The land is full of melancholy spinsters like me, lost to history, blue as roaches in our ancestral homes...."

"I do not think it was ever intended that people should live her. This is a lone made for insects who eat sand and lay eggs in each others corpses and have no voices with which to scream when they die."

This short novel is one of Coetzee's early works. It consists of 206 numbered passages, which are generally short, some merely a short paragraph long. Coetzee has said that in structuring the novel he was influenced by film and photographic methods. And despite being short, the chapters and the prose are frequently dense and require (at least for me) much concentration to read.

The narrator, Magda, lives on a sheep farm deep in the veldt with her widowed father. The story she tells is disturbing, and we sense from the beginning that Magda is/will be an unreliable narrator. We can never be sure whether Magda is telling the truth, or whether the events she described even actually happened. What we can be sure of is that the novel follows the descent and decline of Magda as she (probably) kills her father, and is slowly starving herself, as all around her the farm deteriorates.

Not an easy read, but very powerful.

4 stars ( )

This was a confusing book. It deals with heavy themes and the narrator is very unreliable. It's the the second book I read from the author and I think it's just not my style. But even though I didn't like the book I appreciate what the author is doing. ( )

Set in a barren part of South Africa and narrated by a spinster daughter, this tense tale will keep readers in suspense the entire book. The 5 stars are for the writing and conception of such a character, and the intelligence apparent throughout. It wasn't an easy read because the main character has mental issues, but it was powerful. The story is a study on extreme loneliness and isolation, devoid of love, touch, and caring, cut off from discourse with other people. The father in this story appears cold towards the daughter, at least from her perspective. It's hard to tell what reality is, and Magda, the daughter, plays out various scenarios in her mind. She's intelligent and introspective, reasonably well read, and yet knows little about normal life outside of the few people in her life and the vast land on which she lives. The book is a fascinating psychological essay. Brilliant, probably beyond my understanding. This slim volume is utterly unforgettable. The author has won two Booker Prizes and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I'd recommend the book to people who like literary works.



( )

Unnromanzo feroce e appassionato. Una donna intelligente e sola. Un amaro ritratto dell'esperienza coloniale. ( )

If you like depressing and dark fiction about colonial South Africa, then read this. If you like quasi-experimental/poetic prose, then also read this. If you are not keen on either, then find something else. This novel is tense, and never ceases in its tautness. ( )