Rating: 
Summary: Well written tiresome intellectual exercise
Review: I found it a labor to navigate through Coetzee intellectual obstacle course. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not entirely bad, well written and some of the topics of her lectures peaked my interest, but many were long and tiresome. I kept waiting for story to lead somewhere but it never happens. If you like a story with a cohesive storyline this isn’t the book for you. The main character reminds me of an old fish flaying on the deck of a ship, gasping its last breath. Hey we all feel like that sometimes in our life, I just don’t enjoy being subjected to it for 230 pages.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: I have been a Coetzee reader for a number of years, and an admirer of his difficult themes and complex characters. I was dusappointed to note that these "fictions" were recycled and juxtaposed with different contexts. Still, reading Elizabeth Costello was better than many other books I've come across lately. As far as the perspectives or themes that these "talks" tackle...they are only entertaining but not significant enough to stay with this reader.
Rating: 
Summary: Fact or fiction?
Review: I honestly don't know. The press releases say Elizabeth Costello is a novel that pretends to be a biography, but many critics swear it's Coetzee's biography dressed up as fiction, even tho the protagonist is female while the author, of course, is a man. All I know is that it's a damn fine piece of writing.
The setup is that Elizabeth Costelly, an Australian writer whose fame is based on an early piece of work about Ulysses' character, Molly Bloom, cleverly educates us to issues of race, honesty, humanitarianism, and deception in Africa through "eight lessons" which sometimes read like lectures or debates.
It's not an easy book, and Coetzee's bleak outlook comes through in the writing, but it's worth the effort. It's a book I'll keep, as I believe I'll get even more out of it on a second reading.
Rating: 
Summary: AMAZING piece of work! But can you really call it a novel?
Review: I started reading Coetzee when I heard that he had won the Nobel Prize. Before that I had not heard of him. I read his 1999 booker prize winning release, 'Disgrace' and thought that is was an amazing book. So when I heard that he had just released another novel I went to the bookstore and picked it up.It turns out that this is a book that is not exactly a novel, it's not what most of us would think of if we were asked to define what a 'novel' is. the book is divided into eight different parts, in the table of contents they are called 'lessons.' These, 'lessons' are really just lectures that the main character Elizabeth Costello gives at various places about a lot of different topics. The one I remember most was the lecture on Animal Rights because it was very thought provoking and interesting. All of the lectures are related in the book. In the Animal Rights lecture she claims that the slaughtering of animals can be compared to the holocaust. People feel that she is belittling the tragedy of the holocaust. Obviously it was a very risky thing to say and because of what she said she is asked to give a lecture on the nature of 'evil' later on in the 'novel'. Apart from being a book full of lectures that the writer, Elizabeth Costello, gives, it is also a look into a writer's life. When we think of a writer, philosopher, painter, teacher or any other high figure, we associate an almost god-like quality with them. We are uncomfortable when these high figures make mistakes. This 'novel' shows us that the writer is not god-like, but that she is very human. Although it may not sound like it, the book is very readable. Though I am new to this writer, I can tell that J.M Coetzee likes to try new things that have never been done in writing before. He does not stick to the traditional, for that he is a great writer, deserving of the Nobel Prize. Now I will rate the book from A-F in a few categories like I do in all of my reviews: Character Development: A
Plot: B
Readability: A
Thought Provoking: A+ With an overall grade of an A, this is a writer I will return to again, and perhaps a book that I will re-read in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Coetzee And Kafka Explain The World
Review: In Coetzee's new book, "Elizabeth Costello" he takes a significant departure from virtually all his previous books. Coetzee is the master of saying the most sublime things in few and simple words. His prior books deal with the human existence in a way that every person can understand. Simple, yet incredibly elegant. In this book, we see none of the same. This book is constructed using a much more literary style, which not just any person can pick up and absorb. The interpretation of Coetzee's meaning is highly bound up in a relationship between the author, "Elizabeth Costello" and her relationship with the world around her. As a vehicle, Coetzee employs the use of Kafka's story by reference, many, many times, not only in text and title, but in plot as well. For the story, "A Report To An Academy" by Kafka, involves the interplay of the animal mind with the human mind, or at least Kafka's conception of it, in an existential backdrop. In fact, Coetzee does not even tell you the name of the story he is referencing until around page 60, yet by page 20, he has referenced the story at least 3 times. The book goes on to examine, deeply, the relationship of people with the world, and the world of animals, and how it intersects with the world of people. In a sense, the entire book is a 'report to an academy' yet Coetzee makes that even more poignant, by having the protagonist's sister make a speech to an academy, which in itself reemphasizes the ethics, morals and values that Coetzee is trying to bring attention to. The book is truly a masterpiece of literary integration. Many, many references are made to other literature, from the modern to the classical Greek. The reader needs to be armed with some level of reading experience in order to get full force out of Coetzee's message here. However, for those who are Coetzee enthusiasts, this book along with his many others, only confirms again, what the Booker Prizes and the Nobel Prize awarded to J.M. Coetzee did; he is a master author, capable of producing some of the most sophisticated literature in more than one form, as we now see. This book is truly a masterpiece of modern literature.
