Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee
I read Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee because I was participating in the Literature Network online book club and I was excited to read a novel by a Nobel Prize winner. I struggled through this book, but kept with it, mainly because I was scared that I would get on the boards and find glowing reviews. They must have chosen it because it would be good right? So after I finally plowed my way through it, I decided to see what my fellow book club members thought. What a relief!! Most everybody thought it was just average or disliked it altogether. Apparently, this is not Coetzee’s best work. No wonder the back cover only gives glowing reviews for his other books, did he even get any good reviews for this one? I don’t even want to take the time to find out, I’m just not even interested one bit and want to put this book behind me.
To very briefly summarize, the book begins as Paul Raymant, sixty years old, is hit by a car and loses a leg. Once home, he laments not only the loss of his leg but the life that he didn’t create for himself. He longs for a family and children, and in his hopelessness he falls in love with his Croation nurse, Marijana and hopes to become a part of their life. Along the way, he is visited by the mysterious writer Elizabeth Costello, but I never could figure out her role or even why she was in the story. That goes for a blind woman character as well.
Coetzee tries to offer up some themes: what does it mean to grow older, how have we lived our lives, the search of truth, what is the home, care vs. love, what is meaningful, etc, etc, etc. The only redeeming quality of this book was that the main character had once worked in photography and there were some nice photographic descriptions (my degree is in photography, I can relate to some of the stuff he said).
Should I give Coetzee another chance? Should I read Disgrace? Elizabeth Costello? If I do, it won’t be this year, but honestly there just is too many books with so little time, and this one was not worth the time!
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Tags: A-D Author, Africa, Fiction, male author, Nobel Prize author, published 2005, Q-T Title, South Africa
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I read this last year and liked it okay. But, Disgrace is a much better book. I have not heard rave reviews on Elizabeth Costello…
on January 26th, 2008 at 7:09 pmWendy – If I get around to reading Disgrace, it definitely will not be for a long while! I wondered if I had read Elizabeth Costello if I would have understood this book better. Is it a sequel or a standalone? I’m not even sure.
on January 26th, 2008 at 10:30 pmI have this on my bookshelf, but now it will sit until I really have time for it, if that time ever comes. Or, maybe I will raffle it off. We’ll have to see.
on April 27th, 2008 at 10:22 amSlow Man, Slow Motion in someones life before
on October 14th, 2008 at 10:12 pmand after a decisive moment,which calls or allows,for changes to be made but,they are left to float away;then,awareness of aging process, still simmering desires to find answers what lies behind words like love, belonging, perfection in what one chooses to do as well as the urge to persuage happenings to come about, knowing the effort is doomed and just a thought. Slow Man, his own Camera in the imagined writer of Elisabeth Costello; Slow Man, the collector of books, writing in blind motion picture fashion an imagined scenery into his Slow Man’s life. In the time frame of slow life his mind is active.
This is far from Coetzee’s best work and in fact is self-indulgent, which his work never is. Read Disgrace, Elizabeth Costello, Diary of a Bad Year or any of the old works (Waiting for the Barbarians, Foe, etc.). You won’t need glowing reviews because of the ever present glow in the writing. They didn’t give him a Nobel prize for nothing.
Slow Man is probably the worst work by him that I have read, by a mile. Disappointing in that he would allow that. But do read the rest of his catalog.
on March 21st, 2009 at 9:39 amIt seems that you have all missed the point of the book and the role that costello has in it. There is more in this book than what meets the eye.
on March 21st, 2010 at 10:43 am