The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Disgrace, by J. M. Coetzee
reviewed by Rebecca Saunders

Untitled document

Viking, 1999. 220 pp. $23.95.

Not for the ethically faint of heart, the fiction of J. M. Coetzee has repeatedly strewn nettles in the bed of the comfortable social conscience. His most recent novel, winner of the Booker Prize, is focused around an erstwhile literature professor named David Lurie, set in South Africa, and written in that style we have come to expect from Coetzee, at once taciturn and blurting out the unspeakable.

Disgrace is comprised of six subplots, more or less. Following an overture concerning Lurie’s visits to the prostitute Soraya is the story of Melanie, a student with whom Lurie has an affair and who lodges a sexual harassment complaint against him, for which he is dismissed from the university. The third subplot begins when Lurie visits his lesbian daughter Lucy who lives alone on a small farm in the Eastern Cape. One afternoon, intruders appear: they pillage the house, light Lurie on fire, rape Lucy, massacre the dogs, steal the car. This narrative thread becomes entangled in an ugly knot with another, concerning Lucy’s neighbor Petrus and his possible involvement with the crime.

These, and the other, subplots are less interwoven than simply placed next to each other, left alone to initiate their own disturbing dialogue. Their nuances echo through each other like voices through the rooms of an empty house. The novel’s juxtaposed inquiries and trials, for example, constitute a compelling debate over legal and confessional versions of ethics—what responsibility entails and how it is distinguished from “going through the motions,” what “getting away with things” means—all questions that, significantly, also interrogate the workings of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Similar dialogues are elicited through the novel’s repeated scenes of intrusion and its meditations on disgrace, on animality, on the perfective. They are conversations that will not let us have ethical issues wrapped up in lovely clarity, with a bow of clean conscience on top.


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Disgrace, by J. M. Coetzee reviewed by Rebecca Saunders Untitled document Viking, 1999. 220 pp. $23.95. Not for the ethically faint of heart, the fiction of J. M. Coetzee has repeatedly strewn nettles in the bed of the comfortable social conscience. His most recent novel, winner of the Booker Prize, is focused around an erstwhile literature professor named David Lurie, set in South Africa, and written in that style we have come to expect from Coetzee, at once taciturn and blurting out the unspeakable. Disgrace is comprised of six subplots, more or less. Following an overture concerning Lurie’s visits to the prostitute Soraya is the story of Melanie, a student with whom Lurie has an affair and who lodges a sexual harassment complaint against him, for which he is dismissed from the university. The third subplot begins when Lurie visits his lesbian daughter Lucy who lives alone on a small farm in the Eastern Cape. One afternoon, intruders appear: they pillage the house, light Lurie on fire, rape Lucy, massacre the dogs, steal the car. This narrative thread becomes entangled in an ugly knot with another, concerning Lucy’s neighbor Petrus and his possible involvement with the crime. These, and the other, subplots are less interwoven than simply placed next to each other, left alone to initiate their own disturbing dialogue. Their nuances echo through each other like voices through the rooms of an empty house. The novel’s juxtaposed inquiries and trials, for example, constitute a compelling debate over legal and confessional versions of ethics—what responsibility entails and how it is distinguished from “going through the motions,” what “getting away with things” means—all questions that, significantly, also interrogate the workings of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Similar dialogues are elicited through the novel’s repeated scenes of intrusion and its meditations on disgrace, on animality, on the perfective. They are conversations that will not let us have ethical issues wrapped up in lovely clarity, with a bow of clean conscience on top.

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