Review: Disgrace

Nobel Prize winner (literature) J. M. Coetzee’s novel, Disgrace, was gifted to me on my birthday and post that I was strongly recommended to read it by a literature student, so keeping all my unread books aside, I picked this up and started reading. A couple of important facts about the book before I dive into the review – This fictional novel was first published in 1999 and won the Booker Prize subsequently. The story is set in South Africa shortly after the abolition of Apartheid. The novel is the story about David Laurie, a South African professor who has to leave his teaching post after getting involved in a sexual relationship with one of his students. He leaves the city to go live in the country side with his daughter Lucy for a brief period. Things go well until an unexpected act of violence tears their world apart. They are robbed and beaten. Lucy is also brutally raped. Post that the book mainly deals with how both father and daughter deal with their situation.

Right from the start, I had this uneasy feeling while reading the book and this feeling persisted till the end. Be it the relationship (consensual and legal) he had with his student, the rape and the way in which it was dealt with, the part-time job that Laurie had (putting very sick dogs to sleep and then disposing their bodies) all made me feel very uncomfortable. That being said I must say that the story was very gripping right through. That uneasiness manifests itself in a sort of anxiety about what is going to happen next. Both father and daughter want to deal with the rape in different ways and that ends up adding to the tension of the whole situation. I won’t go into how each person wanted to deal with it because I don’t want to give out spoilers.

A line that was used in the book a few times which stuck with me was “This is Africa”, a line that held far more meaning than was evident. The situation in Africa in the post-apartheid era is beautifully captured in this statement. The lawlessness, the tension between the blacks and the whites, the helplessness and the mistrust of the government of the time comes through in this. For most part though I must admit that I didn’t get the underlying message that the book was trying to pass on to the readers. And right through the book you get the feeling that you’re missing out on something. For people who plan on reading this book, I strongly recommend that you read up some analysis on the side and have an idea about the situation in post-apartheid Africa. A couple of comments at the back of the book read “Coetzee captures with appalling skill the white dilemma in South Africa” and “Disgrace is a subtle, multi-layered story, as much concerned with politics as it is with the itch of the male flesh”. Unfortunately I read this before I started reading the book and right through I kept looking for the “white dilemma” and the “politics” but I never found it anywhere. My ignorance, I admit.

Another theme that runs right through the book is the life of well-known poet, Byron. Coetzee often uses Byron’s life to convey subtle message about how the characters in the story might be feeling. Now for a person like me who has no clue who Byron is and who has never had much of a thing for poetry, these parts of the book can be a drag. I found myself skimming through these parts and only once in a while being able to grasp the true meaning of what the author was trying to say.

So overall a pretty decent read as it keeps you engaged right through. If you have no clue about the history of South Africa and the story of Byron, this book will probably come across as an average book to you but I really think this book has the potential to be truly great if people know the underlying themes.

My Rating: 3/5