Rating: 
Summary: a painfully honest, brutal account of death and apartheid..
Review: 'Age of Iron' is typical Coetzee material in that it is extremely well written and portrays South Africa, in this case 1980s South Africa, as a very strange place where its national psyche is badly twisted. In 'Age of Iron' the narrator is a elderly white woman dying of cancer. Not only does she no longer understand her country she has trouble grasping the notion of life, death and in-between. And then a homeless black man comes into her life (..she let's him in) and then she really starts pouring out here emotions.On one level I really liked 'Age of Iron'. Coetzee doesn't hold back on his brutal account of a country broken by apartheid. And much of the dialogue between the dying woman and her homeless friend is most thought-provoking. However the author has a tendency to over-cook the dialogue, stretching to the point of being a dissertation of all the evils of mankind. It is as if Coetzee couldn't restrain himself from telling the world how smart he is. Message to Coetzee: less would have be more, much more. Bottom line: certainly an intriguing yet rather flawed novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Like Disgrace, this works lyrically on many levels at once
Review: After finishing Coetzee's Booker-prize winning Disgrace, I found the Age of Iron. This is a moving internal first-person narrative of a cancer victim's final days, filled with graceful and disturbing reflections on a life lived and a death to come. Into the narrative come bursting the untidy eruptions of South Africa in the 1980's--township riots, the anger of blacks finally boiling to the surface, dead children martyred by the state, and homeless alcoholics--driving the tale far beyond a simple exegesis on life and death. Once again, I discovered a disquieting novel written from within the cramped point of view of a protagonist who knows better but cannot seem to gain the courage or momentum to change how she or he relates to the world. And, once again, I was bowled over by the quiet and simple prose that hurtled the narrative to the end. Coetzee's protagonists are deeply flawed--the attraction of the novel is to see if they find a state of grace or even understanding by the end. They can see the corruption in the world around them, can dispassionately view their own weaknesses as well. But they lack the clarity, or perhaps the courage, to act on what they see and know. Will they learn to act? That is the mystery that drives us to read with them. The narrator, an old, dying woman, a former college professor, becomes one of the few white civilians to experience the Township riots. She sees black teenagers she has known since childhood shot and killed--even one who is murdered in her own home. Yet she does nothing except write a long letter to her daughter (it is sometimes so longwinded that you wish she would move on already!). She contemplates self-immolation as a protest, but this goes nowhere. And, yet, she will not take the road of her daughter, who fled the horror of South Africa for a middle class life in the United States. It is as if her mere outraged presence is enough to subtly influence the white regime to be humane. In this, she is like so many other white South Africans of the 1980's (and probably like so many white Americans of the 1950's and Israeli's of the 1990's). She finds, brutally, horrifically, that her outrage has no influence. Even when she confronts the police/military in her own home, after they have murdered a teen in her backyard, they do not feign innocence to her--they understand her outrage but could care less. Like Disgrace, this is a lyrical novel that works on so many levels at once. It would be much less interesting if solely written about a dying woman; so much more polemic if written solely about the injustice of South Africa. Like the unseen daughter who may get the letter (if the very real Angel of Death in the novel delivers it), we can only read in mute anger and horror at the neutered conscience of white South Africa, frozen in its middle class lifestyle, afraid to look at the past or to contemplate the future, hoping it is all a bad dream and will all go away in the light of day. And, of course, it did not, could not. And, also of course, the Angel of Death will always win out, in the end, as mute and implacable as the machine of the state.
Rating:
Summary: Heart rending, brutal vulnerability, savage triumph.
Review: age of iron is a quietly tragic retelling of an elderly woman's final days, superimposed on an account of the deadly social turmoil in south africa in the late 80's. when the central character arrives to her home after learning of her condition, she discovers a homeless man sleeping between her house and that of her neighbors. is the man a symbol, a delivering angel? and if so, why has he come in this form, with his smell of whiskey and urine, his yellowing eyes, his contempt for her charity? in a parallel narrative, her own response to the chaos around her is a fitting commentary on white apathy: after two black children are attacked by police, her first impulse is to arm herself with a pen and paper and write a letter to her newspaper. and when she finds herself in the middle of a veritable battlefield, she can only mutter the words "i want to go home." this is book is coetzee's finest achievement, and may be his most overlooked.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth your time
Review: Coetzee presents us with a picture of apartheid from the perspective of an old woman in South Africa who had never had a chance to get close to her own country's reality.
Definitely worth your time. Easy to read too.