Rating:
Summary: Coetzee And Kafka Explain The World
Review: In Coetzee's new book, "Elizabeth Costello" he takes a significant departure from virtually all his previous books. Coetzee is the master of saying the most sublime things in few and simple words. His prior books deal with the human existence in a way that every person can understand. Simple, yet incredibly elegant. In this book, we see none of the same. This book is constructed using a much more literary style, which not just any person can pick up and absorb. The interpretation of Coetzee's meaning is highly bound up in a relationship between the author, "Elizabeth Costello" and her relationship with the world around her. As a vehicle, Coetzee employs the use of Kafka's story by reference, many, many times, not only in text and title, but in plot as well. For the story, "A Report To An Academy" by Kafka, involves the interplay of the animal mind with the human mind, or at least Kafka's conception of it, in an existential backdrop. In fact, Coetzee does not even tell you the name of the story he is referencing until around page 60, yet by page 20, he has referenced the story at least 3 times. The book goes on to examine, deeply, the relationship of people with the world, and the world of animals, and how it intersects with the world of people. In a sense, the entire book is a 'report to an academy' yet Coetzee makes that even more poignant, by having the protagonist's sister make a speech to an academy, which in itself reemphasizes the ethics, morals and values that Coetzee is trying to bring attention to. The book is truly a masterpiece of literary integration. Many, many references are made to other literature, from the modern to the classical Greek. The reader needs to be armed with some level of reading experience in order to get full force out of Coetzee's message here. However, for those who are Coetzee enthusiasts, this book along with his many others, only confirms again, what the Booker Prizes and the Nobel Prize awarded to J.M. Coetzee did; he is a master author, capable of producing some of the most sophisticated literature in more than one form, as we now see. This book is truly a masterpiece of modern literature.
Rating: 
Summary: A Disappointment
Review: In Elizabeth Costello, Mr. Coetzee adds his name to the long list of established authors who assemble bits of previous material, tack on a few new thoughts and voila! a new work of art emerges. (See Acknowledgements p. 233) If you want animal rights, Peter Singer will more than suffice. Shame on you Mr. Coetzee for succumbing to the urge to coin more rands.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: In Elizabeth Costello, we find Coetzee confronting some of the fundamental structures of the society we have known for so long, forcing the reader to think and have an insight into life. This thought-provoking novel which is actually a collection of essays with some having been published before as lectures, is a deep but entertaining book. Coetzee uses Costello Elizabeth as a fictional character to put forward these essays and uses other characters as critics to create a dialectical outlook for the book. It is this approach that I think made this book so unique. A reader is forced to think beyond his beliefs. And in so doing, the reader is forced to evolve.
I recommend this book along with DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE to any curious mind.
Rating:
Summary: A rip off
Review: Is it my imagination but was this author just trying to put every interminible, radical commencement speech he ever heard into bookform and use the most uninteresting character in all of literature to be the speaker. Because it was mercifully short, I read it to the end to see if somehow he let his readers in on this ridiculous joke but alas, it ended how it began. Incredibly boring!!!
Rating:
Summary: Good literature with much food for thought
Review: Like Elizabeth Costello, the title character of this novel, J.M. Coetzee is himself a noted literary figure. As a matter of fact this South African writer has recently won a Nobel prize. In this book, he takes the opportunity to discuss a wide variety of moral and ethical concerns through the voice of his main character, Elizabeth Costello, an aging Australian novelist who is called upon again and again to give lectures on the literary circuit.
We meet her first on a American college campus, her son there in an effort to assist her. And when her lecture, which turns out to be a rambling discussion of Kafka, is not well received, he has his own little adventure. We meet him again later when she stays in his home in Boston to give yet another lecture. This time she goes off on a tangent about animal rights, making the day uncomfortable for John and his wife. Later, she's off to a cruise ship where she finds herself giving a lecture along with an ex-lover of hers. And still later, she goes to Africa where her sister is a nun. We see her in Amsterdam considering the nature of evil. We learn some of her erotic recollections. And always we see her approaching the end of her life.
The book started slowly and I found some of her early lectures boring, especially since I didn't know some of her literary references. But as it continued, I enjoyed some of her discussions. J.M. Coetzee is a fine writer with a vast command of language. I found my mind stimulated and started to look at some basic concepts with fresh eyes. Her character was developed perfectly and, in some ways, I even identified with this old woman.
This is a good piece of literature that provokes quite a bit of food for thought. For that reason I recommend it even though I know I absorbed just a small part of it. But that part was certainly worthwhile.
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