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3.67 AVERAGE
3.67 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is a fascinating character study, but I don’t know how well it holds up as a novel
The main tenet of this book for me was the main character’s refusal to see the parallel’s between his sexually assaulting a student, and other men raping his daughter . His use of literature, philosophy, and gods to justify his thoughts and actions makes for a really interesting read, because you see through him for what he is. And yet, he is not totally without sympathy
It’s a book about denial, race, prejudice, power, about how people justify their actions to themselves, and about sex in all its forms
The prose is fantastic, but for me the plot felt a bit ‘and then’ instead of ‘and therefore / because.’ And, I’m not sure that his eventual bonding with the dogs really hit home for me
I would recommend this
The main tenet of this book for me was the main character’s refusal to see the parallel’s between
It’s a book about denial, race, prejudice, power, about how people justify their actions to themselves, and about sex in all its forms
The prose is fantastic, but for me the plot felt a bit ‘and then’ instead of ‘and therefore / because.’ And, I’m not sure that his
I would recommend this
I truly don't understand why this book is so highly regarded. I wish I did. From what I read, it's a book about a sexist (rapist?) white guy who kind of but not really gets redeemed at the end. lame.
4/5stars
I really do love Coetzee’s writing. Read for my graduate class in post colonialism. Might add more once I process everything.
I really do love Coetzee’s writing. Read for my graduate class in post colonialism. Might add more once I process everything.
I read it because it's the title source for the awesome canine revenge movie, "White God." It turned out to be one of the most wrenching books I've ever read, and one of the most thought-provoking. It was hard to take, but none of it was gratuitous. There are many levels of meaning on many subjects -- political, racial, sexual, emotional, familial. The most perplexing character, to me, was David's daughter, Lucy. I hate to side with him, but I don't understand her position, unless it's coming from abject hopelessness.
Enh.
This is one of the most blase books I've read in a long time. Considering it won the Nobel Prize for Literatre, perhaps I need to check my literature visors for streaks and dust.
The protagonist, college-professor David, has issues with sex. He wants it, he pays for it, he can't get it, he takes it, his daughter is seemingly uninterested in it, he is present when it is taken from her and there's nothing he can do. After a watered-down affair with a very uninterested student, David finds himself on the wrong side of the chopping block. He is asked to resign his post as professor and takes some time to rest in the South Africa countryside where his daughter resigns.
David is not likable, but I like him. He stands to his convictions and refuses to apologize for who he is or what he feels--no matter the circustances. I admire his ability to stand behind his convictions.
Overall, I'll most likely never read this again.
This is one of the most blase books I've read in a long time. Considering it won the Nobel Prize for Literatre, perhaps I need to check my literature visors for streaks and dust.
The protagonist, college-professor David, has issues with sex. He wants it, he pays for it, he can't get it, he takes it, his daughter is seemingly uninterested in it, he is present when it is taken from her and there's nothing he can do. After a watered-down affair with a very uninterested student, David finds himself on the wrong side of the chopping block. He is asked to resign his post as professor and takes some time to rest in the South Africa countryside where his daughter resigns.
David is not likable, but I like him. He stands to his convictions and refuses to apologize for who he is or what he feels--no matter the circustances. I admire his ability to stand behind his convictions.
Overall, I'll most likely never read this again.
This brutal novel is about a white middle-age divorced college professor in post-Apartheid South Africa who is fired from his job after coercing and sleeping with one of his students. In disgrace, he goes to visit his lesbian daughter Lucy on her small farm. During his visit, three black men invade her home and rape her. In the aftermath, Lurie and Lucy find their relationship further strained over how to handle the crime. Lurie suspects Lucy’s black neighbor and farmhand, Petrus, might have been involved in some ways as he is conveniently away during the day of the attack, covets much of the land around his own to grow his wealth, and his wife’s brother that comes to live with him is one of the rapists. To occupy himself after the loss of his job, Lurie works on an opera about Byron and his Italian lover Teresa and tries to figure out what comes next for himself in life. Soon he learns his daughter is pregnant with her rapist’s baby.
Although short and relatively easy to read at the sentence level, this novel was mentally difficult and brutal with many of the characters being terrible human beings, engaging in frustrating behaviors, and the plot containing difficult events like multiple rapes. It’s equally frustrating to watch how the characters refuse to change and none of the problems in the story are dealt with a satisfying way. In terms of readability, it doesn’t help that the entire narrative is funneled through the perspective of the insufferable and self-absorbed Professor David Lurie who is a rapist that deceives himself and others by justifying his unsavory behavior behind appeals to poetic language. You constantly feel like he is judging others appearances and life choices and deceiving himself about his own actions, while never taking full responsibility for his own. Even his daughter accuses him of only thinking how events affect him, forgetting that all the other people in the story are not minor characters. Perhaps this is what is most frustrating about the novel: David never fully changes or takes responsibility for his actions. Other than his daughter Lucy, all the other characters feel pretty awful. The three black rapists and the covetous and pragmatic Petrus aren’t depicted in flattering ways either.
Ironically literature and poetry are associated with old-fashioned views subsumed under the larger communications department. Lurie is clearly educated, especially in Romantic poetry, but the reader sees how his poetic sensibilities are used to disguise his disgusting actions and make them seem like something noble and beautiful. It calls into question whether literature makes you a better person or improves you morally or gives the illusion of improvement. Lurie even uses poetic sentiments to deceive himself about his own reprehensible actions, the exact opposite of literature as improvement.
