Disgrace

Jan 09, 2013 Nathan James rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

ummm...no. I'm afraid for me, this book suffers from what I call the Booker disease. I've read very few books that won the Man Booker prize that I've enjoyed.

--------SPOILERS AHOY AHOY-----------------------
I looked through the GoodReads comments concerning this book and saw a lot of positive feedback. But not one of those comments talked about Coetzee's horrible dialogue. All of his characters speak like a phlebotomy textbook, and they are all just an obvious soundboard for the author's opinio...more

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Jun 04, 2012 Steve aka Sckenda rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Readers of Prize-Winners

Recommended to Steve aka Sckenda by: Booker Prize; Nobel Prize

Shelves: south-africa, africa, romanticism, women, wordsworth, animals, fathers-and-daughters, race, nobel-prize, movie

“Strange fits of passion I have known.... She dwelt among untrodden ways.” --William Wordsworth

“Note that we are not asked to condemn this being with the mad heart, this being with whom there is something constitutionally wrong. On the contrary, we are invited to understand and sympathize. But there is a limit to sympathy. It will not be possible to love him....He will be condemned to solitude.” (34)-- J.M Coetzee

Is there redemption after disgrace? Can one bear disgrace with dignity? If so, does...more

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Mar 13, 2009 J rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book made me want to read Twilight. Yes, Twilight: perfectly perfect young people falling in love and never growing old. God, I hope that’s what’s in store for me there. I need an antidote to Disgrace.
It affected me more than I thought it could, in ways I hadn’t imagined possible. At page ten I would have readily given it five stars; the writing is superb. Halfway through I’d have given it four. Excellent, but slightly annoying. At the moment I finished it, shouting “WHAT?? What the hell...more This book made me want to read Twilight. Yes, Twilight: perfectly perfect young people falling in love and never growing old. God, I hope that’s what’s in store for me there. I need an antidote to Disgrace.
It affected me more than I thought it could, in ways I hadn’t imagined possible. At page ten I would have readily given it five stars; the writing is superb. Halfway through I’d have given it four. Excellent, but slightly annoying. At the moment I finished it, shouting “WHAT?? What the hell kind of ending is THAT???” and wondering if I was going into shock, I’d have demanded stars back for ruining my life. A little distance was needed before I could consider it rationally again.

The word disgrace is what struck me with nearly every page. Coetzee’s writing is like that. Tight. There’s no escaping what he wants you to see. It’s not outrageously blatant, but it’s none too subtle either. It’s good. So good you might be tempted to revel in it. Do not. This is not for the faint-hearted. Run. Read something easy, something happy. Anything. If you stay Coetzee will turn that word, disgrace, in your mind a hundred different ways. I’m no stranger to the word. I have been a disgrace, been disgraced, disgraced myself and others. Seriously. I thought I was immune to it.
The main character, David Lurie, is disgraced. Big deal. He disgraces a student. Yeah, I’m familiar with that. She’ll live. He is a disgrace. Yes, clearly. David Lurie is entering the disgrace of growing old. That’s where Coetzee has me.
I can’t find it in me to despise Lurie. He’s a Lothario and possibly worse (“She does not own herself. Beauty does not own itself.”), but I don’t have to live with him. Then there’s the sharp intelligence with too little empathy or emotion to make it truly sing. The bare objectiveness. He claims to have lost ‘the lyrical’ within himself, but it’s doubtful he ever had it. He’s a pretender. I’m amused by the fact that he, a professor of language, begins the affair that causes his public fall from grace by quoting Shakespeare’s first sonnet. The words apply as much to himself as to anyone. But self-delusion is my own stock-in-trade. I can’t condemn him for that. I don’t love him either. I feel as dispassionate as Lurie himself. The disgrace of the dying though - the 'without grace' – that younger generations foist upon them. That they’re made to feel as intruders in life, burdensome. This is where Coetzee hooks me. And he reels me in. Reels me in until I find myself suffocating in a world I want no part of. A world of shame, dishonor, humiliation, degradation. Disgrace. That of a man, a father, a daughter, a woman, an unborn child. Now make those plural. Add the disgraces of South Africa, of humanity, of animals. Yes, animals. I suspected Coetzee would sneak in a little commentary on that. He has a reputation. I did not expect to be so affected by it. I, a confirmed carnivore, did not expect to lie awake at night considering vegetarianism. Coetzee brings that passionate quote at the beginning of this paragraph back to hit me square in the face near the end though and – once again – Disgrace.

So five stars, but would I recommend it? I’m still not sure. Read it if you dare. Coetzee is brilliant.

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Feb 23, 2009 Kim rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: gr-friend-recommendations, meh-at-you

There should be one of those button options on GR that states this review has been hidden due to hormonal, maybe not so justified, incoherent rants… click here to view

Because that’s what you’re about to get.

David Lurie is a playah. In the full urban dictionary sense of the word.

