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From Publishers Weekly
Even more uncompromising than usual, this latest novel by Coetzee (his first since 1999's Booker Prize-winning Disgrace) blurs the bounds of fiction and nonfiction while furthering the author's exploration of urgent moral and aesthetic questions. Elizabeth Costello, a fictional aging Australian novelist who gained fame for a Ulysses-inspired novel in the 1960s, reveals the workings of her still-formidable mind in a series of formal addresses she either attends or delivers herself (an award acceptance speech, a lecture on a cruise ship, a graduation speech). This ingenious structure allows Coetzee to circle around his protagonist, revealing her preoccupations and contradictions her relationships with her son, John, an academic, and her sister, Blanche, a missionary in Africa; her deep, almost fanatical concern with animal rights; her conflicted views on reason and realism; her grapplings with the human problems of sex and spirituality. The specters of the Holocaust and colonialism, of Greek mythology and Christian morality, and of Franz Kafka and the absurd haunt the novel, as Coetzee deftly weaves the intense contemplation of abstractions with the everyday life of an all-too-human body and mind. The struggle for self-expression comes to a wrenching climax when Elizabeth faces a final reckoning and finds herself at a loss for words. This is a novel of weighty ideas, concerned with what it means to be human and with the difficult and seductive task of making meaning. It is a resounding achievement by Coetzee and one that will linger with the reader long after its reverberating conclusion.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
Although it's billed as "a novel masquerading as a biography," some readers may speculate that Coetzee's newest is a biography posing as a novel, or even lectures formed into fiction (six portions were previously published separately). The format is instantly intriguing. Elizabeth Costello is a near-elderly Australian novelist who remains best known for an early work in which she appropriates James Joyce's Ulysses character, Molly Bloom. Coetzee tackles problems of writing, literature, philosophy, and family through eight "lessons," most of which center on a lengthy formal address. In "Realism," Costello travels to Pennsylvania with her son to receive an award; Coetzee slyly enumerates conventions of realistic storytelling even as he guides Costello through interview, debate, and a lecture in which she declares, "The word-mirror is broken, irreparably." In "The Novel in Africa," Costello lectures on a cruise ship with an old acquaintance, Emmanuel Egudu, a Nigerian expatriate novelist. Egudu's talk takes center stage, even as Costello demands to know why there is "no African novel worth speaking of." In later "lessons," Costello speaks passionately about animal rights; hears her sister, a nun, deride the humanities; and gives a speech she is not sure she believes, claiming writers who explore evil may not survive uncontaminated. Coetzee may be exploding the genre, but Elizabeth Costello has real novelistic force. Our pleasure is watching this fascinating woman wrestle with intellectual issues as if they are life-and-death matters--and being convinced, in the end, that they are. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome,
By Sancho Mahle (Charlotte, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Elizabeth Costello (Paperback)
In Elizabeth Costello, we find Coetzee confronting some of the fundamental structures of the society we have known for so long, forcing the reader to think and have an insight into life. This thought-provoking novel which is actually a collection of essays with some having been published before as lectures, is a deep but entertaining book. Coetzee uses Costello Elizabeth as a fictional character to put forward these essays and uses other characters as critics to create a dialectical outlook for the book. It is this approach that I think made this book so unique. A reader is forced to think beyond his beliefs. And in so doing, the reader is forced to evolve. I recommend this book along with The Usurper and Other Stories, Nervous Conditions to any curious mind.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Perceptions Change From Generation To Generation,
By
This review is from: Elizabeth Costello (Paperback)
Coetzee's novel illustrates that literature, like history, is based on perception as events and ideas are interpreted differently from generation to generation. Elizabeth Costello nears the climax of her professional life and wonders if she will remain relevant in future generations. The novel explores how having different perceptions of literature and history allows ideas to live on rather than lose significance. An individual's life is much more fragile as it involves the struggle to look beyond the mundane to find meaning, which implies that things are never stable as other people will inherit perceptions only to change them.
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent novel of ideas,
This review is from: Elizabeth Costello (Hardcover)
The fact that some of the sections of this novel have been published as lectures takes nothing away from the grand ideas of this book. Though not easy entertainment, yes, one must think a little when reading, this book is still very very entertaining. A writer must evolve, change, do what he or she wishes to do which is exactly what it seems Coetzee has done with Elizabeth Costello.
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