Rating: 
Summary: Detatched and a little pompous
Review: This book certainly makes sense in its own terms. Like all his fiction it deals with South African politics through contemporary philosophy. But it feels like the events aren't unfolding as they do in real life, which is not always in accordance with philosophical literary theoretical models.
The book therefore feels somewhat pompous as a result.
The characters never approach anything that is substantial. This is probably why he is able to create such a purely philosophical novel.
The author clearly has a very detatched perspective on the world and perhaps prefers the safety of books and ideas to real events.
Rating: 
Summary: A great novel
Review: Meet David Lurie. An English professor who is going down, and his downfall symbolizes another downfall: The fall of white South Africa. The novel is splendidly written. I've read most of Coetzes books, and although most are great, this is probably his best.
Rating:
Summary: the weight of the desiring gaze
Review: ...this brings us to j.m. coetzee, a south african writer who has won the booker prize twice, one of two, with peter carey, who has accomplished that feat. coetzee's sparse writing style insulates the insistence on an economy of language against an even harsher critique from me, because he shows that a book can be deeply layered and terse at the same time. disgrace is the third, and best, of coetzee's novels that i've read. of the others: age of iron, about an old woman dying of cancer, opposed to apartheid all her life, but never, until the incidents described in the book, experiencing the brutality at its core, becomes sermonic by the end; the master of petersburg reimagines fyodor dostoevsky's life between the publication of crime and punishment and before he began writing the brothers karamazov, but loses much of its resonance unless you know dostoevsky's biography (though it's meaningless inconsistencies and liberties may distance those that have read fyodor's work more extensively). disgrace tells the story of david lurie, at a kind of crossroads in his life, married and divorced twice, meeting a prostitute once a week, until that relationship ends abruptly when he impinges on her daily life. once a professor of modern languages, he is relegated to the post of adjunct professor of communications, when his former department is done away with. soon he seduces one of his students and is fired, after refusing to admit any wrongdoing during a public hearing. instead, he visits his daughter, lucy, the owner of a farm on the eastern cape, where she makes a living keeping dogs and growing flowers. david muses that nothing could be more simple, but the naivete of that thought is evident in the ensuing pages: he is unable to protect lucy when her house is ransacked by three black men, and again, as in age of iron, coetzee's main character is surrounded by the repercussions of the apartheid, which continues to segment the nation even after the policy's demise. however, rather than allowing his book to be weighed down by a preachy morass by denouement, coetzee doesn't let his opinions interfere with his writing. david lurie wonders, toward the end of the novel, "how one can enter what seems to be an ordinary room and never come out again." this thought comes to him as he escorts dogs to the euthanization table at the animal shelter where he works while living on the farm. he realizes that all men and, on the larger scale, animals are connected by the scythe of death, always positioned precariously above our heads, slated to drop at any moment. there is something ultimately comforting in the idea that we are united as we enter "this room that is not a room but a hole where one leaks out of existence." coetzee's is writing at its plainest, but, fortunately, "plain," when describing disgrace, is not a synonym of "bland." accurately, one could define it as lyrical, in this case, as we are privy to the main character's imaginings and approximate thoughts, his motivations and emotions, whether concealed or laid bare, without excesses.
Rating: 
Summary: What a revealing book!
Review: By narrating a very personal tale, amazing how much this book revealed without talking about the critical political issues explicitly that influenced the life in question; i guess this duality is reflective of the new politically correct order of social commentary in South Africa. Coetzee never mentions race yet the book is really about little else; written with a strong racial undercurrent about a depressed life in a society dealing with the aftermath of race politics. What a shame that post-Apartheid South Africa has become this jungle where the previously advantaged class have lost all interest in creating a meaningful existence for themselves so lost are they in this new world of injustice, lawlessness and so weighed down they are by historical guilt that they don't dare demand anything anymore. A very revealing work about the imminent doom this country faces, if it's not already there...
Rating:
Summary: Glowing though manipulative
Review: JM Coetzee writes his South African novel with the pains of living there as the primary focus.The main characters, a disgraced college teacher in Cape Town, David Lurie (lurid?) his daughter who runs a kennel on a rural 5 hectare property, and the people that live nearby are universal; they are also representative of the changing society of a black South Africa which is slowly becoming the dominant in that society. The human soul is at the heart of "Disgrace". Whether that soul is in need of "music" to fill the void in life, or whether it is merely a representation of all of life as it leaves one person and eventually is reborn in another, it is a theme throughout the book. The "lost" souls of David and his daughter come from disgrace; one actively gotten, one passively. How the author tells his yarn is worth the read. The manipulative mechanisms he uses are not. Too often, the story moralizes in a not so subtle way. Rape, lechery, robbery, blackmail and land-grabbing are a bit too much for such a short novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyed the story, but hated the writing
Review: I might be the only one that feels this way, but I could not stand Coetze's prose. The prose to me seemed terse and boring, often pompous at times. There are parts of the book where I just want to laugh because it seems like Coetze has never had sex before (which makes it even more humorous because the book is based upon a womanizing anti-hero)...here's a passage that might help clarify, "He makes love to her one more time, on the bed in his daughter's room...One moment stands out in recollection, when she hooks a leg behind her buttocks to draw him in closer" I don't know, technically its good writing, but it seems to lack any passion, for some reason it is incredibly boring to me...I know that Coetze is a famous and critically praised writer, but I just can't stand his prose, its like Hemingway on Valium. I recommend this book to read, because some of the themes in the book are quite interesting, and some of you may enjoy this type of prose. I simply cannot stand it.
