| |||||
Life and Times of Michael K: A Novel
Books: CookBooks: Crockery Cooking: Item 1
|
Life and Times of Michael K: A Novelby J. M. Coetzee
|
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful: A difficult story, told well, October 3, 2004 Reviewer:C. Gilbert "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - Even without the K after the Michael, it would be difficult to read this book without thinking about Kafka. Michael K is a simple gardner from a class and a situation where to be simple is not to be protected, but to be unnecessary and even guilty. Guilty of what? Guilty of being expendable, of being bewildered, of being unable to cope or understand the different categories of change around him. Coetzee has created a character who has been judged and found wanting long before he understands that this is even a possibility. What is interesting about Michael and what is also one of the organising aspects of the book is that Michael does not stay in passive opposition to his situation but gradually moves to a kind of active opposition-- at least as active as such a limited character with limited power is capable of carrying out. A lot of the criticism of this book talks about post-colonial literature and racial relations and all of those things are certainly backdrop to the story, but it is mostly about power imbalance and the effect of power imbalance on the people least equipped to do anything except express confusion. Michael K is a disenfranchised everyman, someone who is only as useful as society is kind. This is only the second of two Coetzee books that I have read. I unintentionally picked the two books with which he won Booker prizes (this one and Disgrace). If this had been the first Coetzee that I picked up, as good as it is, it may well be that I would not have rushed to read another one. It is a relentlessly unhappy book, and its vision of freedom that Michael is able to achieve is not a glorious one. Michael apparently has only the freedom to be misunderstood and protected, misunderstood and persecuted, or alone and dead. As much as the world around him is creating Michael, it is hard to imagine a world in which he ever had the possibility of happiness. That kind of bleakness is hard to read and there is not even Beckett-style bitter humor to lighten the pages or encourage the reader. Disgrace was not exactly a happy book, but there was a complexity in it that I somehow miss in Life & Times. It is not where I would start if I had not read any other Coetzee first, but it is difficult to argue with the brilliance of the writing (or the writer).
Book Description
In South Africa, whose civil administration is colapsing under the pressure of years of civil strife, an obscure young gardener named Michael K decides to take his mother on a long march away from the guns towards a new life in the abandoned countryside. Everywhere he goes however, the war follows him. Tracked down and locked up as a collaborator with the rural guerrillas, he embarks on a fast that angers, baffles, and finally awes his captors. The story of Michael K is the story of a man caught up in a war beyond his understanding, but determined to live his life, however minimally, on his own terms. J.M. Coetzee has produced a masterpiece which has the astonishing power to make the wilderness boom.
Inside Flap Copy
In South Africa, whose civil administration is colapsing under the pressure of years of civil strife, an obscure young gardener named Michael K decides to take his mother on a long march away from the guns towards a new life in the abandoned countryside. Everywhere he goes however, the war follows him. Tracked down and locked up as a collaborator with the rural guerrillas, he embarks on a fast that angers, baffles, and finally awes his captors. The story of Michael K is the story of a man caught up in a war beyond his understanding, but determined to live his life, however minimally, on his own terms. J.M. Coetzee has produced a masterpiece which has the astonishing power to make the wilderness boom.
Shop Bookstores:
Books
Resources
Most Watched Book Auctions
Crockery Cooking at Sduf
News To Peruse
More Subjects
Book Review Directory
Reviewed Authors
Reviewed Titles
Review List
Site Map
