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Summary: An important treatise on FREEDOM
Review: South Africa once delivered one M.K.(Gandhi) who taught the world a thing or two about freedom and now comes the second one, M.(Michael)K, through Coetzee. True freedom is the state where one can assert "I do not belong to any camp" and it does not come easy. Freedom also must exclude "dependence on charity" and the temptations are not easy to overcome at times. Michael K succeeded in both the aspects and the novel enumerates the price one has to prepare for. A remarkable novel. And the language! After Naipaul it is difficult to name another author with such mastery and such effective use of language!
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Summary: A powerful postcolonial text
Review: "Life & Times of Michael K" tells the story of a man who lived in imposed silence for his entire life.
J.M. Coetzee is a talented writer who effectively uses aspects of the English language such as irony and allegory to undermine society's value systems of power, history and language.
This novel highlights the power politics of modern society and how it distorts the identity of those in the world who are marginalised.
The changing viewpoints show how differently events are viewed by the colonised and the coloniser.
This moving novel compels viewers to sympathise with the silenced Michael K as he lives off the land. It is truly an inspirations piece of postcolonial literature.
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Summary: Fantastic tale about beating the odds..
Review: .. that has nothing to do with apartheid. A lot of the reviewers have focused on the 'apartheid brutality' aspect of this book. Civil war South Africa (by the way for the uninitiated - this is ficticious - there is/was no civil war) merely supplies the backdrop for the story of Michael and how he sees past all of this. It is a book that could have been set anywhere in the world (in turmoil) and still been as valid.This is a deeply uplifting book that is well worth a read (particularly since it is so short you'll be done in an afternoon)
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Summary: A gardener denied his garden
Review: A bleak and forbidding tale about a physically disfigured man living in South Africa during a (fictional) civil war. Michael K is an outcast, yet there are some ways in which Coetzee portrays him as a Christ figure.The absence of a human father figure, the sketchy childhood prior to the events of the novel by which time he is 30, the period in the wilderness, his return signalling the drawing of (admittedly only one) disciple to him. Ultimately K is an outsider who wants to be left alone. However, society's paranoia makes it impossible for that to happen and he is condemned to live in circumstances that would kill anyone else. A sad and challenging book, worthy of the accolades accorded it.
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Summary: An unblinking look at war
Review: A stunning novel but not for the faint of heart. Here are all the horrors of war, but presented on a microcosmic scale that doesn't allow the reader to substitute ultimately cold statistics (x million dead, for example) for the true havoc wreaked on an individual-by-individual basis. Statistics go down easier, and are easier to ignore; in contrast, the trajectory of the protagonist's life here is so heartbreaking as to be beyond sadness -- it changes the way you think about things. War is everywhere in this novel, yet nowhere; we encounter few soldiers and no battles, but the South Africa described here is ravaged seemingly beyond repair. It is nearly impossible to do justice to the merit and value of this book, and to Coetzee's razor-sharp focus; he says more in this short novel than lesser writers could with an ocean of words.
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Summary: Let-it-be . Heartbreaking
Review: As most of the reviews focused on the spiritual v.s. physical (And I deeply agreed with that), I still found this book quite heartbreaking. This was a Let-it-be life story. Under such a wartime which nobody could realize or comprehend, all one could do was to let the time pass by. And Let it be, let it be. Michael K. reached into the extreme state: lived with the Mother nature, in the wind, in the earth. Being careless about anything. This aspect was philosophical but heartbreaking. In a sense it was passive, despairing, and unhealthy (if there was any criterion to judge that). But alas, it moved me.
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Summary: An Insightful Tale
Review: At first this book to reader appears(in the first few pages) to be a dull, slow moving and uninteresting story. On the surface it is a story about a slow witted , misundertood man, whose mother dies, lives in an a abandonned property who continually is caught and escapes the soldiers and institutions. However once you realise the story is not about the plot but about the message and the reprersentation of life. the story suddenly becomes interesting, and full og life. The reader from then on is entranced by the characters, the small details and events sudden;y becaome important and you begin to see the world throughK's eyes. An example is the clutching of the paper bag of seeds and the fear of them being stolen. This becomes powerful because it is representative of life and the connection and importants of the earth to michael k, almost acting as a mother. I felt that the uneventful ending was effective in portraying the hardship and the struggles of K's life. It almost acts as nastalgic look over his life and im plies that this will continue and will be the life of Michael K. My three unit english techer brought up an interesting point. How has the least dialogue in the book?(Michael K) Whose voice do you remember most? (Michael K). This book is an excellent throw back to post coloninailists, for colonised, for the peole in the margins to speak up, to be given a voice, to tell what colonisation is like for the michael k's of this world. This was an insightful book with a message for us about ourselevs and our world.
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Summary: review
Review: Coetzee is razor-concise as ever, and elegantly combines many ideas into one person. I got a lot from the book's observations of a man in natural seclusion, growing into a purely spiritual being. The notion is Romantic, but, I feel, true. I recommend this book to people who find being alone and lost enriching. I do.
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Summary: review
Review: Coetzee is razor-concise as ever, and elegantly combines many ideas into one person. I got a lot from the book's observations of a man in natural seclusion, growing into a purely spiritual being. The notion is Romantic, but, I feel, true. I recommend this book to people who find being alone and lost enriching. I do.
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Summary: Spare, clear as a diamond and a reminder we have choices
Review: Each sentence uttered by Michael K, the anti-hero of this book, is the voice of sanity, understanding, compassion and truth in a book full of voices of hate and confusion. Of course it's Michael K who is alledged to be the idiot, the simpleton. He's the only one who has chosen to listen to the voice inside each of us that says, "This is poison, avoid it, this is paradise, experience it now and stay here". I was reminded life isn't so very confusing when it's pared down to simplicity. I don't ever want to be the person with a weapon in my hand telling someone I'm just following orders or I'm just doing my job. Thank you, Mr. Coetzee for writing books for us to read.
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