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kats05 's review for:
Life & Times of Michael K
by J.M. Coetzee
About 15 years ago I read Disgrace by the same author and thought it was spectacular, so imagine my joy at getting to read another one of Coetzee's Man Booker Prize winners for book club. A first edition of this book has graced my bookshelves since the last century, but being a bit of a simpleton I had always assumed that it was the memoirs of John Michael Coetzee.
Well, within a few pages it was obvious that not only was this a novel, but it was even set against the backdrop of a fictitious civil war in South Africa, possibly during the 1960s or 70s, but no specific time references are given. That is not the only thing to keep the reader guessing - given that the story is set in South Africa during the Apartheid, I wondered from the beginning whether or not the protagonist is white or black / coloured, something that would strongly affect his social status and safety. I came to the conclusion that he was black based on the way that other people treated him (badly), and the way he behaved.
Frankly the guesswork (about Michael K himself, the relationship with his mother, his whereabouts, his passive aggressive ways, etc. etc.) didn't make this a fun experience in terms of reading but it felt really quite tedious. Never before has it taken me six weeks to read a 190 page novel. It simply did not engage me, and I did not appreciate how it made me feel, or rather what it failed to make me feel: empathy for a poor, hard done by protagonist. I felt like a bad person when I had to admit to myself that I actually stopped caring about what happened to Michael K as he travelled around war-stricken South Africa, hiding on farmland without any sense of purpose.
In our book club discussion we all agreed that there was some beautiful Coetzee writing to be found, albeit even more sparse than in Disgrace but the slightly gratuitous and very incongruous sex scene at the very end of the book sullied The Life and Times of Michael K for a lot of us.
For a Coetzee fan and Man Booker Prize follower, this was a very disappointing read.
Well, within a few pages it was obvious that not only was this a novel, but it was even set against the backdrop of a fictitious civil war in South Africa, possibly during the 1960s or 70s, but no specific time references are given. That is not the only thing to keep the reader guessing - given that the story is set in South Africa during the Apartheid, I wondered from the beginning whether or not the protagonist is white or black / coloured, something that would strongly affect his social status and safety. I came to the conclusion that he was black based on the way that other people treated him (badly), and the way he behaved.
Frankly the guesswork (about Michael K himself, the relationship with his mother, his whereabouts, his passive aggressive ways, etc. etc.) didn't make this a fun experience in terms of reading but it felt really quite tedious. Never before has it taken me six weeks to read a 190 page novel. It simply did not engage me, and I did not appreciate how it made me feel, or rather what it failed to make me feel: empathy for a poor, hard done by protagonist. I felt like a bad person when I had to admit to myself that I actually stopped caring about what happened to Michael K as he travelled around war-stricken South Africa, hiding on farmland without any sense of purpose.
In our book club discussion we all agreed that there was some beautiful Coetzee writing to be found, albeit even more sparse than in Disgrace but the slightly gratuitous and very incongruous sex scene at the very end of the book sullied The Life and Times of Michael K for a lot of us.
For a Coetzee fan and Man Booker Prize follower, this was a very disappointing read.