A male who is skilled at manipulating ("playing") others, and especially at seducing women by pretending to care about them, when in reality they are only interested in sex….A certain class of low-rent, slack-jawed fuck...more

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May 06, 2010 Ben rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: darkness, favorites, good-fiction, read-in-2010

This could have been the most uncomfortable I’ve ever felt while reading a novel. The issues and themes addressed are those that are immersed in the sensitive, pitch-black parts of my insides. And it didn’t relent; not once did it get easier. It was painful to keep going, yet I was gripped and couldn’t stop.

Mining through our darker spirits is not pleasurable. Looking at the world and its sickness, and feeling some of its constant, inherent pain is no easier. But when these merge together, a glo...more

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Jan 08, 2011 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I’ve read scores of reviews of this book by women, and I’m still dissatisfied. Will a woman explain the reasons why Lucy made her final decision about the baby and her living arrangements? For me, it’s the most controversial moment in Disgrace, as it was for Lucy and her father Mr Lurie, the 2 main characters. I respect a woman’s right to choose--or not to choose--her pregnancy, and I certainly don’t judge how she leads a conspicuously difficult life. I may question, disagree, and debate, but it...more

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Jan 11, 2009 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. At the risk of sounding painfully obvious, getting old seems like it sucks for the most part. I’m speaking about men here, because I have only an inkling of the changes that women face as they age and assume that their road is much tougher. Sure, some old, white guys like Dick Chaney have amassed enough power and social influence over the years that they are probably having a pretty good time giving the rest of us white guys a bad name, but the majority of us will never have the opportunity or d...more At the risk of sounding painfully obvious, getting old seems like it sucks for the most part. I’m speaking about men here, because I have only an inkling of the changes that women face as they age and assume that their road is much tougher. Sure, some old, white guys like Dick Chaney have amassed enough power and social influence over the years that they are probably having a pretty good time giving the rest of us white guys a bad name, but the majority of us will never have the opportunity or desire to revel in such asshole-ish excesses and will most likely spend our waning days swimming in a sea of mediocrity and overflowing adult diapers. There may be a ten-twenty year window where our cognitive skills and wisdom peak and ripen, but most of the people who would benefit from this wisdom have already stopped listening and the price to be paid for this involves the appearance of strange ear and nostril hair. As time goes on we have trouble keeping up with the once enthralling youth culture, finding it either derivative or incomprehensible. This makes us overly protective of our lawns. Some men who could once upon a time charm the pants off of young ladies with their wit soon find that their jokes have gone from funny to quaint to lame-ass when they weren’t looking. As the slow march continues, problems surface with the “little guy” and it hurts to pee. Luckily, according to all of the commercials on the evening news they have pills for those issues now, but I still wonder why it is in those commercials that the men are always doing more dancing than “dancing”? But I digress…

The quick-and-dirty one word summary for ‘Disgrace’ would be as follows: Professor David Lurie learns that it sucks to get old and that there are opportunities for personal growth through having your ass handed to you.

Lurie is a teacher at a South African university who is dismissed from his position for engaging in an affair with one of his students and fixing her grades. The question that hangs in the air is whether or not the affair was of a completely consensual nature for both parties as Lurie held the greater balance of power. The media catches wind of this and Lurie finds himself being a persona non grata in Capetown. He moves out to the country to help his daughter Lucy with her farm. Lucy is a fiercely independent white woman and lesbian in a rural area ran by black men with strong family ties going back generations. Her presence does not sit well with the locals, which ultimately leads to an attack inside her home where Lurie is assaulted and unable to help Lucy as she is savagely raped by the attackers. This act seems to be both a symbolic release of the hatred of the racial oppression that was for so long a part of South Africa and also an attempt at “putting the woman in her place.” Obviously, Lurie is despondent over his inability to protect Lucy, and the similarities between this act and his own affair are not lost on him.

Once again, I am awe struck by the number of themes that Coetzee manages to fit into such a slim volume. Chief among them seems to be Lurie’s relationships with women, as we get a cross-section of women that he has known and how his perspective of them changes because of the events explained above. This is juxtaposed nicely with an opera that he is working on throughout the book involving the affair of Lord Byron and Teresa.

Also intriguing is the way that Coetzee explores the frailty of language as it unravels. At the beginning of the book the narrator seems determined to find a precision in language, leaving no detail uncovered. The first sentence of the book is a great example of this – “For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well.” Following the attack, the precision seems to leave entirely or become muddled in the chaos. Page 117 – “More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for he truth of South Africa. Stretches of English code whole sentences long have thickened, lost their articulations, their articulateness, their articulatedness.”

This is by no means a happy, warm-fuzzies inducing kind of book. Coetzee seems to be a master in painting poetically brutal scenarios, but I feel that this book challenged me as a reader and I am glad that I undertook the challenge.

