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.

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There’s an excellent essay on Cormac McCarthy in today’s Guardian by Jason Cowley. It’s well worth reading and, although I’d decided to lay off McCarthy for a while, I’m itching to start the second part of his Border trilogy, The Crossing. The Coen Brothers film of No Country for Old Men is also out soon. I predict McCarthy mania.

Following on from the last post, I’m slowly rebuilding my TBR pile, which is looking something like this:

• The Girl at the Lion d’Or by Sebastian Faulks. This is my first (and overdue) contribution to the Reading the Author challenge at Incurable Logophilia.
• I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. I have no interest in seeing the recent Will Smith film, although I still have fond memories of the adaptation called The Omega Man with Charlton Heston. So I thought it was time I tried the original novel.
• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones. I think I may have overdone Booker nominees recently, but we shall see.
• Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. Praised too much for me to keep ignoring.
• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. This is an intriguing looking new vampire novel set in Washington.
• Chamber of Horrors. An anthology of ghost and horror stories from 1984 purchased this morning. I’d not planned to read any more of this type of thing for a while, but who could resist a collection that includes H.G.Wells, Sheridan Le Fanu and W.W. Jacobs?

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Reading other book blogs, I often notice that people have phenomenal TBR piles. Stacked high and ready to topple, books eager to be savoured in their dozens. Last night I was shocked to discover that I have no TBR pile of my own. I thought I did, but I’ve exhausted it. The books have run out without me noticing, creeping up on my unnoticed like the tortoise on the hare.

I’m currently reading Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee. It’s excellent. It’s also a very slim novel and I’ve also almost finished it. Where to next? I have The Quiet American by Graham Greene, although I overdid Greene last summer. I still have unread collections of ghost stories, but the later months of the year are the best times for ghost stories. So I’m kind of at crisis point, where I will end up buying something from the bestseller lists because my imagination has let me down.

Of course there’s always the January sales, but every time I walk into a bookshop I’m greeted by the faces of Richard Hammond and Terry Wogan…

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