If he abuses his power as a professor to sleep with his student who clearly doesn’t want to sleep with him, then the reader witnesses his powerlessness against the intruders that rape his daughter. Power dynamics are presented as contextual depending on where you live in South Africa. A person can be powerful in one context, then powerless in another. At the same time, while he condemns the rape of his daughter and shows concern for her, it doesn’t lead to true contrition or change in his own situation.
Even when they seem further apart than ever, there is an ironic similarity between Lurie and his daughter Lucy. Lurie’s stubbornness and refusal to change prevents him from repenting and apologizing at the inquiry over his rape of his student, while his daughter Lucy refuses to leave her land or abort the baby despite the danger due to her stubborn desire to keep what she has.
Beyond power dynamics in general, the novel is ultimately about racial politics in post-Apartheid South Africa. Lucy explains the rape felt personal and full of hatred, but in reality is impersonal. It is implied the men hate her simply for being white as a lingering sentiment of racial hatred and resentment from Apartheid. Her desire to stay on her farm remains ambiguous. She suggests at one point it is the price she must pay, the atonement, to live there as if she were paying for the racial crimes of the past, while at other times it seems to be more about her making her own independent decision as a woman, reclaiming her own agency, in which even rapists won’t force her to leave against her will. Her black neighbor Petrus continually gains more land and wealth, offering marriage and alliance to Lucy as a form of protection, inverting the previous social relations of the past. Even Lurie whose role is also a meditation on the indignity of old age in general has a symbolic role as representing the past hierarchy of the white intellectual looking down on the black attacker and accusing Petrus of colluding with them. His continued declaration that he is told old to change his ways is symbolic of those of the older order and its stagnation. Nobody repents, nobody really changes, which leaves the impression of hopelessness politically and spiritually.
Although short and relatively easy to read at the sentence level, this novel was mentally difficult and brutal with many of the characters being terrible human beings, engaging in frustrating behaviors, and the plot containing difficult events like multiple rapes. It’s equally frustrating to watch how the characters refuse to change and none of the problems in the story are dealt with a satisfying way. In terms of readability, it doesn’t help that the entire narrative is funneled through the perspective of the insufferable and self-absorbed Professor David Lurie who is a rapist that deceives himself and others by justifying his unsavory behavior behind appeals to poetic language. You constantly feel like he is judging others appearances and life choices and deceiving himself about his own actions, while never taking full responsibility for his own. Even his daughter accuses him of only thinking how events affect him, forgetting that all the other people in the story are not minor characters. Perhaps this is what is most frustrating about the novel: David never fully changes or takes responsibility for his actions. Other than his daughter Lucy, all the other characters feel pretty awful. The three black rapists and the covetous and pragmatic Petrus aren’t depicted in flattering ways either.
Ironically literature and poetry are associated with old-fashioned views subsumed under the larger communications department. Lurie is clearly educated, especially in Romantic poetry, but the reader sees how his poetic sensibilities are used to disguise his disgusting actions and make them seem like something noble and beautiful. It calls into question whether literature makes you a better person or improves you morally or gives the illusion of improvement. Lurie even uses poetic sentiments to deceive himself about his own reprehensible actions, the exact opposite of literature as improvement.
If he abuses his power as a professor to sleep with his student who clearly doesn’t want to sleep with him, then the reader witnesses his powerlessness against the intruders that rape his daughter. Power dynamics are presented as contextual depending on where you live in South Africa. A person can be powerful in one context, then powerless in another. At the same time, while he condemns the rape of his daughter and shows concern for her, it doesn’t lead to true contrition or change in his own situation.
Even when they seem further apart than ever, there is an ironic similarity between Lurie and his daughter Lucy. Lurie’s stubbornness and refusal to change prevents him from repenting and apologizing at the inquiry over his rape of his student, while his daughter Lucy refuses to leave her land or abort the baby despite the danger due to her stubborn desire to keep what she has.
Beyond power dynamics in general, the novel is ultimately about racial politics in post-Apartheid South Africa. Lucy explains the rape felt personal and full of hatred, but in reality is impersonal. It is implied the men hate her simply for being white as a lingering sentiment of racial hatred and resentment from Apartheid. Her desire to stay on her farm remains ambiguous. She suggests at one point it is the price she must pay, the atonement, to live there as if she were paying for the racial crimes of the past, while at other times it seems to be more about her making her own independent decision as a woman, reclaiming her own agency, in which even rapists won’t force her to leave against her will. Her black neighbor Petrus continually gains more land and wealth, offering marriage and alliance to Lucy as a form of protection, inverting the previous social relations of the past. Even Lurie whose role is also a meditation on the indignity of old age in general has a symbolic role as representing the past hierarchy of the white intellectual looking down on the black attacker and accusing Petrus of colluding with them. His continued declaration that he is told old to change his ways is symbolic of those of the older order and its stagnation. Nobody repents, nobody really changes, which leaves the impression of hopelessness politically and spiritually.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is a difficult book to rate. On the one hand the characters are wholly unlikable and some if the events are horrific; on the other hand, the writing is masterful and it is very believable as a reflection on post-apartheid South Africa. A challenging book I will not forget in a hurry