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3.67 AVERAGE
3.67 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Just struggling to understand the purpose of the author when writing this book
For once, easy to understand why this book won a major literary award (The Booker 1999).
Many characters touched with disgrace--a very white male perspective.
Strong, curt language. Complicated protagonist facing his own inadequacies as a man, father, person.
Ending:
Lucy, his daughter, is raped in brutal home-attack. She decides to keep the child that results. He attacks the boy who was part of the attack. Her neighbour, Petrus, suggests a strange relationship - it is his relative that is the boy who was in the attack. He will marry Lucy to get her land, and she will gain his protection in this rural wild. David is left feeling impotent in the face of his daughter's decisions. He works with stray dogs, helping Bev Shaw put them down. The last scene has him agree to put down a lame dog he has grown fond of. Ambiguous end, but one in which he finds some kind of reconciliation with his daughter and her decisions. He can agree without accepting.
Ending:
Lucy, his daughter, is raped in brutal home-attack. She decides to keep the child that results. He attacks the boy who was part of the attack. Her neighbour, Petrus, suggests a strange relationship - it is his relative that is the boy who was in the attack. He will marry Lucy to get her land, and she will gain his protection in this rural wild. David is left feeling impotent in the face of his daughter's decisions. He works with stray dogs, helping Bev Shaw put them down. The last scene has him agree to put down a lame dog he has grown fond of. Ambiguous end, but one in which he finds some kind of reconciliation with his daughter and her decisions. He can agree without accepting.
I shouldn't like this book (I explain why later) but somehow I found that it worked for me and it ended up being a 5-star read for me.
The book follows Professor David Lurie who has an affair with one of his students and the aftermath of it all. He is portrayed as a man of passion with his poetry as well as with his lust for women. Disgrace is a theme you will see recurring multiple times in the book, first with David Lurie and later with his daughter. David as a man is an unlikeable character yet his character is well-developed to the extent that I found myself empathizing with him during his troubles. Coetzee's writing is impeccable and I loved the parallels he draws between men and women; the wealthy and the poor; white people versus black people throughout the book.
Now to the reason why I'm conflicted on this book. Apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994. This book was published 5 years later in 1999 and it does not depict native South Africans in good light nor does Coetzee bring out properly how black people were treated during apartheid. Petrus is depicted as a villain (I'm not excusing his actions or that of the thieves') but his side of the story isn't narrated in this book. I can see how this will rub people in the wrong way as it appears to be the whining of a privileged white man all while villainizing the black man. He tries to address this somewhat lightly with Lucy's character in her inability to report what happens to her, because of residual guilt but some might feel that isn't enough.
The book follows Professor David Lurie who has an affair with one of his students and the aftermath of it all. He is portrayed as a man of passion with his poetry as well as with his lust for women. Disgrace is a theme you will see recurring multiple times in the book, first with David Lurie and later with his daughter. David as a man is an unlikeable character yet his character is well-developed to the extent that I found myself empathizing with him during his troubles. Coetzee's writing is impeccable and I loved the parallels he draws between men and women; the wealthy and the poor; white people versus black people throughout the book.
Now to the reason why I'm conflicted on this book. Apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994. This book was published 5 years later in 1999 and it does not depict native South Africans in good light nor does Coetzee bring out properly how black people were treated during apartheid. Petrus is depicted as a villain (I'm not excusing his actions or that of the thieves') but his side of the story isn't narrated in this book. I can see how this will rub people in the wrong way as it appears to be the whining of a privileged white man all while villainizing the black man. He tries to address this somewhat lightly with Lucy's character in her inability to report what happens to her, because of residual guilt but some might feel that isn't enough.
I’ve finally finished reading Disgrace.
I am free.
God this book was horrible and I hated all of it, something that doesn’t happen often.
Sure, well-written or whatever, skilful use of words, but incredibly annoying.
The main character had no redeeming qualities, and the entire book was full of white dude whining about how hard his life is.
