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Liked It4 of 4 members found this review helpful “This book isn't for everyone, but I found it to be really interesting. The main character is a 52-year-old divorced literature professor who leaves teaching after he has an affair with a student. Over the course of the novel he has to come to grips with his new life, and try to learn to...” see full review » see other reviews » |
Didn’t Like It1 of 1 members found this review helpful “This was the 2nd book I read in my English 101 class with my favorite professor of all time. Despite my adoration for the professor, I mainly hated this book, except for a few parts that I liked. It was a required read, and I wrote several essays about this book, but I remember I skipped chunks...” see full review » see other reviews » |
Newest Reviews
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“What an incredible book to end 2009. Coetzee is a master storyteller. Although it is both a portrait of a middle-aged man and the transitions in South Africa, it contains a beautiful story of rebirth and hope. ”
Nancy K wrote this review 5 minutes ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“a beautifully written book. Coetzee, in my opinion, succeeded in using a simple plot to tackle very complex issues. sex, sexuality, discrimination. there was an exactness in his story telling that allowed the reader to put himself in david lurie's shoes. he was able to express david's dilemma as a 52 year old man struggling with his sexual desires as well as the dilemma of david's family living in africa. being white and discriminated, thats something people are not used to, yet this novel was able to portray the emotions and predicaments involved in the matter with ease. Another issue dealt with in this novel is a father's love for his daughter. a love that is at times unwanted. as the story develops, david takes a journey towards enlightening himself. towards the end he realizes that he and his daughter are two different entities. that what he thinks is best may not always be accepted by his daughter. a father can only fight for her daughter so much, but only to a point. after which, one must learn to give up. to accept fate.”
Mike dJ wrote this review yesterday. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“This is a short and readable novel that offers interesting insights into race relations in the new South Africa. A professor, fired from his university position for an affair with a student, experiences some intimate racial issues while living with this daughter on her remote farm. The New York Times rated this novel one of eleven best books of 1999.”
Marvin S wrote this review 3 days ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“The characters were all so flawed. I was astounded by the woman settling for abysmal treatment.”
Jayne L wrote this review 3 days ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“"Yes, I am giving him up."”
Dan K wrote this review 13 days ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“A pretty good and depressing tale of life in South Africa. Didn't like the highbrow cultural parts to be honest and I don't think this is the best book I've ever read as other people seem to do.”
xroldx e wrote this review 2 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“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:
North Shore Country Day School English-10 wrote this review 2 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
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”
“Amy's "I tried to love you" book. Disgrace is a disgrace. But she finished it. Kimberly liked it. ”
BYOB Book Club wrote this review 3 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Description sans fard de l'Afrique du Sud avant l'âge de fer. Amour, amitié, sentiments qui co existent au sein d'une violence sans limite et sans réel but, violence désoeuvrée et anarchique. Certains passages sont durs.”
Vanessa I wrote this review Wednesday, December 2 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“funny to read a book called Disgrace, just after reading one called Grace. Similarities too - father/daughter relationships are central to both; southern hemisphere landscapes and contemporary issues from a colonial past set the scene.
Deborah O wrote this review Monday, November 30 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Disgrace is a hard book to read, and I think it will also prove a hard movie to watch - but one that is worth the effort. A small book but not a small story.”
