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A review by mjhorn
Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee
2.0
I found Diary of a Bad Year much more interesting than it was enjoyable.
The structure is fascinating, wonderful really, and raises a lot of questions at times about Coetzee's intention.
It was a book I wanted to talk about with people, wanted to analyse (and did, much more so than usual), but which really I found quite boring. I thought it was actually lazy. He had some interesting ideas, that he couldn't be bothered making into something great, which I'm sure he could have done.
Annoyingly, through the unusual bifurcated narrative structure, Coetzee adresses pretty much every criticism of the book, having one narrative third insult and pick apart another. I thought this was pretty cheap, unconvincing.
If you are interested in the experimental structure, I would say it justifies the read. But as a story, it is pretty dull.
The structure is fascinating, wonderful really, and raises a lot of questions at times about Coetzee's intention.
It was a book I wanted to talk about with people, wanted to analyse (and did, much more so than usual), but which really I found quite boring. I thought it was actually lazy. He had some interesting ideas, that he couldn't be bothered making into something great, which I'm sure he could have done.
Annoyingly, through the unusual bifurcated narrative structure, Coetzee adresses pretty much every criticism of the book, having one narrative third insult and pick apart another. I thought this was pretty cheap, unconvincing.
If you are interested in the experimental structure, I would say it justifies the read. But as a story, it is pretty dull.