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This was a really strange novel. You can’t win the Nobel Prize without being a bit strange to read. I don’t think, on the whole, that I enjoyed this at all. And I struggled to get the point of it.
It started out okay with the writer kind of doing the literary equivalent of breaking the fourth wall, so to speak, by addressing the reader about how a novel is constructed. But this seemed to fall by the wayside and, as I was enjoying that, I felt like someone had left me after starting to play a game ...more
It started out okay with the writer kind of doing the literary equivalent of breaking the fourth wall, so to speak, by addressing the reader about how a novel is constructed. But this seemed to fall by the wayside and, as I was enjoying that, I felt like someone had left me after starting to play a game ...more
This was the first book I have read from the much celebrated South African/Australian, J.M. Coetzee. The novel concerns the life and beliefs of the past-her-prime Australian writer, Elizabeth Costello, who is best known for her work “The House of Eccles Street” a re-imagining of Joyce’s “Ulysses” from the perspective of Molly Bloom. This novel is divided into a series of lectures and conversations that Costello gives concerning a wide range of topics such as the welfare of animals, literary cens
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This is a funny little novel. I would hesitate to recommend it to most readers. There is no plot. The writing is dry. Elizabeth is an abrasive personality.
But then again, it's Coetzee. It's a novel of ideas. I didn't like all the ideas presented, but it was interesting to read them. I was fascinated by each of the chapters but I wanted the Elizabeth Costello who appeared in Slow Man. I didn't find her.
I liked it and I didn't like it all at the same time.
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But then again, it's Coetzee. It's a novel of ideas. I didn't like all the ideas presented, but it was interesting to read them. I was fascinated by each of the chapters but I wanted the Elizabeth Costello who appeared in Slow Man. I didn't find her.
I liked it and I didn't like it all at the same time.
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a beautiful book that touches upon everything important in life via the story of an aging australian author, using the vehicles of internal monologue, third person observations, and speeches and lectures to ruminate on family, love, sex, art, religion, atrocity, and, ultimately, what it means to be human and to interact with other humans. i cannot recommend this book highly enough. i feel that i am a profoundly different (and better) person for having read this and it certainly won't be the last
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I don't like the main character (crotchety, opinionated, cerebral, blah blah) and I don't like Cotzee. He describes Elizabeth Costello as "elderly" and "frail" when she is in her 60s. Sixty years old is hardly elderly. Stupid Cotzee.
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Jun 18, 2007
Christine
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Mar 05, 2010
Liz.
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Jan 04, 2013
Mirja
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Jul 21, 2015
Vesra (When She Reads)
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