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Jul 24, 2007 She-Who-Reads rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: thoughtprovoking, worth-rereading, africa, literary, race, gender, disturbing, sexual-politics, academia, rape, animalrights

I literally just finished this book a few minutes ago, so I have not by any means worked though all of my reactions to it yet. It is written in a very spare, emotionally distanced style, even though it deals with very emotional topics. It is a page-turner, an absorbing, fast read that keeps you anxious to find out what happens next -- but that seems almost incidental, besides the point. I thoroughly disliked the main character, David Lurie -- he is unbelievably arrogant and chauvinistic -- but t...more I literally just finished this book a few minutes ago, so I have not by any means worked though all of my reactions to it yet. It is written in a very spare, emotionally distanced style, even though it deals with very emotional topics. It is a page-turner, an absorbing, fast read that keeps you anxious to find out what happens next -- but that seems almost incidental, besides the point. I thoroughly disliked the main character, David Lurie -- he is unbelievably arrogant and chauvinistic -- but that seemed less and less important as the novel went on, and totally irrelevant by the end. In fact, I don't think there is a single likable character anywhere in this book, not even Bev Shaw (she is admirable, I think, but not likable). But these characters and their lives have so much to say to the reader that their likability just doesn't even enter into it.

This is an extremely complex book, with a lot going on -- I haven't even begun to unpack it all. At its core, it's about race, specifically about race relations in modern-day South Africa. But it also has a lot to do with gender politics and with animal rights (or, if not animal rights exactly, the treatment animals receive at the hands of human beings). Lucy, David's daughter, becomes the focal point for most of these issues, yet she, as a character, would eschew the whole notion of "issues". She doesn't deal in abstractions, only in the concrete necessities of daily life. She is -- all of these characters are -- hard to wrap your head around, hard to understand their motivations. Honestly, Lucy disturbed me even more than David disturbed me. David is an arrogant jackass who constantly romanticizes everything around him. Lucy, however, is a victim, a voluntary martyr. It is the role she has adopted for herself, the price she has decided she has to pay for being a white woman living in the South African countryside. She is powerless and oppressed -- not by other people, not by the society she lives in, but by herself. She may be trying to live a good life and be a good person, but I cannot imagine that anything good could possibly come out of the stance she chooses to take. She takes self-loathing to new and extreme levels, in my opinion.

So what is the disgrace that the title references? David's disgrace at the beginning of the book, being caught in an affair with a student? The disgrace Lucy feels from the rape? South Africa's disgraceful history of apartheid? The disgraceful behavior of the rapists and of Petrus, who is protecting them and may possibly have instigated the whole incident in the first place? Lucy's lack of self-respect? Her father's lack of empathy and connection with other human beings? Some other meaning I haven't considered yet? All of the above?

I don't know. But I know I will be thinking about this little novel for a long time to come. Haunting is, I think, the right word for it.(less)

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Feb 10, 2008 Liza rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I would like very much to be able to coherently refute this novel. After finishing it I felt as though I had maybe been taken in because while reading it I accepted its premise(s), but afterwards I wondered if what had seemed true really held up to the glare of daylight.

There was a review by James Wood that I liked a lot, and here is a quote from it: “But people like novels that, however intelligently, tell them what to think, that table ideas and issues - novels that are discussable. Above all...more I would like very much to be able to coherently refute this novel. After finishing it I felt as though I had maybe been taken in because while reading it I accepted its premise(s), but afterwards I wondered if what had seemed true really held up to the glare of daylight.

There was a review by James Wood that I liked a lot, and here is a quote from it: “But people like novels that, however intelligently, tell them what to think, that table ideas and issues - novels that are discussable. Above all, and most depressingly, people like allegory, and Coetzee's books always incline toward this mode. Coetzee is very subtle and refined, so that much of the time he does not really seem to be telling us what to think; better still, his novels self-consciously display an involvement in their own modes of presentation, so that Coetzee will often seem to be telling us what to think about being told what to think (which is still a species of telling people what to think, of course). Disgrace, which is a kind of South African version of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons - an issue novel about the generation wars - is a novel with which it is almost impossible to find fault. Precisely because he is a very good writer and not a great writer, Coetzee emits prize-pheromones.” The full review is here: http://www.powells.com/review/2001_05...

It does seem, in a way, to be too good without being good enough. It goes straight, if anything too precisely, to the jugular on some very particular issues: men and women, family, colonialism, rationality and its limits, irrationality and its dangers. Then (and I feel a little bit nervous about how there doesn’t seem to be more mention of this) at moments it really does offer something very much like a cheap form of redemption, doesn’t it? The protagonist goes on his knees before the family of the woman he has (in my opinion) mistreated. Literally goes on his knees. And what good does that do anyone? He rescues dogs and then gives them up to the inevitable slaughter. Come on, now. If you have been so seemingly brutally offering up such a dark version of the truth, what could you mean by these sorts of images? They seem either mocking or appeasing, and neither seems right.

