The Book Tower

5 Stars

After finishing J.M.Coetzee’s Disgrace I was reminded of Philip Roth’s Everyman, a novel I had high regard for although one I forgot to include in my recent summary of favourites from 2007. Like Roth’s novel, Disgrace follows an ageing and at first not particularly likeable man as he quenches his sexual thirst, in this case with consequences that totally alter the course of his life. David Lurie is a university professor in Cape Town who, after becoming involved with one of his students, is forced to choose no option but to resign from his post and slips away quietly to lick his wounds on his daughter’s farm. Whilst living there, life takes another dramatic turn when they are both violently attacked in their home, Lurie set fire to and his daughter raped. The novel continues as they attempt to recover from this assault, and its consequences on them, their relationship and their place in the world.

I’ve compared Disgrace to Everyman because the two novels had a similar effect on me. A central character facing up to his middle age and beyond, and a realisation that they will never again be able to charm a young and attractive girl. Coetzee’s Lurie settles for an affair with the plain and unattractive woman he assists at a veterinary hospital, his arrogance accepting this as an ironic fall from grace. But, like Roth’s Everyman, we warm to him because, although already of a certain age, Lurie learns an incredible amount from the events in Disgrace. He doesn’t cast off all of his faults, but I found the book captivating because of this. When, towards the end of the novel, he violently confronts a man he believes to be one of the attackers I found myself supporting his anger. An emotional response, but one a reader can understand which makes Coetzee’s characters live and breathe just that little more distinctly.

Disgrace is written with great clarity and precision. It’s a brief work (as is Everyman) but is rich, multlayered and very profound. Lurie, although specialising as an academic in poetry, is very unpoetic. In my opinion his pursuit of the young student is ungraceful and ill-conceived. It is inevitibly his closer move towards nature, and in particular his relationship with the doomed dogs he deals with at the animal hospital, that brings him to life. And gives this novel its particularly moving ending. My first taste of Coetzee and very impressive, especially in how he manages to make such a brief novel an extremely thought provoking work.