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kk0sanda's review against another edition
I don’t feel like reading a white man’s perspective of South Africa.
serrasa's review against another edition
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
scostner's review against another edition
1.0
I read this and several other books in an "Intro to World Novels" class during my undergrad years. Of all the books on the required reading list, this was the one I disliked the most.
tsundoku281's review against another edition
4.0
Essentially 4.5 but Goodreads doesn't offer that like Letterboxd. Far more piercing on the soul/the eternal present versus the fantasy of being historicised and embedded in the past than any other Coetzee novel much more disturbing and complex.
edgeworth's review against another edition
1.0
For a 139-page novella this was a hell of a slog. I’ve always found Coetzee, for a Nobel Prize winner and a man very clearly smarter than the rest of us, to be a surprisingly accessible writer: his prose is crisp, clear and concise. In The Heart of the Country, his second novel, this is unfortunately not so. It tales place on an isolated farmstead on the South African veldt, the narrator a young woman whose father is having an affair with the wife of his black farmhand. The novel’s style has a dreamy, unreal aspect to it, often bordering on stream of consciousness, and it can be difficult to tell what’s real and what’s a daydream or a fantasy. I hugely admire Coetzee as a writer, but as I said, this one was a slog.
veranasi's review against another edition
4.0
If you like depressing and dark fiction about colonial South Africa, then read this. If you like quasi-experimental/poetic prose, then also read this. If you are not keen on either, then find something else. This novel is tense, and never ceases in its tautness.
jakekilroy's review against another edition
3.0
Well, that was just the feel-good read of the year, wasn't it?
Jesus.
I don't often read books like this, and, even now, I can't even begin to describe what that category actually is. I remember reading Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure and fucking hating it. It was so filled with misery without the slightest attempt of hope or reason or a remote coming-and-going of happiness. It read like an endurance test. And I noticed some similarities between the general depressing tone of Jude The Obscure and In The Heart Of The Country. But J.M. Coetzee succeeded where Hardy failed by making the protagonist strangely engaging and sympathetic. I don't know how he did it, because...that bitch was straight-up nuts. However, I have to admit that I was generally intrigued by Magda.
The narrative was very first-person, given that there wasn't much dialogue, and I find that that style usually ends up sounding like a long, long half-assed diary entry. It was way more tell than show and it only worked because of the poetry style of narration. If it had been a stream of consciousness of complaining, I would've considered taking vengeance on the novel. But, instead, it reads like a long, really good Emily Dickenson poem (and I never actually dug her work). It provided a stillness of life that I don't often observe or acknowledge. I can't imagine any of us raised in the city or the suburbs having the patience to live on that South African farm because there's so very little culture and entertainment. Seriously, she did nothing. All she had was her insanity. If she didn't have her insanity, she would have killed herself out of boredom. Her misery and insanity gave her something, which was actually a pretty intriguing concept. Kids can have imagination, sure, but what if you lived in a place where that wasn't enough? What if you had to have an imagination that was so uncontrolled to survive the boredom that it had to become absolute madness?
I certainly did find the book exhausting though. Oh my god. I would look at it like a chore I had to do. But then once I was reading it, I'd remember how oddly intrigued I was by the narrator and how spectacularly impressed I was with the writing. It was a give-and-take feeling. If I came home from a long day at work, I'd tell the book to go fuck itself and read something else. Really, that 138 pages felt like 1,000. The novella probably aged me. Coetzee can write though. That dude can seriously spin some words.
I don't know how well-developed I'd consider the character of Magda, as her past doesn't often make an appearance (though I really liked the end when she asks her dead father if he remembers her favorite moments on the farm). I would've liked to know more about her childhood, but maybe that would've taken away from the main theme of feeling like goddamn crap. But one of the best moments of the book is when she talks about how happy she was playing with Arthur (page 48). You know every thought she has, sure, but how she came to be her wasn't really there. Then again, maybe who she used to be was always who she is so it didn't matter. I don't know, people. I'm not a fucking scientist.
BEST PART OF THE BOOK: My favorite part of the book was only two pages, I think. It's towards the end when the Spanish voices start coming from above. It lasts for a while, but she's still insane when she's dissecting what they mean and how the messages are relevant. However, there's, like, two pages where she starts yelling back and it seems like she's the sanest in that instant because she believes she's refusing the messages. But there's a speech coming from the "sky-gods" and she screams, "Spanish filth!" It was so relieving to see Magda divide herself up into two minds, one crazy and one sane. After spending the entire book in misery and isolation, she comes into her own sanity for a brief moment and refuses the crazy within her and she does it with gusto. It gave me a rather quick instant of awesome hope. I was honestly stoked for her. Her insanity actually cured her madness, I thought! But...it was short-lived.
I give this book three stars too because, honestly, Coetzee wrote an entire novella on misery and made it refreshing. However, I can't imagine why I'd ever reread this book unless I was tucked away in a cabin for the winter and wanted to get weird. I enjoyed an in-depth look at a character's constant feelings, but there wasn't too much of a plot for me to get into.
RANDOM LINES I FOUND INTRIGUING:
"I am not a happy peasant. I am a miserable black virgin, and my story is my story, even if it is a dull black blind stupid miserable story, ignorant of its meaning and of all its many possible untapped happy variants." (page 5) - I thought this sentence summed her up the best, and it was the first instance where I thought, this bitch is gonna be trouble.
..."whom I would vow to bend to a little lower, slave for a little harder than another woman in the dark, so as not to alarm him, and arouse, if the arts of arousal can be learned, and guide to the right hole, rendered penetrable with a gob of chickenfat from a pot at the bedside, and endure the huffing and puffing of, and be filled eventually, one expects, with seed by, and lie listening to the snoring of, til the balm of slumber arrive." (page 42) - She's as awkward horny as you can get and this description of sex was very...her. It made me feel awful inside.
