- Category: Books » Biography & Autobiography » Literary
- Format: Paperback Learn more about the Paperback format using Tower WIKI.
- Publisher: Penguin USA
- ISBN: 014026566X
- WAPI (Tower ID): 100531883
- Release Date: September 1, 1998
- Average Customer Review: There are no customer reviews yet. Be the first to write a review!
- Tower.com Sales Rank: #86019 in Books (See Top 100 Books Bestsellers)
- #2476 in Biography & Autobiography (See Top 100 Biography & Autobiography Bestsellers)
- #96 in Literary (See Top 100 Literary Bestsellers)
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Product DescriptionRun a Quick Search on "Boyhood" by J. M. Coetzee to Browse Related Products:Browse more products related to "Boyhood"Browse more products related to "J. M. Coetzee"Review"Mr. Coetzee writes, as always, with striking elegance, but it is not clear whether these 'Scenes From Provincial Life' are to be taken as factual memories or fictional projections." "Coetzee's strange, hard, impacted intelligence is one of the most powerful in contemporary literature." "John Coetzee has written a spare and sober little tale of growing up in a hard place....This is a book about how a writer makes stories: out of bits and pieces and a long memory. In South Africa, memory remains a weapon, and a threat. People don't like the ghosts of themselves; amnesia is all the rage. But as the young narrator realises: if he doesn't remember--who will? Coetzee's 'Boyhood' is an uncannily accurate picture of the way things were in South Africa." "'Boyhood' is a charmingly accessible book. It is the memoir of a sensitive soul, absorbing the elemental impulses of life for later use....At first it strikes one as rather odd for a memoir to be written in the third person, as Coetzee's is. But this has the effect of broadening his emotional and imaginative range within the constraints of a memoir." "It will not surprise readers of Coetzee's fiction to learn that the story of 'Boyhood' is primarily internal, the story of an exquisitely painful--almost autistic--self-consciousness....Coetzee is compelled to write his way out of his own South African prison; we benefit from his struggles." "A short and unsettling, deftly realized memoir....This is not an eventful memoir--its strength comes, instead, from Coetzee's nuanced, unblinking perceptions. His childhood was not unhappy in the conventional sense; the sadness and tragedies were mainly of the ordinary kind, and in his masterful depiction of them, that's what makes them so shattering....[A] powerful, disillusioned portrait of childhood..." "Written in a third-person, present-tense voice that effaces adult perspective and lends harsh immediacy to the inner agonies of the child, the memoir explores a profound ambivalence about what in most respects looks like a routine middle-class boyhood....What to say about all of this, other than that Coetzee is not merely a born writer, but one born for South Africa?" Publisher's noteJ.M. Coetzee grew up in a new development north of Cape Town, with a father he despised and a mother he both adored and resented. Bold and telling, this masterly evocation of a young boy's life under apartheid is the book Coetzee's many admirers have been waiting for. "Exceptional. . . . A scorched tale of race, caste, shame, and--at times--hilarious bewilderment".--THE NEW YORKER. Coetzee grew up in a new development north of Cape Town, tormented by guilt and fear. With a father he despised, and a mother he both adored and resented, he led a double lifeùthe brilliant and well-behaved student at school, the princely despot at home, always terrified of losing his mother's love. His first encounters with literature, the awakenings of sexual desire, and a growing awareness of apartheid left him with baffling questions; and only in his love of the high veld ("farms are places of freedom, of life") could he find a sense of belonging. Bold and telling, this masterly evocation of a young boy's life is the book Coetzee's many admirers have been waiting for, but never could have expected. AnnotationA memoir of growing up in South Africa during the 1940s and 1950s, written by the Nobel Prize-winning author of THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MICHAEL K. and DISGRACE. Coetzee examines his early impressions of his family, his unhappy years at school, and his slowly developing awareness of the political strife that hangs over his country. If You Enjoy "Boyhood (Paperback)", May We Also Recommend:Customer Reviews for "Boyhood (Paperback)" by J. M. Coetzee (Author)There are no customer reviews yet. Be the first to write a review! Literary Bestsellers
Biography & Autobiography Bestselling Books
Explore More Great Tower Sales & Specials
Books Bestsellers
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