Now here is a review I found even more disturbing than the book itself: http://www.salon.com/books/review/199.... Here is a part that really stuck in my gullet: “Readers may well be repelled by David's arrogance, and his conduct with Melanie has fallen only a little short of rape. But judging him is not a simple matter. He is a student of Romanticism whose unrealized ambition is to write a chamber opera about Byron's life in Italy. No matter how little of our sympathy David may command, he has a point: If he genuinely believed his passion for Melanie was the real thing, the flame he had been waiting his whole life to feel, then how could he not pursue her avidly?” Oh, come on. Come on! Perhaps this is beside the point, but now that the question has been raised, can’t we agree that he pursued her not avidly enough? He didn’t even take the time to seduce her properly, and so the point becomes, in my book, not that he was a student of Romanticism but that he wasn’t a very good student of Romanticism.

Then this sticks maybe worse, from the same review: “If David actually reclaims some dignity by the end of "Disgrace," it is only because he gives up everything, gives up more than a dog ever could -- his daughter, his ideas about justice and language, his dream of the opera on Byron and even the dying animals he has learned to love without reservation, without thought for himself.” Looking for this kind of resolution! It’s where we get a little too book-of-the-month, if not a little too 700-club. (For starters: is it really virtuous that he has given up his daughter?) And I am stuck trying to refute this book review, because in all honesty I couldn’t say that the book itself presented anything quite reducible to these platitudes. But it came too close, too close. And if you’re going to do a thing like that, it only seems right to go all the way or not at all. All the same, I would recommend it because it is at least interesting enough to disagree with. (less)

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Jun 29, 2007 William rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: africa, south-africa, political-fiction, trauma-recovery

Disgrace is a beautifully written, emotionally blunt novel that maps, in shadows and scars, the complicated cultural geography of contemporary Cape Town. In Disgrace the decadence of Western privilege overlays the body of rural Africa; the useless academic hopes to shape and tame the simple thoughts of the unformed young; and art seeks to find honesty in first distantly mimicking then finally respecting the rough-hewn people it mines for material. Finally, and in a manner that makes this novel s...more

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Jun 16, 2010 Ellen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel

...And, on second thought..."

I re-read this book last night and am still trying to sort out my feelings. At the level of writing, J.M. Coetzee is brilliant, his prose both spare and evocative.

But what to do with David Lurie? Coetzee humanizes this man and even invites us to empathize. Yet, does Lurie deserve our pity, on any level? He uses women, selected solely on the basis of their looks, and frequently expresses his contempt for women who are not beautiful. At the beginning of the book, he fi...more ...And, on second thought..."

I re-read this book last night and am still trying to sort out my feelings. At the level of writing, J.M. Coetzee is brilliant, his prose both spare and evocative.

But what to do with David Lurie? Coetzee humanizes this man and even invites us to empathize. Yet, does Lurie deserve our pity, on any level? He uses women, selected solely on the basis of their looks, and frequently expresses his contempt for women who are not beautiful. At the beginning of the book, he finds he's lost his powers to summon women as effortlessly as he did in the past. Nevertheless, he woos a young woman (only 20 years old to his 52) who is a student in his class.

This time his actions have consequences, and Professor Lurie is accused and must attend a hearing. Oddly - given his actions - most of his colleagues try to encourage him to say or do something, anything, so that they will not be forced to fire him. Lurie refuses. On principle, he says. He will not confess to a contrition he doesn't feel or succumb to counselling he doesn't need. His "principle" is born of arrogance; he thinks of a dog who, unable to control his desire, is punished for responding to what he cannot help. But Lurie is not a dog.

When questioned by students after the first official hearing, Lurie responds to a girl who's asked him, "Do you regret what you did?" with callousness: "No...I was enriched by the experience."

Lurie's response takes your breath away. And indeed, his answer defines him. As his daughter later accuses, Lurie sees himself as the all-important, central player and everyone else--particularly women--are merely the supporting cast. While we all are the protagonists of our story, most of us make an attempt to empathize and to view things from the perspective of others. Lurie's comment underscores his lack of humanity. More disgraceful than his molestation of his student is Lurie's view that these conquests serve to enrich him, like taking a multi-vitamin perhaps.

To his credit, Coetzee does not have this irredeemably repugnant character undergo any dramatic revelations. Lurie remains selfish and often blind to the ironic parallels between him and his own daughter's situation. Yet, with subtlety and small touches, Coetzee allows Lurie some glimpses of humanity.

I find Lurie unforgivable, but, as the novel progresses, I can relate to his growing sense of mortality and his small - very small - acts of grace.

I'm not sure why originally I only gave this books 3 stars. While painful to read--Lurie's character both attracts and repels--this is a haunting novel, beautifully written.

