Ron Peters's Reviews > Disgrace by J M Coetzee

This book won pretty well every major book award out there, but I didn’t like it, and in the end, I don’t think it’s a good book. That is mainly because it is one of those books (like Joseph Heller’s 1974 Something Happened) that is a remarkable artistic success while being an abysmal entertainment failure. Its merit lies solely in the quality of its writing.

That might sound odd, but it is an artistic success in that it masterfully depicts precisely what it sets out to: a dislikable person’s life rapidly disintegrates before your eyes, then proceeds to never get any better. As Kurt Vonnegut said of Heller’s novel, “Is this book any good? Yes. It is splendidly put together and hypnotic to read. It is as clear and hard-edged as a cut diamond. Mr. Heller’s concentration and patience are so evident on every page that one can only say that Something Happened is at all points precisely what he hoped it would be.”

But reading this book is like watching a fatal car crash in slow motion. You can’t take your eyes off it because it is appalling and fills you with a sense of dread and unreality, and maybe even a bit of shame because you can’t drag yourself away from the spectacle. The book raises one dark and bleak ethical quandary after another, then simply drops each of them and moves on to raise another one, only to drop it in turn.

So, it scores zero on the entertainment scale. I would never say that being entertained is the only thing you should expect from a novel, but having entertainment as one factor you use to assess a novel is nothing to be ashamed of either. Fathomability is another criterion, and I must say I could not fathom this book. Why was it written? Also, raising ethical questions is a good thing for a novel to do. But just chucking these conundrums at you like an automated pitching machine does not make for a good book.