Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee

As was rec­om­mend­ed to me, I read J. M. Coet­zee’s Dis­grace. And indeed it was a good book. Folks seem to like call­ing Coet­zee’s writ­ing “sparse;” and I guess you could say that. I tend to think that writ­ers who are wordy don’t real­ly know what they are try­ing to say. What comes through with Coet­zee is that he has a keen and deft mind. Any­way the book

takes place in South Africa and the main char­ac­ter, David Lurie, is a self­ish wom­an­iz­ing ass­hole, so I iden­ti­fied with him pret­ty well. Through the events of his life we are pre­sent­ed with angles on race, gen­der, class, sex and gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences; as well as rela­tions between Lurie and Byron, an old goat, and a crip­pled dog. But you don’t need to get any of that to enjoy the writ­ing, empathize with the char­ac­ters and be chal­lenged by them as well. It is a book that can be read by any­one, and every­one who reads it like­ly gets some­thing good out of it. So I’ll pass on the rec­om­men­da­tion to y’all as well.

One thought on “Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee”

  1. Some­where down the road give his Age of Iron a read. It is per­haps not as stun­ning as Dis­grace, but is is a fine nov­el.

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