Elizabeth Costello - J.M. Coetzee
by Zia ~ October 25th, 2005. Filed under: Books.
One either waxes rhapsodic over Coetzee or one … does not. And I’m not really sure how I felt about Elizabeth Costello, his latest novel. Though novel seems too strong a word for loosely jointed series of lectures.
For a series of lectures it is, told in turn through the lectures of fictional novelist Elizabeth Costello. Costello is famed for her feminist portrayal of Molly Bloom. Although she has written other novels, this is the one for which she is remembered–and she rather resents it. Costello is, as even her son says, a poor speaker: she alienates her audience, talks down to them … and yet, as the novel progresses, we move from disliking her to having a certain sympathy for a woman nearing the end of her life.
As I said, I’m not sure how I felt about this book. Didactic and pedantic as Costello is, infuriating as she may be, there is still no question about the response Coetzee elicits from his readers. At the same time, I have to question the point. And perhaps, so does he.