He stalks women, invades their privacy, manipulates his student into having sex with him, makes his daughter’s rape about him (and also her decision to no have an abortion afterwards), whines incessantly about how everything bad that happens to him is because people hate old men… Oh, and there is a healthy dose of racism, homophobia(/lesbophobia) and ableism next to the sexism!
What a winner.
Everything revolves around him, and when his daughter calls him on it (“you act like I’m a minor character”) he’s bewildered. People have their own feelings? Certainly not!
Who ever made Coetzee believe we needed another book about how incredibly hard it is to be an aging, white (heterosexual) man?
I am free.
God this book was horrible and I hated all of it, something that doesn’t happen often.
Sure, well-written or whatever, skilful use of words, but incredibly annoying.
The main character had no redeeming qualities, and the entire book was full of white dude whining about how hard his life is.
He stalks women, invades their privacy, manipulates his student into having sex with him, makes his daughter’s rape about him (and also her decision to no have an abortion afterwards), whines incessantly about how everything bad that happens to him is because people hate old men… Oh, and there is a healthy dose of racism, homophobia(/lesbophobia) and ableism next to the sexism!
What a winner.
Everything revolves around him, and when his daughter calls him on it (“you act like I’m a minor character”) he’s bewildered. People have their own feelings? Certainly not!
Who ever made Coetzee believe we needed another book about how incredibly hard it is to be an aging, white (heterosexual) man?
This is a really thought-provoking novel on the themes of guilt, colonialism and masculinity. I found it a really difficult read at times, especially when dealing with sexual assault and aspects of the main character's sexuality. However, I can see the increased relevance of how it deals with national identity and inherited guilt as the less developed world begins to struggle largely due to the overproduction of greenhouse gases by more developed countries.
The story follows David Lurie, a world-weary English Professor in Cape Town. He's twice-divorced and seems pretty settled in his bachelor life, with a prostitute he visits regularly for his sexual 'needs'. However, possibly out of boredom, he starts up a relationship with a young female student. This relationship seems incredibly pressured from his side due to their power imbalance, and not entirely consensual from hers. The story is told from the point of view of David, and even he seems to acknowledge that what he is doing is wrong. I found the scenes where David describes him having sex with his student after having entered her house uninvited while she laid there immobile immensely disturbing. However, he frequently seems to justify this as just him indulging his sexuality or developing an obsession. In his eyes, because he cared about her a bit, what he was doing was somewhat acceptable.
Anyway, he ends up losing his job, partly because he can't take the university inquiry seriously. He escapes to the countryside for a bit while the scandal dies down and stays with his daughter, Lucy. She sets him to work on her smallholding and her friend's animal shelter. Soon after he arrives, they are brutally attacked by some locals who steal some of their belongings, lock David in a toilet and try to set fire to him, and rape Lucy.
Lucy is probably the best character in the book, and I would have been really interested to hear her point of view. She seems determined to integrate into local rural life, be independent, and almost serve as an example of a white South African coexisting with black South Africans without turning her house into a fortress.
David wants Lucy to leave for Holland to recover from the attack, but she is adamant that she must stay. Lucy continually insists that her dad could not possibly understand what happened during the attack and David goes to great lengths to try. The conclusion appears to be that she sees this as something she has to go through as reparations for everything black South Africans have had to go through at the hands of white people. Lucy has inherited the responsibility for this mistreatment from her ancestors.
David of course rages against the idea that Lucy is obliged to suffer in this way because of other people's actions. His emotional response is understandable, but Lucy is more pragmatic about it. In their frankest conversation in the book, she admits that what she struggles with the most is the hatred in the men's eyes as they did this to her, when she is so kind to everyone. As she tries to wrap her head around how someone can feel that much hate during an act that normally brings joy, she says to David:
"'Hatred...When it comes to men and sex, David, nothing surprises me any more. Maybe, for men, hating the woman makes sex more exciting. You are a man, you ought to know'"
Disturbingly, David then admits to himself that this may be true.
"Lucy's intuition is right after all: he does understand; he can, if he concentrates, if he loses himself, be there, be the men, inhabit them, fill them with the ghost of himself. The question is, does he have it in him to be the woman?"
