John. Maxwell. Coetzee 

                       Age of Iron (1991)

   Disgrace (1999

    about

Age of Iron (1990) 

Editorial Reviews
Book Description 
In Cape Town, South Africa, an old woman is dying of cancer. A classics professor, Mrs. Curren has been opposed to the lies and brutality of apartheid all her life, but has lived insulated from its true horrors. Now she is suddenly forced to come to terms with the
iron-hearted rage that the system has wrought. In an extended letter addressed to her daughter, who has long since fled to America, Mrs. Curren recounts the strange events of her dying days. She witnesses the burning of a nearby black township and discovers the bullet-riddled body of her servant's son. A teenage black activist hiding in her house is killed by security forces. And through it all, her only companion, the only person to whom she can confess her mounting anger and despair, is a homeless man, an alcoholic, who one day appears on her doorstep. 

Brilliantly crafted and resonant with metaphor, Age of Iron is "a superbly realized novel whose truths cut to the bone." (The New York Times Book Review) 

Synopsis 
In cape Town, South Africa, an old woman is dying of cancer. A classics professor, Mrs. Curren has all her life been opposed to the apartheid system. Now, she is forced to come to terms with the rage to her daughter, Mrs. Curren recounts the strange events of her dying
days. 
                      from: http://www.amazon.com 

 

  reviewed by Benita Parry: Southern African Review of  Books, Issue 17, January/February 1991: http://www.uni-ulm.de/~rturrell/antho2html/Parry.html (very detailed, rather a literary criticism than a review)

Disgrace (1999)

Editorial Reviews Amazon.com 
David Lurie is hardly the hero of his own life, or anyone else's. At 52, the protagonist of Disgrace is at the end of his professional and romantic game, and seems to be deliberately courting disaster. Long a professor of modern languages at Cape Town University College,
he has recently been relegated to adjunct professor of communications at the same institution, now pointedly renamed Cape Technical University: 

Although he devotes hours of each day to his new discipline, he finds its first premise, as enunciated in the Communications 101 handbook, preposterous:"Human society has created language in order that we may communicate our thoughts, feelings and intentions to each other." His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul. 

Twice married and twice divorced, his magnetic looks on the wane, David rather cruelly seduces one of his students, and his conduct unbecoming is soon uncovered. In his eighth novel, J.M. Coetzee might have been content to write a searching academic satire. But in
Disgrace he is intent on much more, and his art is as uncompromising as his main character, though infinitely more complex. Refusing to play the public-repentance game, David gets himself fired--a final gesture of contempt. Now, he thinks, he will write something
on Byron's last years. Not empty, unread criticism, "prose measured by the yard," but a libretto. To do so, he heads for the Eastern Cape and his daughter's farm. In her mid-20s, Lucy has turned her back on city sophistications: with five hectares, she makes her living by
growing flowers and produce and boarding dogs. "Nothing," David thinks, "could be more simple." But nothing, in fact, is more complicated--or, in the new South Africa, more dangerous. Far from being the refuge he has sought, little is safe in Salem. Just as David
has settled into his temporary role as farmworker and unenthusiastic animal-shelter volunteer, he and Lucy are attacked by three black men. Unable to protect his daughter, David's disgrace is complete. Hers, however, is far worse. 

There is much more to be explored in Coetzee's painful novel, and few consolations. It would be easy to pick up on his title and view Disgrace as a complicated working-out of personal and political shame and responsibility. But the author is concerned with his country's history,
brutalities, and betrayals. Coetzee is also intent on what measure of soul and rights we allow animals. After the attack, David takes his role at the shelter more seriously, at last achieving an unlikely home and some measure of love. In Coetzee's recent Princeton lectures, The
Lives of Animals, an aging novelist tells her audience that the question that occupies all lab and zoo creatures is, "Where is home, and how do I get there?" David, though still all-powerful compared to those he helps dispose of, is equally trapped, equally lost. 

Disgrace is almost willfully plain. Yet it possesses its own lean, heartbreaking lyricism, most of all in its descriptions of unwanted animals. At the start of the novel, David tells his student
that poetry either speaks instantly to the reader--"a flash of revelation and a flash of response"--or not at all. Coetzee's book speaks differently, its layers and sadnesses endlessly unfolding. --Kerry Fried 

The New York Times Book Review, Michael Gorra 
Coetzee won an earlier Booker Prize for Life & Times of Michael K.. Last month's award made him the only writer ever to win it twice. Disgrace certainly deserves such recognition.
But that may, in time, come to seem among the least of this extraordinary novel's
distinctions. 

