Rating: 
Summary: A warning before existence goes banana
Review: Forgetting the sources of true pleasure, happiness, enjoyment that civilizations have found over several millenium's search, we are rushing towards a life of too much specialization restricting our existence to an unnecessarily narrow space which is draining us of most of our potentials to make life meaningful. Coetzee weaves an excellent record of events in the life of the protagonist (the name never mentioned, possibly suggesting that it could be the reader him/herself) to hint at this in as solid a manner as possible. Only one doubt: taking bananas only as meal is not exactly starving. It will make life deseased, weak but is not likely to cause death. And death need not any longer be the only threat to a civilized mind after all! Thus using the possible outcome of the indian computer engineer's (at International Computers) lifestyle as a metaphor for a dangerous destiny we are rushing towards could possibly be planned in a slightly more appropriate way. Still should be widely read. A very important work.
Rating: 
Summary: One of this year's best!
Review: Books like J.M. Coetzee's "Youth" are few and far between. Just like with his novel "Disgrace," I was absolutely riveted. In this autobiographical work, Coetzee describes a young man in his twenties. John longs to escape his life in South Africa and to seek out his destiny in one of the capitals of Europe. He chooses London and struggles to embark on the writing life whilst trying to make ends meet by working as a computer programmer. Such a "mundane" existence -- not to mention a string of one-night stands and failed relationships -- can put a damper on youthful ideals as John is soon to find out. Coetzee's achievement is his ability to faithfully capture the thoughts, the idealism, and the misconceptions of a green twenty-something -- and all without making John seem overly exasperating or unsympathetic. And what a prose stylist this author is! For instance, chapter 8 contains a wonderfully breathless description of Henry James's writing style that is both humorous and rather true. Descriptions of IBM and John's experience there are quietly hilarious. You can't help but laugh aloud at times. These moments of levity are balanced out with a sense of sad confusion as John struggles to find himself and his voice. His confusion is the confusion we have all experienced at different points in our lives. Turning the final pages of this wise and elegant book, the reader longs for this youth's eventual success.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: Coetzee's fictionalized memoir is a painfully honest account of a would-be writer trying to forge himself through two misguided yet common strategies of youth: heading to one of the world's "great cities" (London) because only in these places does "destiny happen"; and kidding himself that both he and his work will be somehow redeemed by love. That he promptly falls into an abyss of middle-class working life and a series of loveless relationships is unsurprising. Coetzee's detached third-person style (an admirable achievement in such a personal work) and his preference for narrating rather than dramatizing most situations here add to the lugubrious mood, though this never becomes a self-indulgent or melancholy work. Indeed, it is saved from that by two things. First, Coetzee's inspiring articulation, in the final pages, of the real reason behind artistic failure in the young: a paralyzing lack of self-confidence which kills art and any chance of a loving relationship. It's the unwillingness to fail and therefore the unwillingness to try which usually thwart us. Secondly, Coetzee's reflections on what I presume to be his own reading history are wonderful. His interleaved commentaries on Henry James, Ezra Pound and Ford Madox Ford are keen and insightful. This is a book that young would-be writers will find alternately depressing and inspiring - and perhaps the not-so-young ones, too. Exhausted, over-educated dwellers in the white-collar wasteland will find much to inspire and console them here. After all, Coetzee was an I.T. professional who didn't publish until well into his 30s and went on to win the Nobel this year at 63. He's certainly made up for lost time.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: Coetzee's honesty about depression and sexuality really shook me. Most portraits of the artist as a young man sentimentalize the artist, or hyperbolize in order to titillate, or try to evoke the spirit of the time in which he is coming of age. Coetzee, as he did similarly (but not identically) in Boyhood, sticks close to his narrator's consciousness. This makes for a plodding and difficult look at a young man's life. It feels so close to reality, and in that way very far from literature. This is not a story in the traditional sense -- it's a hard, precise reflection of a consciousness struggling to emerge. Its insistence on portraying reality in a form reflective of that reality is this book's finally gorgeous achivement.
Rating: 
Summary: nothing to write home about.
Review: it's okay. has some historical revelance as it is a memoir of an Afrikaaner.