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Jan 02, 2008 laura added it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

i don't know how to assign this book anything as linear as a 1-5 rating. it's an oddly troubling book. i didn't enjoy it, but i've continued to think of it and to be troubled by it for longer than any book written in recent memory, and that's quite something. i'd call it compelling, but i usually save that word for books that confront me with something undeniably/complicatedly true, and i don't know if this book is true or not.

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Sep 29, 2011 Angus rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: man-booker-prize, nobel-laureates, reviewed-and-blogged

Original post at Book Rhapsody.

***

Intro

I got this at regular price back in college. I bought it even if I found the cover unappealing: a stray dog on a barren dirt road. I am not into judging books by their covers, but nice covers sometimes help. It’s hard not to be drawn to a book with a sleek cover design.

Oh yes, this novel is a Booker winner. The author is a Nobel laureate. The author is among the top authors who have the most number of books in that 1001 list. With all these, expectations ar...more

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Nov 30, 2012 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-and-punishment, kind-of-depressing, people-turn-to-creatures, they-made-me-do-it

Man, living in South Africa really sounds like it sucks.

---

Nabokov insisted that "one cannot read a book: one can only reread it," and while I suspect he was right I almost never read books more than once. There are just too many unread books out there for me to stop and go back in most cases, unless I'm made to do so for a class, which this time I was, just two years after first reading Disgrace.

There are a couple obvious reasons why it's good to reread books, and one has much more to do with t...more

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Mar 19, 2009 Lavinia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, fiction

Everything has a price. If you're a university professor getting involved with a student who later reports you, you pay the price: you're dismissed and your life is turned upside down.
If you're a young white woman and choose not to leave the ground you were born on (i.e. South Africa), you pay the price: you get robbed, raped and learn how to cope with the situation.

Definitely a fast and captivating read.

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Aug 04, 2007 Meredith rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: qualifying-exam

A professor once commented to me that Coetzee mistakes brutality for truth. Perhaps so at times, but this novel struck me as a much more redemptive work than Coetzee's earlier fiction. Briefly, it is a story that asks questions of possession: Should we own our belongings? Do we own our lives? Do we own our bodies? Do animals own theirs? Do we own our actions if they are driven by uncontrollable desire, or rage?

After refusing to offer a statement of contrition for an affair with a young student,...more

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May 01, 2008 Yulia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: criminal-intent, i-thought-i-hated-you

Every time someone tells me I may change my mind about a book in a few years, that I'm just not at the right stage in my life to appreciate it, I shake my head and insist my opinion will never change. I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam I am! But then, I have this book as a glaring reminder that sometimes, well, I do see things differently with time. When I first tried this in college, I stopped after 60 pages, repelled by the lack of affect and humanity in David Lurie. But...more

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Jul 09, 2011 Teresa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A brilliant, nearly flawless novel. I don't know a whole lot about contemporary South Africa, but it's obvious this book has a lot of important things to say, through its story and its characters, about the state of the country. Actually, though it's a slim novel, it has a lot to say, period. For starters, there's the meaning behind words, including the title word. There's also the indignities of life (and death) for animals and humans: growing older, becoming redundant, becoming too many.

Lurie...more

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May 27, 2008 Shannon (Giraffe Days) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, favourite, book-club, 2007

I had had no interest in reading Disgrace for many years but am now thoroughly glad I did, especially with the movie adaptation coming out (starring John Malkovich).

It's a quick read - I read it in about 6 hours (non-continual) - and very light on its feet. For all that, it deals with many political, cultural, racial and social issues and is definitely worthy of some in-depth study at college or university level.

David Lurie is a white Professor at Cape Town Technical University; shunted out of t...more I had had no interest in reading Disgrace for many years but am now thoroughly glad I did, especially with the movie adaptation coming out (starring John Malkovich).

It's a quick read - I read it in about 6 hours (non-continual) - and very light on its feet. For all that, it deals with many political, cultural, racial and social issues and is definitely worthy of some in-depth study at college or university level.

David Lurie is a white Professor at Cape Town Technical University; shunted out of the classics and into "communications", he can teach one subject of his own choosing each year. This year, he's teaching Romantic Poetry - he's a Wordsworth buff and is trying to write a book on Byron's time in Italy.

He's twice divorced at 52, with a daughter, Lucy, in her mid-twenties living on a farmstead in the country. He's a womaniser, and when he isn't sleeping with a colleague or a tourist backpacking through South Africa, he resorts to prostitutes. He styles himself as a servant of Eros, a slave of desire, and believes that a woman's beauty should be shared - with him.

So it's no surprise when he seduces, in a faintly creepy, dirty-old-man kind of way, a student in his romantic poetry class. She's unreceptive, but does little to dissuade him or resist him, while he is simply following that flutter of lust he gets when he looks at her. Soon the scandal is out, and he does not even try to keep his job.

He empties his fridge, packs up his car and goes to stay with Lucy. This is where the book gets really interesting. The farm struggles on dog kennels, market produce and cut flowers, while Petrus, once a typical black farm worker and now with a grant of land (bought off Lucy), two wives and a house in the works, helps out. David, bored, helps at the clinic where they put down dogs and cats left abandoned or injured - the dogs themselves become a powerful theme throughout the novel.