"I must not fall asleep in the middle of my life." (page 43) - It's one quiet moment where she admits she's unhappy and wants to be happy in a way that weighs more on the joy than the desolation.
"The sex is smaller than I thought it would be, almost lost in a bush of black hair straggling up to the navel: a pale boy, a midget, a dwarf, an idiot son who, having survived for years shut away in the cellar, tasting only bread and water, talking to the spiders, singing to himself, is one night dressed in new clothes, set free, made much of, pampered, feasted, and then executed. Poor little thing." (page 69) - I was pretty impressed with this description of a man's junk. This also made me feel terrible.
Jesus.
I don't often read books like this, and, even now, I can't even begin to describe what that category actually is. I remember reading Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure and fucking hating it. It was so filled with misery without the slightest attempt of hope or reason or a remote coming-and-going of happiness. It read like an endurance test. And I noticed some similarities between the general depressing tone of Jude The Obscure and In The Heart Of The Country. But J.M. Coetzee succeeded where Hardy failed by making the protagonist strangely engaging and sympathetic. I don't know how he did it, because...that bitch was straight-up nuts. However, I have to admit that I was generally intrigued by Magda.
The narrative was very first-person, given that there wasn't much dialogue, and I find that that style usually ends up sounding like a long, long half-assed diary entry. It was way more tell than show and it only worked because of the poetry style of narration. If it had been a stream of consciousness of complaining, I would've considered taking vengeance on the novel. But, instead, it reads like a long, really good Emily Dickenson poem (and I never actually dug her work). It provided a stillness of life that I don't often observe or acknowledge. I can't imagine any of us raised in the city or the suburbs having the patience to live on that South African farm because there's so very little culture and entertainment. Seriously, she did nothing. All she had was her insanity. If she didn't have her insanity, she would have killed herself out of boredom. Her misery and insanity gave her something, which was actually a pretty intriguing concept. Kids can have imagination, sure, but what if you lived in a place where that wasn't enough? What if you had to have an imagination that was so uncontrolled to survive the boredom that it had to become absolute madness?
I certainly did find the book exhausting though. Oh my god. I would look at it like a chore I had to do. But then once I was reading it, I'd remember how oddly intrigued I was by the narrator and how spectacularly impressed I was with the writing. It was a give-and-take feeling. If I came home from a long day at work, I'd tell the book to go fuck itself and read something else. Really, that 138 pages felt like 1,000. The novella probably aged me. Coetzee can write though. That dude can seriously spin some words.
I don't know how well-developed I'd consider the character of Magda, as her past doesn't often make an appearance (though I really liked the end when she asks her dead father if he remembers her favorite moments on the farm). I would've liked to know more about her childhood, but maybe that would've taken away from the main theme of feeling like goddamn crap. But one of the best moments of the book is when she talks about how happy she was playing with Arthur (page 48). You know every thought she has, sure, but how she came to be her wasn't really there. Then again, maybe who she used to be was always who she is so it didn't matter. I don't know, people. I'm not a fucking scientist.
BEST PART OF THE BOOK: My favorite part of the book was only two pages, I think. It's towards the end when the Spanish voices start coming from above. It lasts for a while, but she's still insane when she's dissecting what they mean and how the messages are relevant. However, there's, like, two pages where she starts yelling back and it seems like she's the sanest in that instant because she believes she's refusing the messages. But there's a speech coming from the "sky-gods" and she screams, "Spanish filth!" It was so relieving to see Magda divide herself up into two minds, one crazy and one sane. After spending the entire book in misery and isolation, she comes into her own sanity for a brief moment and refuses the crazy within her and she does it with gusto. It gave me a rather quick instant of awesome hope. I was honestly stoked for her. Her insanity actually cured her madness, I thought! But...it was short-lived.
I give this book three stars too because, honestly, Coetzee wrote an entire novella on misery and made it refreshing. However, I can't imagine why I'd ever reread this book unless I was tucked away in a cabin for the winter and wanted to get weird. I enjoyed an in-depth look at a character's constant feelings, but there wasn't too much of a plot for me to get into.
RANDOM LINES I FOUND INTRIGUING:
"I am not a happy peasant. I am a miserable black virgin, and my story is my story, even if it is a dull black blind stupid miserable story, ignorant of its meaning and of all its many possible untapped happy variants." (page 5) - I thought this sentence summed her up the best, and it was the first instance where I thought, this bitch is gonna be trouble.
..."whom I would vow to bend to a little lower, slave for a little harder than another woman in the dark, so as not to alarm him, and arouse, if the arts of arousal can be learned, and guide to the right hole, rendered penetrable with a gob of chickenfat from a pot at the bedside, and endure the huffing and puffing of, and be filled eventually, one expects, with seed by, and lie listening to the snoring of, til the balm of slumber arrive." (page 42) - She's as awkward horny as you can get and this description of sex was very...her. It made me feel awful inside.
"I must not fall asleep in the middle of my life." (page 43) - It's one quiet moment where she admits she's unhappy and wants to be happy in a way that weighs more on the joy than the desolation.
"The sex is smaller than I thought it would be, almost lost in a bush of black hair straggling up to the navel: a pale boy, a midget, a dwarf, an idiot son who, having survived for years shut away in the cellar, tasting only bread and water, talking to the spiders, singing to himself, is one night dressed in new clothes, set free, made much of, pampered, feasted, and then executed. Poor little thing." (page 69) - I was pretty impressed with this description of a man's junk. This also made me feel terrible.