In a South Africa torn by civil war, Michael K sets out to take his mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity. Life and Times of Michael K goes to the centre of human experience -- the need for an interior, spiritual life, for some connections to the world in which we live, and for purity of vision.
It took me a while to get into this book. The first half of it felt somewhat dull, and then it gradually became more and more beautiful to read, rising in me a kind of Steinbeck-like nostalgy. I was left with such warmth inside my chest upon the turning of the last page. It now seems to me like these changes in the way the book was written were purposeful, a parallelism to the story, an intended journey on which the author embarked me.
“He thought of himself not as something heavy that left tracks behind it, but if anything as a speck upon the surface of an earth too deeply asleep to notice the scratch of ant-feet, the rasp of butterfly teeth, the tumbling of dust.”
Review of 'The Life and Times of Michael K' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I read J.M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K in one go. It has been a disturbing, beautiful and emotional experience. It has made a deep impression on me.
The story takes place in an unreal South Africa which is torn by civil war. Michael K works as a gardener in the De Waal Park in Cape Town. One day his mother, who is suffered from edema, calls him to collect her from the hospital. Moving with difficulty, she asks Michael to return her to the farmland of her girlhood, in Prince Albert. Facing a real possibility of being made redundant, Michael quits his job and decides to made the trip, convincing himself that ''he had been brought into the world to look after his mother.”
After the death, on route, of his mother, Michael decides to go anyway in Prince Albert. He finds the farmland, or one that …
I read J.M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K in one go. It has been a disturbing, beautiful and emotional experience. It has made a deep impression on me.
The story takes place in an unreal South Africa which is torn by civil war. Michael K works as a gardener in the De Waal Park in Cape Town. One day his mother, who is suffered from edema, calls him to collect her from the hospital. Moving with difficulty, she asks Michael to return her to the farmland of her girlhood, in Prince Albert. Facing a real possibility of being made redundant, Michael quits his job and decides to made the trip, convincing himself that ''he had been brought into the world to look after his mother.”
After the death, on route, of his mother, Michael decides to go anyway in Prince Albert. He finds the farmland, or one that resembles his mother’s description. It is a desolate and abandoned land but he stays, and there in the veld, he spends his days sowing and tending a few pumpkin seed and a pair of watermelons. One day the soldiers arrive and Michael is taken prisoner. He is transferred to a “rehabilitation” prison camp for deserted soldiers set up on a former race course in Cape Town. And then, one night, he disappears.
Life and Times of Michael K is austere, marvellous, allegorical novel, strongly located in the specific South African context. It is deeply political; it exploits the ‘unreality’ of South African state for change. There is a sense of meaningfulness throughout the book. At the same time an irony, a search for freedom, fuelled by Michel’s desire to live in the moment and do what makes him feel the most alive. To be the lord of his own life, even if this cause him a lot of suffering. It is a visceral experience, instinctive, not rational, and therefore impossible for the others to understand. All, but one. The doctor at the prison camp develops a personal relationship with Michael, something he has never done before with an inmate, and slowly, as time passed, he began to see the originality of Michael's resistance.
Review of 'The Life and Times of Michael K' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Denne fant jeg totalt forvirrende, og den litt merkelige halvmagiske realismen passet ikke inn i min begrepsverden akkurat da jeg leste den. Det er mange år siden, og det er derfor godt mulig jeg ville opplevd den annerledes nå. Skal huske at de litterære referanserammene mine til Sør-Afrika da jeg leste denne boken var André Brink og Wilbur Smith. Disgrace var en mer fantastisk leseopplevelse, så det er ikke at jeg ikke har tro på forfatteren.
Michael K is a gardener in Cape Town whose mother, a domestic servant, is ill, and fears she may lose her job, so he decides to take her back to Prince Albert in the Karroo, where she grew up. But there is a war on, and people need permits to travel, and though he applies, the permit is lost in red tape, so he decides to set out on foot, with his mother in a home-made wheelchair. She takes a turn for the worse, and is admitted to a hospital in Stellenbosch, where she dies and is cremated. Michael K continues alone, with his mother's ashes, but has only the vaguest notion of the farm where she grew up from her description.
When he finds a farm that he thinks may be the right one, he find it abandoned, and so lives as a recluse, shunning human company and becoming …
Michael K is a gardener in Cape Town whose mother, a domestic servant, is ill, and fears she may lose her job, so he decides to take her back to Prince Albert in the Karroo, where she grew up. But there is a war on, and people need permits to travel, and though he applies, the permit is lost in red tape, so he decides to set out on foot, with his mother in a home-made wheelchair. She takes a turn for the worse, and is admitted to a hospital in Stellenbosch, where she dies and is cremated. Michael K continues alone, with his mother's ashes, but has only the vaguest notion of the farm where she grew up from her description.
When he finds a farm that he thinks may be the right one, he find it abandoned, and so lives as a recluse, shunning human company and becoming self-sufficient, but though he has left the world, the world keeps breaking in on his solitude, and trying to remould him according to its own values.
It is well written, and has won several literary prizes. I found it more readable than other books by [a:J.M. Coetzee|4128|J.M. Coetzee|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1458869911p2/4128.jpg], and quite a gripping story. The first part, about the journey to the farm, is reminiscent in a way of [b:Sammy going south|6296206|Sammy Going South|W.H. Canaway|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1334730677s/6296206.jpg|6480624] by [a:W.H. Canaway|1591857|W.H. Canaway|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], which describes a similar journey, though of a child rather than an adult. After Michael K becomes a recluse, it is quite different.
There is also a surreal quality to the book. It was first published in 1974, which was in the middle of the apartheid era, but there is no mention of apartheid in the book. Race is never mentioned, and so it seems unreal. The bureaucracy is there, but the people are more kindly than they were in that era. So while the book is set in South Africa geographically, it seems to be a South Africa in an alternative universe, as if it had taken a different turning, and developed in a different way.