Then David and Lucy become victims of a horrible crime and tensions escalate. David suspects Petrus of some kind of involvement, while Lucy seems to give up on life. No progress is made on the farm or David's book and the relationship between father and daughter gets worse and worse, while Petrus builds his house and harbours one of the men who perpetrated the crime.

David is not a sympathetic character, yet I felt sympathy for him, or maybe it was pity. He argues so well, and believes in himself so deeply, that you cannot help but be drawn in by him even as you are repulsed by him. And he does love his daughter, you can't fault him for that. He is stripped of everything: his job, his home (broken into and thoroughly cleaned out while he is away), his daughter, his hair and half an ear, his book which becomes an opera which, while the passion is there, is going nowhere. He is reduced to spending his days at the clinic on a camp stool with a little heater, keeping the dogs company, or they him.

I would not know where to start in discussing imagery or themes or politics, but I would have loved to study this one. It's also an interesting glimpse into life in post-apartheid South Africa. The earlier scenes in Cape Town could have been set anywhere, while the scenes at Lucy's place are more alien, more out-of-control, harsh yet fragile. Precarious. It's a loosing battle, and which side is right? Lucy talks about the absolute hatred she saw in the faces of the three black men who abused her, and David suggests it's ancestral. Does that make it right? The novel certainly does not posit that. Does that make it wrong? Again, the novel makes clear that things are so very much more complicated that a simple matter of right or wrong, that there are so many underlying forces at work in the country, all tangled up together, that what happens to one young woman on a remote settlement is bad but not the worse thing that could happen.

I wish I had the book with me for some good quotes, it's a very quotable book. Ah well, I'll just have to hope I've encourage you to read it for yourself. Though the subject matter is "heavy", the way it is written will draw you in and the speed at which you will read it gives you the chance to escape the other end without harm, if you that's what you want. I myself am interested in reading more fiction set in Africa, and if you have anything to recommend I'd love to hear it.(less)

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Apr 07, 2012 Seth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopian-literature, world-literature

What a bleak view of life!

The author describes the self-destruction of a literature professor in post-Apartheid South Africa. Professor David Lurie's downfall is his obstinate, reckless, and disgraceful personal conduct, which society is unwilling to excuse absent an apology. At the same time, his scholarship, which revolves around the poet Byron, has become increasingly obscure and irrelevant, offering no offsetting value to society. His daughter Lucy, albeit an idealist, has inherited his stu...more

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Jul 10, 2009 K.D. Oliveros rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

J. M.Coetzee richly deserves his second Man Booker Award (1999) as I enjoyed this far more than his The Life and Times of Michael K (Man Booker Award 1983). This is also the one included in the 501 Must Read Books so I read it.

The story is about an aging professor (52 y/o) who had an affair with his student that caused his expulsion from the university. He has been twice divorced and with the pension denied by the university, he had no choice but to live with his lesbian daughter who chose to li...more

