The novel is short and not designed to offer reading pleasure. The characters seem to act in ways that destroy their own chances of making a reasonable future in South Africa after apartheid, at a time of turmoil in the country. A number of issues are raised: racism, sexual harassment, rape, the future of a country, and animal rights (in recent times, a favourite theme of Coetzee).
No novel has excited as much discussion among the readers, during the session, and continuing afterward in the reading group’s WhatsApp. The passages selected for reading were short, but representative of the novel, covering all the themes and characters and major events. Some readers found the novel complex with honest depictions of various protagonists and the socio-political history of the times. Others found it dark, almost dystopian.
The question arose regarding the title – why is it called Disgrace? One reader answered it was because of the disgrace heaped on the two central characters, David Lurie, and his daughter, Lucy. For David Lurie, the main character, the author has plotted a path of abasement and degradation, one step at a time. The gloom of the novel arises from the failure of all the escape routes, held out and then withdrawn. KumKum added that the book contains disgraceful actions by several characters besides David Lurie – you could include the rapists and Petrus.
Another reader, Priya, said, the book presents a dystopian world , sad and abnormal. It is a difficult book, she said, with bizarre situations, desolate and dreary, loveless , joyless and frightening. It derives its strength from negativity, a space where no ray of hope exists and everything ends in hopelessness.
One of the pessimistic predictions of the novel (buttressed by the emigration of the author himself) is that S Africa is not a place where white people can live with fairness and justice.
Joe said in a well-written novel we come away with the impression that the characters are free spirits governed by their own fancies and predilections. And the choices they make may be capricious, not in accord necessarily with the active reader’s judgement, but we concede the character made them freely. In this novel we have the distinct impression of the authorial hand guiding every major mis-step of the characters. The locus of their decision-making is out of their hands. They are contorted into unnatural modes to satisfy the puppeteer, Coetzee. Removing their independence of action constituted the greatest flaw in this novel.