I found that last paragraph so hard-hitting and disturbing. David can see himself as someone who can do something violent and hate-filled (I don't think of these things as inherently masculine attributes, but David appears to). He also wants Lucy to hit back at his attackers with full force: to go to the police when one attacker moves in with her neighbour. But Lucy chooses (I assume David sees this as the feminine option) an alternative and effectively cooperates with her attackers in understanding of their struggles and that she has an obligation to struggle in order to live in their country.
Upsettingly, the novel also puts in stark relief Lucy's struggles with exerting herself as an independent modern woman, while simultaneously trying to make some amends for the racism in South Africa. Lucy ends up pregnant from the attack and agrees to be another wife of her neighbour in exchange for her safety and ownership of her land. Thus, Lucy has lost her land and independence in order to be allowed to continue living in her house without abuse.
The story follows David Lurie, a world-weary English Professor in Cape Town. He's twice-divorced and seems pretty settled in his bachelor life, with a prostitute he visits regularly for his sexual 'needs'. However, possibly out of boredom, he starts up a relationship with a young female student. This relationship seems incredibly pressured from his side due to their power imbalance, and not entirely consensual from hers. The story is told from the point of view of David, and even he seems to acknowledge that what he is doing is wrong. I found the scenes where David describes him having sex with his student after having entered her house uninvited while she laid there immobile immensely disturbing. However, he frequently seems to justify this as just him indulging his sexuality or developing an obsession. In his eyes, because he cared about her a bit, what he was doing was somewhat acceptable.
Anyway, he ends up losing his job, partly because he can't take the university inquiry seriously. He escapes to the countryside for a bit while the scandal dies down and stays with his daughter, Lucy. She sets him to work on her smallholding and her friend's animal shelter. Soon after he arrives, they are brutally attacked by some locals who steal some of their belongings, lock David in a toilet and try to set fire to him, and rape Lucy.
Lucy is probably the best character in the book, and I would have been really interested to hear her point of view. She seems determined to integrate into local rural life, be independent, and almost serve as an example of a white South African coexisting with black South Africans without turning her house into a fortress.
David wants Lucy to leave for Holland to recover from the attack, but she is adamant that she must stay. Lucy continually insists that her dad could not possibly understand what happened during the attack and David goes to great lengths to try. The conclusion appears to be that she sees this as something she has to go through as reparations for everything black South Africans have had to go through at the hands of white people. Lucy has inherited the responsibility for this mistreatment from her ancestors.
David of course rages against the idea that Lucy is obliged to suffer in this way because of other people's actions. His emotional response is understandable, but Lucy is more pragmatic about it. In their frankest conversation in the book, she admits that what she struggles with the most is the hatred in the men's eyes as they did this to her, when she is so kind to everyone. As she tries to wrap her head around how someone can feel that much hate during an act that normally brings joy, she says to David:
"'Hatred...When it comes to men and sex, David, nothing surprises me any more. Maybe, for men, hating the woman makes sex more exciting. You are a man, you ought to know'"
Disturbingly, David then admits to himself that this may be true.
"Lucy's intuition is right after all: he does understand; he can, if he concentrates, if he loses himself, be there, be the men, inhabit them, fill them with the ghost of himself. The question is, does he have it in him to be the woman?"
I found that last paragraph so hard-hitting and disturbing. David can see himself as someone who can do something violent and hate-filled (I don't think of these things as inherently masculine attributes, but David appears to). He also wants Lucy to hit back at his attackers with full force: to go to the police when one attacker moves in with her neighbour. But Lucy chooses (I assume David sees this as the feminine option) an alternative and effectively cooperates with her attackers in understanding of their struggles and that she has an obligation to struggle in order to live in their country.
Upsettingly, the novel also puts in stark relief Lucy's struggles with exerting herself as an independent modern woman, while simultaneously trying to make some amends for the racism in South Africa. Lucy ends up pregnant from the attack and agrees to be another wife of her neighbour in exchange for her safety and ownership of her land. Thus, Lucy has lost her land and independence in order to be allowed to continue living in her house without abuse.