Lavinia reviewed The Life and Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee
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.
