Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee

I recently read the book Disgrace. A quick synopsis: it takes place in South Africa very soon after apartheid ended, and the relationships between blacks and whites are changing. Hierarchies are being dismantled, and not always peacefully. In the middle of all of this, a professor has a midlife crisis and seduces a student. His philosophical stance prevents him from being apologetic, and he is essentially exiled. He goes to live with his daughter on a farm.

The book gripped me from the first page. It starts out with him feeling drawn to his student and the things he does to try to woo her. We are essentially inside his head, and yet - there is no REAL explanation for why he does what he does, at least not anything I would consider an explanation. He just does it, as if he's compelled. There is no rationalization, no talking into or out of, he just feels that he wants to do something, and then goes for it.

I was fascinated - is that really how men think? With no regard to why they want something, no regard to the other person's feelings, thoughts, desires, just "I must do this" and they do it, hoping for the best? Sometimes, always? I think of myself as a pretty insensitive person, but even I take other people's feelings and reactions more into consideration than this.

Later on in the book, a tragedy befalls his daughter, and he cannot understand her reaction to it. The book is written by a man, and Mr. Coetzee hints that there is more behind her reaction, and that his male antihero can't quite grasp it. But that just makes me wonder, did the author know her motivations and merely didn't allow his male character to see them - or is he as perplexed in real life by certain things women do, and only hinted at the depth of her reaction because hints are all he is able to comprehend, both in fiction and in life? Are the sexes really THAT different?

The ending to this book is ambiguous, to me anyway, and kind of unsatisfying. I've noticed a trend lately in fiction to end stories in such a way that the reader doesn't know how they're supposed to feel, except that they don't think they've gotten the whole story. I was talking about it with a friend, and we decided it's in vogue to write this way now because real life is messy. So why should books have neatly tied up endings? Except it's not even true - so much in life DOES have definite beginnings and endings, so many things do reach a conclusion, even if it's not what we wanted or expected. So to leave the ending to a book, or tv show, or movie, with absolutely nothing figured out, is not really artistic or even realistic. It's laziness made trendy.

Final take - Read it. Or don't.

Kidding, I will give this an ending - read it. It's good.