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Apr 28, 2008 Eleni rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am traveling to Tanzania this summer with a group of seven other students and in preparation for our trip, we were assigned to read two books written by African authors. I choose the novel Disgrace by John Maxwell Coetzee, a South African author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Disgrace is the story of David Lurie, a white professor of English at a technical university in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a lonely man, twice divorced, who craves adventure because of his discontent in his mon...more I am traveling to Tanzania this summer with a group of seven other students and in preparation for our trip, we were assigned to read two books written by African authors. I choose the novel Disgrace by John Maxwell Coetzee, a South African author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Disgrace is the story of David Lurie, a white professor of English at a technical university in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a lonely man, twice divorced, who craves adventure because of his discontent in his monotonous job. He finds adventure and pleasure in sexual interactions with women, usually prostitutes, who help to overcome his otherwise pretty boring life. After encountering his “regular” prostitute outside of their scheduled times, he finds himself cut off from her services and looking for a new sexual encounter. He identifies one of his students, Melanie, as a possible romantic interest and pursues her intent on sleeping with her. Melanie is a naive girl who does not know how to deal with Lurie’s infatuation with her and passively submits herself to him while he goes quite near the line of taking advantage of her. After their encounter, Melanie does not show up in class and Lurie covers for her. The board at the university catches drift of his affair with Melanie from her parents and the board calls him to stand before them and give them reason not to dismiss him and although they attempt to make sense of Lurie’s testimony, they decide to dismiss him. Lurie moves to the countryside to live with his daughter, with whom he never had a close relationship with, and learns to live in a completely different environment than in the city. While he is with Lucy, his daughter, a terrible incident occurs at the farm transforming their relationship as well as Lurie’s view on his mannerisms and people.
Throughout this book, Lurie questions his place in life and how he fits into other people’s lives. At first he is an egotistical middle-aged man who does not realize how lonely he really is, but because of his dismissal from the university he begins to understand the importance of relationships with those you truly love. His relationship with his daughter is strained and is not easily repaired but the longer he lives with her, the more he begins to appreciate her way of life and her ideology. He cannot comprehend some of the incredibly selfless things that she does on a regular basis as well as her reaction to the brutal act that is taken out on her by three black men when they attack the farm. Lurie realizes that he will never be as good a person as his daughter is but he finally understands this and becomes a better person because of this understanding.
Although Lurie is the protagonist of the novel and his is the story that is followed throughout the whole book, Lucy’s character is the martyr to Lurie’s selfish egotistical character. She takes in dogs that are not wanted and cares for them as best she can. And when the three men attack, she does not hold them responsible as she feels that it is repayment for the mistreatment of black people during apartheid in her country. Lucy’s character does not appear complex at first but as the novel progresses, different layers emerge revealing a woman with a big heart. She is a white woman as well as probably being lesbian (I say this because the book mentions a former female companion) in a predominantly black community in the countryside. Her way of life contradicts that of the father whose absence during her childhood is reflected when she refers to him as simply “David”. Lucy’s way of life perplexes her father until he understands the meaning of the simple things in her life. As he becomes involved at the animal shelter, he does not understand how the woman who works there is able to put the numerous abandoned dogs to sleep but as he spends more time there he begins to understand that it is simply what has to be done and that even though she is essentially killing the dogs, she provides them with as much love as possible before they are killed. This realization by Lurie allows him to accept that not everything is black and white, most of the time it is grey, with no clear answer.
Understanding and realization becomes a strong theme in the novel as Lurie progresses through his journey after his affair with Melanie. He becomes a better man because of his evaluation of his daughters’ strengths and weaknesses and learns from her interactions with other people. Every Sunday Lucy takes the flowers and vegetables she cultivates to the market to sell and Lurie is astonished by how much more mature she is compared to him, “So: a new adventure. His daughter, whom once upon a time he used to drive to school and ballet class, to the circus and the skating rink, is taking him on an outing, showing him life, showing him this other, unfamiliar world.” (p.72) It is not as much a story of Lurie as a middle-aged man but as a man who never learned how to be his own person with mature, responsible and good intentions.
As with the theme, the tone of the novel shifts as Lurie’s journey shifts. At the beginning the tone is somewhat melancholic but by the end of the book, the author seems to have hope for Lurie and that somehow Lurie is going to be a better man. The tone directly connects to the title, Disgrace, which can refer to Lurie’s disgrace of his affair in Cape Town but more likely represents the disgrace that Lurie feels when he cannot protect his daughter from the brutal attack. He cannot come to terms with how she does not do anything about it and in a way it hurts him even more because of the responsibility he feels towards her. This moment in the novel completely changes the way that Lurie sees his Lucy, he no longer sees her as merely his kin but begins to truly care for her wellbeing. Through the disgrace of not being able to save his child from being hurt he is able to love again and live for the simple things once again.
I enjoyed the ending of this story but did not find the initial half of the book to be nearly as good. The ending gave me a sense of hope and made me care about what happened to the characters because of the image that you were left with. I would recommend this novel to someone who enjoys cynical books or someone who has the patience for a hopeful ending.

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Mar 11, 2008 Kathleen Carr rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I think this is a very well-written novel. Coetzee is very well-regarded so this isn't news. However, when I finished the book, I felt like there was something missing. After thinking about it and discussing it with someone else who read it as well, I think it comes down to the portrayal of the main female character, David's daughter. I don't think he authentically developed this character in a way that would explain her (shocking) decisions in the novel. You could argue that this is the point-...more

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Aug 09, 2007 Nathaniel rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: africa

I read Coetzee after going on a binge of African literature. Given his world-historical and cultural position, I couldn't help being bothered to the point of acute aggravation by the fact that "Disgrace" seems like propaganda--excellently disguised, subtle, hand-wringing propaganda against the good hopes of his country. The whole time I was in South Africa it was impossible to avoid being besieged by white people who sought to poison my own conception of their black countrymen. This was especial...more

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Jan 04, 2013 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Laura by: Capitu

Shelves: bookmooch, booker-prize, south-africa, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, book-and-movie, mtbr-challenge-2013, contemporary-fiction, read-2013

Just arrived from Australia through BM.

I just realized that I watched the movie before had read the book.

John Malkovich is perfect in portraying Professor David Lurie, a professor who is 52 years old and has a love affair with one of his students while teaching at the Technical University of Cape Town.

Once this affair becomes public known, he decides to vista her daughter Lucy who lives in the countryside.

And then their lives will change forever.

