JM Coetzee is one of those "can't miss" authors for me. Or has been. Until now. Even books I haven't really known what to make of going into them, or worried I'd be utterly bored -- such as Elizabeth Costello or The Master of Petersburg or The Lives of Animals -- have, in the end, in the reading, gripped, shaped, shaken, excited, or just left me thinking. Deep.
Until Diary of a Bad Year that is.
Maybe it's the gimmicky split level narrative. Maybe... Oh, hell, I don't know. It's gotten plenty of laudatory reviews: from Book Forum, the New York Times and elsewhere (including a rather more thorough reflection in Slate).
So take their word for it. Not mine. Coetzee's always worth reading (and apparently worth discussing, formally, as the Penguin Reading Guide illustrates). Just don't read this one first. You'll miss all the real good stuff.
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