Disgrace

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It's a hit!

A simple, disturbing read, whose story leapt and staggered through the disintegration of the protagonist's life, from the pomposity and arrogance o... (show more)

A simple, disturbing read, whose story leapt and staggered through the disintegration of the protagonist's life, from the pomposity and arrogance of his staid career as an academic, to the bitter, humble resignation of a man who begins to recognise his waning strength and influence. There are so many parallels and astute observations, so many angry dilemmas and difficult choices, that it's hard to believe this is a slight-looking book of two hundred odd pages. Nor have I come across a cover that so aptly captures the atmosphere of its book - the colour is vivid, glorious; the scene is quietly uneasy; there is something ahead we cannot see, and yet we feel a sense of foreboding from the mongrel's gait, neglect from the cracked, rusted pipes; we are far from the beaten track, we are alone.

Each page bristles with tension. The prose is spare, terse, clipped with resentment and disillusion, while the narrator's world is framed with the gilt of other, softer languages - French, German, and beyond that, Sotho and Xhosa. "More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa." He struggles to come to terms with the changes around him; he sees himself fit only to exterminate the unwanted. This is an novel politicised from beyond the borders of South Africa - with a reach that extends to the stark history of the twentieth century - that speaks of holocausts, concentration camps, genocides and repression, and its dazed, civilised aftermath. (show less)

 

 

by David Fernandes

No, it's a flop!

I really didn't get anything out of this book. Its style was very clinical and impersonal and there was nothing about any of the characters that I ... (show more)

I really didn't get anything out of this book. Its style was very clinical and impersonal and there was nothing about any of the characters that I found engaging or emotionally provoking. David Lurie was an odd man with an even odder demeanour and while his argument with his daughter regarding her safety was fair and logical, there was something about the way he conveyed it, and everything else about himself, that really didn't inspire anyone to do anything. And Lucy's way of thinking was just a little too 'lie down and take it' for me. I don't profess to know a huge amount about South Africa or the arpatheid, but have numerous South African friends (they all seem to become accountants - though my hair dresser is also South African), and I honestly don't feel this was a decent portrayal of the people or their way of thinking. I don't know, it just felt like a wandering piece of melancholy and I didn't gain all that much from it. A shame, but oh well. (show less)

 

 

by Tara van Beurden

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  This was, quite simply, a brilliant work. The foil of the protagonist's mistreated, more grittily put raped lover against the rape of his own daughter is brutal and stunning. You cannot "feel" for David, much as his daughter cannot allow herself to feel for her father. It portrays the situation in South Africa as the natural conclusion to the liberties that have been from one human being to another over centuries. It just is. It does not preach to us and give us an easy out - t... (show more)

  This was, quite simply, a brilliant work. The foil of the protagonist's mistreated, more grittily put raped lover against the rape of his own daughter is brutal and stunning. You cannot "feel" for David, much as his daughter cannot allow herself to feel for her father. It portrays the situation in South Africa as the natural conclusion to the liberties that have been from one human being to another over centuries. It just is. It does not preach to us and give us an easy out - this is what we can do - there are not answers. a book not abandoned from consciousness quickly. (show less)

   

   

  by Dawn Burckley on Mar 29, 2009 at 11:51PM

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  A very interesting book. Post-apartheid South Africa, the late 1990s. David Lurie has not risen above mediocrity by his standards: As a twice-divorced college English professor in Cape Town, he hasn't been prolific, is not popular among the students, and shows abysmal judgment in forcing an affair with a girlish student that costs him his job and his name. Even his regular prostitute is creeped out by his neediness, and his only daughter has chosen an autarkic life on a remote farm, left by h... (show more)

  A very interesting book. Post-apartheid South Africa, the late 1990s. David Lurie has not risen above mediocrity by his standards: As a twice-divorced college English professor in Cape Town, he hasn't been prolific, is not popular among the students, and shows abysmal judgment in forcing an affair with a girlish student that costs him his job and his name. Even his regular prostitute is creeped out by his neediness, and his only daughter has chosen an autarkic life on a remote farm, left by her lesbian lover. It is a life he finds hard to relate to when, seemingly without much to lose, he temporarily moves in with her. As he humbly tells his daughter, "After a certain age one is simply no longer appealing, and that's that. One just has to buckle down and live out the rest of one's life. Serve one's time."

  In a surrounding that could not be more different from the one he is used to, Lurie's problems are put into a rough perspective, and he learns the hard way that higher education and worldliness are no match for a primitive environment with its own laws and codes of conduct, where deeds of primal evil are done.

  While throughout the book Coetzee never asks for sympathy for his protagonist (he anonymously refers to him as "he" except in dialogue), Lurie's evolvement from aloof loser to compassionate character is laid out virtuosically. Economical in both prose and overall volume and almost without the use of flashbacks (though continuously in present-tense), Coetzee manages to convey a cosmos of sorrow and redemption. Gut-wrenching scenes, among them a vicious crime with life-altering consequences, are designed with restraint and concern for the victims' dignity. All the more striking without being in the reader's face, Coetzee plants seeds of symbolism that grow into excrescent moral issues. When speaking of the unspeakable, he offers an explanation but no excuse.

  Lurie had escaped the city for the Eastern Cape to resolve his inner conflicts, but is increasingly overwhelmed by the outer reality. But the very nature he is so resenting, the often painful coexistence between man and beast leads him, initially helpless, to unexpected recognition. His cool disdain for some humans turns into affection for stray animals, the last in the food chain. "Curious that a man as selfish as he should be offering himself to the service of dead dogs. [...] He saves the honour of the corpses because there is no one else stupid enough to do it." What seems like a low point for a former professor whose retirement project has been to write an opera, is in fact his ticket to recovery, if not closure. In finding a purpose, Lurie is able to reclaim--and reassess--his worth. (show less)

   

  by Anonymous User on Feb 10, 2009 at 12:46AM

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