gregisdead121_ 's review for:

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

5.0

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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He tries again, more slowly. ‘When you were small, when we were still
living in Kenilworth, the people next door had a dog, a golden retriever. I
don’t know whether you remember.’
‘Dimly.’
‘It was a male. Whenever there was a bitch in the vicinity it would get
excited and unmanageable, and with Pavlovian regularity the owners would
beat it. This went on until the poor dog didn’t know what to do. At the smell
of a bitch it would chase around the garden with its ears flat and its tail
between its legs, whining, trying to hide.’
He pauses. ‘I don’t see the point,’ says Lucy. And indeed, what is the
point?
‘There was something so ignoble in the spectacle that I despaired. One
can punish a dog, it seems to me, for an offence like chewing a slipper. A
dog will accept the justice of that: a beating for a chewing. But desire is
another story. No animal will accept the justice of being punished for
following its instincts.’
‘So males must be allowed to follow their instincts unchecked? Is that the
moral?’
‘No, that is not the moral. What was ignoble about the Kenilworth
spectacle was that the poor dog had begun to hate its own nature. It no
longer needed to be beaten. It was ready to punish itself. At that point it
would have been better to shoot it.’
‘Or to have it fixed.’
PG80


Reading is often wrongly characterized as an escape, it is not. At least for me, the books that stay, linger long after that final page ;when the book returns to the shelf to gather dust waiting for to be forgotten enough to be read again, the one that matter are not places I escape to. No, instead the books that ensnare me are like alligators invisible in greenish swamps,they sneak up on me after stalking my waking thoughts. And usually I can survive them. ''Parable of the Talents'' by Octavia E Butler marked one of those moments where I'd been used up by a book but even then the distance of its world protected me from complete damage . ''Disgrace'' offers no such reprieve, its setting are are in cities I have seen, its characters people I know and tragedies ghosts I am intimately aware of . 

Revolving around an ignorant (and frankly pedophilic) University of Cape Town Communications professor, J.M. Coetszee bracing sophomore Booker Prize Winner arrives five years after apartheid ended to remind us it hasn't. You wouldn't believe the world he relays existed , at least to the level of depravity shown here, but it does. Unaddressed our histories lick at us like flames, encircle the flawed cast of this magnum opus of the late 19th century. David Laurie, the aforementioned professor is a prolific predator who after forcing one of his vulnerable non white students into a sexual relationship which could comfortably described as rape, faces a professional and personal rejection by his society. The world abandons him rightfully so, but caught up in the heat of his ego and dehumanizing sexualization of vulnerable younger women he fails to see how what he did was wrong...until it happens to his daughter. His free spirited younger farm dwelling white daughter is viciously raped by three black men, set up by another older black man who she trusted. From there the tale descends frantically into unsettling depths, underworlds where South Africas enduring contemporary ills persist. Questions of power, reparations , justice , gender norms and race clash in a grotesque wreck - watching a plane crash would be less traumatic. Seriously. This book has pushed me to the brink,even just writing the review has me in tears. I want to fix it all, step into the characters and make them make the right decision. Stop Lucy from locking the dogs up, make David leave Melanie alone, anything to change the ending. One of the ugliest resolutions to a story. Even a book as exacting as ''Beloved'' finds a sort of peace in the end- the town unites to drive the ghost out and save Beloveds family. Here everything dies, the future anticipates even more violence, the present languishes and the past soils.

This is probably one of the best books I have read this year if not amongst the best I have read in my whole life, but I will never recommend it. Its brutal uncompromising veneer is like a dead body thrown out a speeding car grated by the asphalt winning against the flesh,you cover it so those driving past can be spared seeing what could always happen to them. I want to spare people the upset tummy's this gave me, the bloodshot eyes from crying. Did you know I read this in a day? 220 pages so probably not that impressive for most people, but I am a slow reader. I like to let the words settle and dissolve like a paracetamol ,so that its purpose can be served and my thoughts can be collected but with this one I had to get it over with. Needed to put it behind me as soon as possible. I almost said put it to rest but that would be impossible. This is the world I live in, this is the world more than 80 million south africans call normal. A world where justice is a word on a page and a penis the reason why someone's daughter might never breathe again. I will stop myself right there,or else I risk going on  trying to come up with as many words as possible to put across the devastation wrought by J.M. Coetzee's keen observation. 

I leave you with this quote that made me have to take a break and listen to pop music just to heal, it's the moment where his daughter makes him realize how similar her father is to her rapists, how he had the same reasons. :
‘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. When you have sex with someone
strange – when you trap her, hold her down, get her under you, put all your
weight on her – isn’t it a bit like killing? Pushing the knife in; exiting
afterwards, leaving the body behind covered in blood – doesn’t it feel like
murder, like getting away with murder?’
pg136