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“Technique almost overwhelmed this book for me. At first, I was intrigued by Coetzee's technique of dividing the page between his characters: the top of each page presented JMC's opinions about politics, psychoanalysis, terrorism, anti-Americanism, and many other topics; the bottom of each page began with the main character's personal thoughts about a young woman in his apartment building; as the young woman became an important player in this drama, her thoughts about JMC's writing, his interest in her, and her lover's plan to rob the main character. I found it cumbersome and confusing at times to keep the two or three parallel plots going. It was a lot like watching one of the 70s films that experimented with split screens to show several important events simultaneously. For a long time, I didn't think there was enough conflict to keep the story interesting. While I found the characters interesting, Coetzee's technique kept them at arms-length from each other and from the reader. I never really developed a connection with them. This was not a problem in Waiting for the Barbarians, which was told in a more conventional first person point of view. Maybe the diary-like structure of Diary of a Bad Year accounts for the distancing and disjointed plot. I wanted to like it more than I did.”
John B wrote this review Friday, March 28 2008.
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