star rating. The first is that I am tired of books that end in the midst of nowhere, even if a period is used. This book kicks open a host of darkness; it does not need the overused literary device of suspended animation, that is to serve as an end. The concept is an oxymoron, if you allow me the stretch, and it is annoying when it is used as it was in this book. There are times when this can work, there are other times I think an Author cannot unwind the balance of the tale, so it is severed, ambiguously aborted.

My second reason is The Professor's action or lack thereof when he becomes aware of the knowledge his neighbor has. It would take a Saint, which this man is light years away from being, to react as he does. I found it implausible and absurd.

This book provokes as is evidenced by the reactions it has generated. It invades the reader's privacy, there is no quarter given for the reader's personal space, it is thought provoking, it accuses, and it does not stop when the book is set down. And for these reasons I believe the book to be an important work. I cannot comment on it's context within South Africa, but don't think for a moment the locale could not be easily changed. The issues, the offences against a person and a people are unfortunately universal.

This book will move you, it offers no choice.

Rating:
Summary: a rewarding read
Review: i changed my mind a bit about this novel as i went along. the writing is compelling, however the characters are a bit disappointing. it will give you lots to think about, the test of a good novel, it lingers ...

Rating:
Summary: Why?
Review: Though I enjoyed this novel, the most common thought that I had while reading was "why?" I found that I could not relate to a single character in the book. While I understand that the novel is based in a part of the world racked with change, I could not grasp the situations or character's motivation. They seem so absurd under any circumstances. The entire plot seemed more like fantasy than realistic fiction. However, the desire to relate to the characters or understand their personalities makes the book compelling.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing grace or disgrace?
Review: As a South African I am surprised by the strong negative reaction shown by some people after reading this book. For many, it seems, this book is seen as a disgrace itself! It is rejected mainly because of the bleak picture it paints of a country that many believe should be painted in rainbow colours.

To me this is sadly besides the point. As in any other country, everywhere in the world, we struggle to understand ourselves, our fellow human beings, the road of history on which we find ourselves and our place in this struggle.

In South Africa all these struggles are perhaps just more intense, but not less painful.

The book is rich in its sparseness, misleading in its simplicity. It should not be underestimated. It is a book I would have liked to study at varsity or somewhere where one can bring together the themes of Byron, sexual liaisons bordering on rape, relationships, old age, South African politics and more than anything the euthenasia: the graceful, merciful giving-up of a life not fit to be lived. Is this the redemption of the end - the same as Lucy's decision to keep the baby?

I do not know, but it is certainly a complex work that many reviewers clearly are still grappling with. To brush it off simply just will not do.

Rating:
Summary: Reflections of a middle-aged white man in South Africa
Review: Disgrace can only be viewed as reflections of a middle aged white man(disgraced and alienated) in modern South Africa. As a South African I thought it one long whinge that shows the character (authors?) sense of displacement and inability to understand the plight of women, animals and black people. An unreediming inferiority trip dressed up in pretty words still remains only that. It should appeal to all other white middle aged men experiencing a whane in popularity and power. Why it won the Booker raises some questions about the age and skin colour of the judges.