Rating:
Summary: Event horizon
Review: My voyage of trough Coetzee's books continues as the time progresses, and as I read more and more, I begain to undersatnd all that I failed in earlier readings...and I find myself wondering, how could one write so good, how could one put on paper every thought that troubled me since I'm aware of my existence...
This you may call an autobiography, an autobiography which presents a young student, artist-to-be, fleeinf from sout-africa in a land of romantic poets, The england, where he does not find, neither poets nor art...
If you ever wondered about your place in modern world, if you ever longed for an "old times" this is the book for you...
(Oh, I almost forgott - if you don't have an elementary education of romanesque poets, philosophy and general conception of the world, this book will be slightly incomprehensible :)
Rating:
Summary: A Finely Crafted Work
Review: So absorbed was I after the first page that I plowed straight through this slim volume, without pause. Coetzee's subtle mastery of the English language mesmerized me without bells and whistles to announce its cunning intent. The type of writing I best love, Coetzee's "Youth" renounces ostentatious form for true substance that leaves a mark on the soul after the last page is turned. The plot outline is offered in other reviews; I would just add that it is not dark and depressing at all, but an incursion into the life of the mind which cannot help but enlighten.
Rating:
Summary: Cry me a river, Coetzee
Review: The word that remains in your head after reading this novel is "misery." The color one remembers is gray. Were the writing less controlled, and the events more cinematic, it would be a film noir. But a film noir is rarely funny, and this book, though seemingly dreary, has funny moments (hence my 5-star rating). Anyone who reads "Youth" in the expectation of finding out what Coetzee's own youth was like will be disappointed. The youth in question is named John, but whether it's J.M. Coetzee we're reading about we're not to know. My (British) edition of the book states firmly on the dust jacket that it is fiction.
So. Most of the action takes place inside John's head. There is little in the way of conversation. Readers familiar with Coetzee's spare writing and use of present-tense narrative will feel quite at home. In fact, this novel, like others by Coetzee, will go down as easily as frozen yogurt. Some readers may think, at the end "What was that all about?" To them I say (as I'm saying to myself) "Read it again." I have at this point read "Youth" only once. A second reading allows one to forget the direction of the plot, and concentrate on other aspects. I would say that, after a single reading, some of the characters other than John seem more real than he does. John has left home and hearth behind, and isn't as happy as he thinks he ought to be. When I try to think of a way to describe him, Britishisms like "sullen cove" and "dismal Jimmy" come to mind. But I do care what happens to him. I know the feeling. At the same time "John" was a miserable provincial in London, I was a miserable small-town girl adrift in a gritty, cold city. But John's misery, in part, derives from his idea of himself, which borders on the overblown. One gets, well, impatient with him. If this John is the same as the boy in "Boyhood," he has changed. The boy John was a likeable kid, albeit a little strange. The older John is less likeable, perhaps because he expects everyone to think he's either a) a genius or b) a great lover, though deep down he's aware that he's neither. No wonder he's miserable. So cry me a river, Coetzee. You're not the only one who had a hard time growing up. As for the rest of you: read the book. It'll grow on you.
Rating:
Summary: Heavy
Review: Very beautiful written. But don't expect an easy-listening afternoon. This book is black. Very black. A very depressing athmosphere but interesting to the reader. It gives you the chance to look back yourself and see what you reached so far in life. And are you better off than John, who is in fact Coetzee himself? You look trough the eyes of a young man who has thrown himself into the big world while in fact he is not ready. Coetzee reveals his youth in London and wich kind of person he was. At the surface he seems egoistic, asocial and pathetic but deeper you discover someone completely else. Just by reading.
Rating:
Summary: Heavy
Review: Very beautiful written. But don't expect an easy-listening afternoon. This book is black. Very black. A very depressing athmosphere but interesting to the reader. It gives you the chance to look back yourself and see what you reached so far in life. And are you better off than John, who is in fact Coetzee himself? You look trough the eyes of a young man who has thrown himself into the big world while in fact he is not ready. Coetzee reveals his youth in London and wich kind of person he was. At the surface he seems egoistic, asocial and pathetic but deeper you discover someone completely else. Just by reading.
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