A true masterpiece written by J.M. Coetzee and th...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Jandri rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

David Lurie me has ido conquistando página a página, a pesar de que eres un poco más vejete y un mucho más verderón que yo. No te importó tu juicio porque detestabas tu trabajo en el "alma mater" de Ciudad del Cabo.
Porque David, en el fondo tu sabes que eres un ser honesto y todas tus acciones han tenido la virtud de la nobleza, aunque tu brusquedad y tu ímpetu te hayan jugado malas pasadas.

Así que tomando prestadas palabras del autor en sus párrafos finales; Coetzee y un servidor predicamos en...more

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Oct 14, 2012 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Oh, pretty awful. Not badly done: no, not that at all but rater just a book full of bitter hard, hard sadness. As for my 3* rating, this isn't a book you an "like" but it's too serious and too well executed to deserve a bad score either, so I'm stuck in the middle.

There seems a great loathing toward men, too pure and honest to be hatred, permeating the book. In relations between the man and woman, Coetzee teaches his lesson in strata angel-high and craven below dogs.

Actually, it is dogs that are...more

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Jul 15, 2010 Alexandra rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: belletristik, favorites

Ein Collegeprofessor erlebt in Südafrika im Herbst seines Lebens sein persönliches Waterloo, als er eine Affäre mit einer seiner Studentinnen anfägt: Job weg, Ruf beim Teufel. Aber es kommt noch schlimmer: Als seine Tochter bei einem Überfall auf das Haus vergewaltigt wird und er hilflos dabei zusehen muss, ist seine Schande komplett. Was der Schande folgt sind Scham und Sprachlosigkeit eines Traumas. Vater und Tochter können einander nicht helfen - bleiben in ihrem Leid und den Konsequenzen aus...more

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Mar 28, 2011 Deb rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After rereading "Waiting for the Barbarians", I was reminded how much I appreciate J.M. Coetze's ability to write about the implications of oppression through the lens of a few characters while illuminating the impact across a society. This novel centered on a white professor in post-apartheid South Africa who seduced one of his students, resulting in his termination. Feeling lost in the world, he sought refuge with his daughter who lives on a small farm in the Eastern Cape. After a brutal attac...more

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Aug 18, 2007 Bonnie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Well - everything was right with this book but I did not grow to love the main character -- which - under the circumstances is mnost likely what the author intended. But it is a beautiful book, filled with ironies and counter ironies, love, lust and every emotion in between.
And, what I found ironic about myself was that I found myself not exactly liking the "good" characters.
Coetzee is a master.

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Bonnie Now I've just read an Essay in the Times Book Review about Coetzee and the fact that many found "Disgrace" a racist book, including Nadine Gordimer an...more
Dec 18, 2007 04:33pm

Mike Hi Bonnie-
I liked your review and even more your great follow-up comments; you captured, concisely and clearly, the debate around the book, and how we...more Hi Bonnie-
I liked your review and even more your great follow-up comments; you captured, concisely and clearly, the debate around the book, and how we might struggle to make sense of its depictions.

And I think you're right that the best way to do so would be to examine Coetzee's writing more cumulatively. I'll say upfront, I am a longtime fan, so came to Disgrace with a built-in vision of what the author does (well), and might not see some new 'shift' toward positions you can't see in earlier writing. Maybe. Maybe I'm missing his 'new' racism, but all that body of work suggests instead some consistent, persistent concerns against inhumanity and aggression of all sorts.

There's a great essay on his most recent novel worth looking at (see http://www.slate.com/id/2179374/). In a nutshell, this critic argues that Coetzee is trying to illustrate, negotiate, enact the problem of compassion. He produces that problem thematically, in terms of plot, but also through his often-difficult language or narrative structure, and certainly through these characters, who are unlikable or sometimes plain difficult to understand. So, for me, Disgrace is not just about David Lurie trying to find a way to accept and feel for someone (or something) other than himself, it's also about his persistent limits of compassion.

And the book pushes on us as readers--Lurie, and the novel, have a restricted point of view. I find it hard to care for Lurie, find it difficult to reconcile his developing empathy for animals with his relationships with women, let alone the paper-thin vision of people from different racial and class groupings. This is in keeping with that central problem--we readers are also forced to try and develop compassion, for this often-callous, self-obsessed man.

And Lurie's limits of understanding are also something Coetzee continually returns to--it's not just hard to feel for others, it's really hard to understand or speak across differences like gender, race, class without reinforcing or recreating the power dynamics shaping those differences. Michael K's a great earlier example; his books Foe and Waiting for the Barbarians and Age of Iron also display that kind of problem, a central character grappling with people whose lives and identities are so wholly different from their own. In Coetzee's books, "understanding" is often an illusion that allows people to mistreat others.

So.... I am sorry to have rambled so much here, but I think he's among the best and most challenging writers around, and your post was so good I just got caught up in continuing the discussion!

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Feb 24, 2008 08:39am

Bonnie Mike - I've come to Coetzee late but I admire his writing. I'm glad you continued the post. I do think, as you do, that we have to look at the whole b...more
Feb 24, 2008 02:05pm

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