Rating:
Summary: When Every Hour Is Meaningful
Review: In "Age of Iron" J.M. Coetzee again produces a masterpiece of human feeling and emotion. Using his native South Africa as the backdrop of his book, he relates the mental processes of a white women dying of cancer in 1980's South Africa. While South Africa is in many ways a civilized country, it is in many ways very much third world, at least in the 1980's when apartheid was still the "law of the land." As Coetzee's protaganist slowly expires, she uses an epistolary technique, the book is a long letter, to her daughter, who has escaped the daily horror of a gruesome war, by traveling to America. The book illustrates graphically, the culmination of the abuse of a huge majority, simply because of the color of their skin. While Coetzee's protaganist finds the concept of apartheid anathema, she has lived her life in the isolated world of the white of South Africa. In these last days, she comes face to face with the reality of the rest of South Africa. And, her reaction intensifies, as her emotion follows, through the final days of her life. This book is highly recommended to those who wish to experience the true feelings and horror that affect those involved in day to day combat, 'on the streets where you live.' Coetzee characterizes feelings and mental processes in a way that is truly outstanding. It is a very worthwhile venture to read this book from Coetzee. It is not time spent in vain.
Rating:
Summary: When Every Hour Is Meaningful
Review: In "Age of Iron" J.M. Coetzee again produces a masterpiece of human feeling and emotion. Using his native South Africa as the backdrop of his book, he relates the mental processes of a white women dying of cancer in 1980's South Africa. While South Africa is in many ways a civilized country, it is in many ways very much third world, at least in the 1980's when apartheid was still the "law of the land." As Coetzee's protaganist slowly expires, she uses an epistolary technique, the book is a long letter, to her daughter, who has escaped the daily horror of a gruesome war, by traveling to America. The book illustrates graphically, the culmination of the abuse of a huge majority, simply because of the color of their skin. While Coetzee's protaganist finds the concept of apartheid anathema, she has lived her life in the isolated world of the white of South Africa. In these last days, she comes face to face with the reality of the rest of South Africa. And, her reaction intensifies, as her emotion follows, through the final days of her life. This book is highly recommended to those who wish to experience the true feelings and horror that affect those involved in day to day combat, 'on the streets where you live.' Coetzee characterizes feelings and mental processes in a way that is truly outstanding. It is a very worthwhile venture to read this book from Coetzee. It is not time spent in vain.
Rating:
Summary: You can be in the middle of hell and not see it
Review: Interesting and non-obvious look at apartheid. This book raises questions such as: what responsibility does one have for the crimes of a government that have benefitted you - even if you find those crimes repulsive and didn't ask for them; what kind of future can a nation have when it's children have been so brutalized that they become brutalizors themselves. I also think, as my title implies, that this book really exposes the way a community can blind itself or be blinded by others, gov't, media, etc., to the carnage and horror taking place all around them. If you can believe that a South African would be blind to the inhumanity trangressing in their country, then it's not so hard to believe how people in less brutal situations can also not understand or believe what goes on in their community.
Rating:
Summary: Coetzee is extraordinary once again!
Review: Mrs. Curren is an old woman dying of cancer in the heart of South Africa during a period of political as well as literal war. A Classics professor, she has always had the gift of expression yet with the horrors going on around her, her inclination grows even stronger and she begins to channel her thoughts and emotions into a long letter to her daughter who has immigrated to America years ago. The day she finds out she has cancer, a vagrant and his dog show up in her yard whom she allows to work around her home for food and a pittance. Meanwhile, young men around her are being killed in the name of comradery while adults sit idly by and soothe their guilty conscience's with ideas of bravory and grandor. Mrs. Curren seems to be the only one dead-set against all the hatred and killing. She expresses her opinions to her vagrant friend, Vercueil, and to her daughter. She asks Vercueil to promise to send the letter when she is gone. And she resigns herself to an end to the life she knows in her war-torn country. Yet she pretends to be stalling it all the same..."So I am well guarded. Death would think twice before trying to pass this dog, this man." Once again, Coetzee hits on a vitally important issue among the living; that is, whether to support war as a means of fighting for freedom and victory or to put down one's weapons knowing that one more young life taken will not alone decide the fate of an entire country.
Rating:
Summary: Personal!
Review: One can't help but be touched by the personalities woven in this story. Far from stereotypes, the characters are given credibility as individuals, each with their own stories, each with their own reasons for action. Even with the fall of official apartheid, this book goes into the human condition, and with or without governmental promotion, apartheid or something very much like it, will always be with us.
Rating:
Summary: Personal!
Review: One can't help but be touched by the personalities woven in this story. Far from stereotypes, the characters are given credibility as individuals, each with their own stories, each with their own reasons for action. Even with the fall of official apartheid, this book goes into the human condition, and with or without governmental promotion, apartheid or something very much like it, will always be with us.
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