Rating:
Summary: Exhilarating!!
Review: J.M. Coetzee's exhilarating and bold work, DISGRACE, is not everybody's cup of tea (It will surely alienate some readers, as DISGRACE is not a conventional fiction). This Booker Prize winning novel is a multi-layered, abstract masterpiece about the day-to-day struggle in the post-apartheid South Africa. It would be naive to label this book as one which tries to lecture its reader- It doesn't (Although one may feel otherwise). It is guilty, however, of 'leading us not to miss' a certain political evaluation or spectrum. I have to admit that I don't find this (its characters and scenarios), as memorable as say Salman Rusdie's MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN. However, the philosophical thoughts within this fiction are worth pondering, and its examination of one's journey and life worth exploring.
Rating: 
Summary: Quick moving but ultimately muddled
Review: Before I set about to write this review, I stole a quick look at the first half-dozen existing customer reviews for Coetzee's *Disgrace* and found them all to be 5-star raves. Would that I were able to agree. The novel clips along on the tale of an alienated college professor, leading us through estrangement from a prostitute, illicit sex with a student, and professional humilation in barely the first thirty pages. And then, from there, it sort of forgets what it wanted to be when it grew up: mumbling off into a tale of the protagonist's isolation from his small-holding farmer daughter with a series of disjointed vignettes. By turns we are force-fed a plethora of plotless dioramas--ranging from inter-racial sexual assault; to animal euthenasia; to a very unlikely tryst with an unattractive veterinary clinician, on the floor of a room usually reserved for dispatching unwanted pets. Wha---?? About the only thing more surprising than the dreary, climax-less ending of the book was how many other people seem to have found it anything more than verbose, unclear, and ultimately unsure of its own message. Sorry to buck the trend, but in the world of alienated protagonist fiction, there's just too much competition for this effort to get anything more than a coupl'a stars for its rapid-fire development. One need look no further than Ford, Moore, Percy, and Atwood for counter-examples of how to stay ferociously *on* *message,* despite the siren-calls of tempting clevernesses like unexpected violence and smart-allecky turns of phrase.
Rating:
Summary: Life, sex, and death.
Review: J.M. Coetzee's novel "Disgrace" is the story of David Lurie, a professor of classical literature in Cape Town, South Africa. David has been married twice, but divorced both times. He visits prostitutes, and sleeps with female students less than half his age. He is caught by the university, preying on another young lady this semester, but he is unwilling to beg for his job. Stubborn and self-centered, he feels it superficial to make a statement of guilt and apology just to save his skin. He resigns his position, believing he will write a biography or opera about Lord Byron, one of his literary heroes. He takes the opportunity to visit his daughter, Lucy, a young lady with a small farm in a remote region of South Africa, wild and lawless. The two become embroiled in a troublesome event at the farm, and need to reassess their lives as a result. As a male, David basically tries to have sex with everything female. As a female, Lucy seeks protection from males. David cannot believe Lucy accepts this role, not least because she is a strong-willed individual, as well as a lesbian with no male attachments. Reflecting on these thoughts, he blames himself, as a man, for thinking there is no more to life than sex. Near the farm, David meets Bev, a local woman, and friend to his daughter, who treats local animals, sometimes euthanizing them. David cannot bear the thought of killing animals, even unwanted dogs, unhealthy goats, or fatted sheep, and begins to wonder if there more to life than death. He throws himself into the task, helping Bev with her work, perhaps trying to explore death as closely as possible. He wanders away from the farm, tries to return to the university, and his ethereal literary way of life, and basically travels in circles between his two worlds. He works on an opera of Lord Byron's lover, and takes an unhealthy dog as a companion. At the end, David will receive a symbol suggesting the reconciliation of music, poetry, sex, and death, and the book will end on that note. Coetzee does not tell us what David believes at that point, but will ask the reader to reflect on everything they have read, and accept this symbol as a recap of the facts. The reader may reflect on these facts, and believe what they wish. This book's major theme is the struggle between mind and body, spirit and earth. It depicts David's painful separation from the sheltered collegiate utopia of literature and civility, where sex is a harmless past-time (at least in David's idealistic mind), and death is a poetic abstraction, into a state of earthiness, where life is dangerous, death is real, and sex is a fact of life, sometimes a distasteful reality, even a weapon. David will struggle to understand whether both universes can be reconciled, or whether one must trump the other. Is there nothing more to life than sex and death? Is poetry unimportant in the real world? The writing is engaging, and accessible to anyone. It is written with intelligence, but never intimidates. The book can be enjoyed by anyone interested in a story of a father and daughter, and the struggle between life and literature. (The only flaw is minor: a reader unfamiliar with the racial and social characteristics of South Africa might misunderstand which character is which at first, though such things become clear as the book goes on.) This book is highly recommendable to any contemporary reader. The writing is sharp, alive, insightful, efficient, accurate, measured, lyrical, and even poetic at times. The characters are witty and expertly drawn. Their dialog is flawless and unforced, and their personalities convincing. The situations are similarly convincing, never feeling contrived. Near the beginning of the book, Coetzee quotes the final words of Oedipus, the Greek drama: "Call no man happy until he is dead." Is it true? That is David's quest, and becomes the reader's interest.
Rating:
Summary: How does Coetzee write so well?
Review: The plot of this book is odd when I try to write it down objectively. This isn't the first time Coetzee has taken a plot contrived a bit funky and produced the sublime. His work reminds me a bit of Tim Winton's. Outstanding.
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