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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

The most thought provoking of novels, July 24, 2000 
Reviewer: moosifier (see more about me) from Manchester, England
Excited at the prospect of reading a serious, contemporary novel, I leapt into the first pages of "Disgrace". Making an episode of "Eastenders" look like a comic masterpiece, this novel is
a dark, miserable and distressing piece of soul-destroying fiction.

Although I found lead character David Lurie's behaviour at the trial a little unlikely, the themes studied briefly around generation relationships, prostitutes and teacher-student confidence
were at the very least thought provoking and at most mind blowing. The differences between the attitudes of the men and the women at the trial, for example, are massive and yet Coetzee sums them up in one small sentence that generates extensive thought from the
reader. 

It is Coetzee's very abrupt and sparse writing style that is the revelation of the book. The strong racial issue of South Africa is hardly ever touched upon, but the reader is made completely aware of its existence with hardly a word uttered. Lucy's attack at the farm is
never described, but you know exactly what has happened. Or, more precisely, you know exactly what David knows which means you are thinking the exact thoughts of a father traumatized by his daughter's trauma. Brilliant.

So what is wrong with "Disgrace"? Although mine are rather small concerns, I fear they held back the book significantly. David's unusual behaviour, from start to finish, always left me frowning. I think David's fall from grace, engineered rather unlikely by himself, is simply too
big. Surely an intelligent man would never have so little foresight to create his situation.
Surely such a serial philanderer would never get a conscience as fast as David Lurie does.
Surely a woman such as Lucy would never react to her situation as she does.

I found myself thinking more and more about what each situation symbolized rather than what was actually happening. Finding only tenuous links in my own mind left me feeling unsure of the whole plot and story. The worst culprit of this confusing symbolism is that
which comes with the ending. I really do not know what Coetzee is trying to say in the last chapter or so. At least, what I have come up with seems weak.

It is for me a disappointing end to a fantastic book. From the start the reader knows that they are reading genius. Throughout the reader is swept along on a bed of human tragedy. But finally the reader is defeated by just too much being left unsaid by Coetzee.

I certainly recommend this book to anyone and I wish I could give it a really good score, but the author simply lost me too much.


6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

Elegant, Economical, Complex, May 18, 2000 
Reviewer: Christopher Smith (see more about me) from Bogota, Colombia This is a work well deserving of its accolades and very likely one of the best books that I'll read this year. 

"Disgrace" is a book that, somehow, never allows you to get your bearings. The charm of this book is Coetzee's amazing ability to effortlessly shift moods, from dark humor to interpersonal interaction to political insight. His writing is light, precise, never verbose, and
always razor-sharp.

Disgrace is the story of David Lurie, a Capetown professor who's middle-aged philandering puts him into a situation that his pride and confused idealism won't let him gracefully escape;
he therefore loses his job and his reputation. This leads him on a journey to rediscover himself, his relationship with his daughter, and eventually the unfolding chaos of his changing country.

Laurie is a protagonist filled with flaws, but one with whom the reader ultimately can relate.
We cringe in the beginning as we watch his self destructive behavior unwind his life, then watch as Cotezee's expert literary voice takes the novel in unexpected directions. Indeed, the first and second halves of the books are like two different novels. The story of David Laurie
becomes the story of South Africa.

In reading this novel one is hit hard with the complex racial and political reality of modern South Africa; in many ways this is not a work of hope. Throughout it all Cotezee avoids being judgmental, wallowing in stereotypes, or ducking difficult truths. 

In summary this is a brilliant novel: a well-crafted quick read with realistic, flawed, sympathetic characters.

from: http://www.amazon.com 

Booker Prize (GB) 1999: http://www.bhny.com/Booker99.html 

review: http://www.litreview.com/reviews/1999/07/Mosley_on_Coetzee.html 

review Seattle Times: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/entertainment/html98/chur_19991107.html 

About

Life of J. M. Coetzee: http://www.udl.es/usuaris/m0163949/coetzee2.htm 

fiction and non-fiction (good source): http://www.utc.edu/~engldept/booker/coetzee.htm 

reviews & criticism (some of them online). http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/townsend/una/jmcoetzee_top.html 

all his books with links to amazon: http://www.tiac.net/users/jgm/jmbooks.htm 

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