- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; Export ed edition (2 Sep 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099474654
- ISBN-13: 978-0099474654
- Product Dimensions: 17.4 x 11 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,856,372 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
For Australian writer JM Coetzee, winner of two Booker Prizes and the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature, the world of receiving literary awards and giving speeches must be such a commonplace that he has put the circuit at the centre of his book, Elizabeth Costello. As the work opens, the eponymous Elizabeth, a fictional novelist, is in Williamstown, Pennsylvania, to receive the Stowe Award. For her speech at the Williamstown's Altona College she chooses the tired topic, "What Is Realism?" and quickly loses her audience in her unfocused discussion of Kafka. From there, readers follow her to a cruise ship where she is virtually imprisoned as a celebrity lecturer to the ship's guests. Next, she is off to Appleton College where she delivers the annual Gates Lecture. Later, she will even attend a graduation speech.
Coetzee has made this project difficult for himself. Occasional writing--writing that includes graduation speeches, acceptance speeches, or even academic lectures--is a less than auspicious form around which to build a long work of fiction. A powerful central character engaged in a challenging stage of life might sustain such a work. Yet, at the start, Coetzee declares that Elizabeth is "old and tired", and her best book, The House on Eccles Street is long in her past. Elizabeth Costello lacks a progressive plot and offers little development over the course of each new performance at the lectern. Readers are given Elizabeth fully formed with only brief glimpses of her past sexual dalliances and literary efforts.
In the end, Elizabeth Costello seems undecided about its own direction. When Elizabeth is brought to a final reckoning at the gates of the afterlife, she begins to suspect that she is actually in hell, "or at least purgatory: a purgatory of clichés". Perhaps Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, which can be read as an extended critique of clichéd writing, is a portrait of this purgatory. While some readers may find Coetzee's philosophical prose sustenance enough on the journey, some will turn back at the gate. --Patrick O'Kelley, Amazon.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"'One of Coetzee's best...simply burns with creative passion' D.J. Taylor, Independent; 'An important book...Extraordinary' Independent on Sunday; 'Probably the best book on the (Booker) longlist, the one that will last...Every word counts. Every sentence lives' Evening Standard; 'A readable and engaging book...Demanding, playful, provocative...hugely enlightening and rewarding' Sunday Times; 'Richly rewarding' Daily Mail; 'Highly readable and bracing' Scotsman; 'Deals bravely with problems that few other writers dare to think about' Telegraph"
--This text refers to an alternate
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I am an admirer of JM Coetzee, and I started ‘Elizabeth Costello’ with anticipation. I finished it in disappointment.
This book is (as the author tells us) a re-working of previous material, in particular ‘The Lives of Animals’. It deals with several discrete issues, for example the conflict between the humanities and religion in Africa, the purpose of the novel in Africa, the nature of evil and whether a book that describes evil in detail is obscene, and, its main topic, whether we should eat animals or not. On all of these issues Coetzee has much of great interest to say, but the issues are probably better dealt with in the essay form.
In order, however, to treat all these topics in one novel, Coetzee has devised a framework which enables Elizabeth Costello to initiate discussion of them, in sequence. The topics do not all belong together in one book without this framework, and the framework is clumsy and contrived. The conversations, or lectures in two cases, in which the ideas are set forth, are all in one uniform voice, giving the characters no differentiation by way of their speech. I was reminded of ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ where the religious and moral arguments are presented by two characters debating eath other in the same voice.
This book is a polemic on issues dear to the author, masquerading as a novel. I have as much interest as any reader in the discussion of ideas, but I found the stage machinery creaky and the dialogue stilted. The non-polemic chapter at the end, where Elizabeth Costello awaits entry into a version of heaven, is beautifully and imaginatively written. But the earlier part of the book required an effort to finish: I was bored with it.
In the same order from Amazon I received ‘The Full Cupboard of Life’, the latest of the novels about Precious Ramotswe of the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Apart from being enjoyable to read (which any novel surely ought to be) it dealt with big human issues (honesty, courage, and gender relationships) in a subtle but literary manner. Just as Coetzee has done in ‘Disgrace’.
Format:Paperback
a very bad book from a very good novelist. i would place several of coetzee's early books amongst my favourite novels but this is just terrible. he seems to have lost his way. haven't read anything he's written since this one as its put me off so much. please don't read this until you've read his first four or five novels at least. in fact, don't read it at all...
Format:Paperback
Elizabeth Costello is an aging novelist, resident (like Coetzee) in Australia, celebrated primarily for work now long in the past, and tied hand and foot to the celebrity circuit of lectures and honorary awards. The chapters of the books are episodes from her life as she moves towards death, shedding certain abiding concerns and finding that others emerge with disconcerting insistence to take centre stage against her will. It is this preoccupation with death, and the meaning that it gives to life, that is one strand that ties the book together. The other, which emerges more slowly, is Costello's crisis of confidence in the powers of reason and finally even in the powers of the creative writer that have been her principal source of self-justification.
'Elizabeth Costello' is a paradoxical book. It presents itself as a novel, but is based around previously published material that appeared at different times in different places and in forms that are not clearly novelistic or even fictional. We are told that it is fiction; but much of the material is clearly autobiographical in origin, and the central character, whose personality and concerns hold the disparate sections together, might be caricatured as Coetzee in a dress.
In spite of this variousness, and what one might call its centrifugal tendencies - the book threatening to fly apart - I found that 'Elizabeth Costello' works as a novel. It was published in the year in which Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the intelligence and seriousness that mark the author's earlier work are everywhere apparent. The book addresses ideas with remarkable directness, as though like Tolstoy Coetzee were striving away from fiction and towards the realms of philosophy; two sections dealing with vegetarianism were delivered as lectures and published separately in an earlier version as 'The Lives of Animals'. Even the chapters of the book are called 'Lessons', as though taken from a book of devotions or spiritual instruction.
Coetzee is not a loveable author: he makes the reader work to understand him, he does not condescend, his style is spare and comedy is not his forte (though there is dry humour here, an irony that some readers will like better). But he rewards careful reading in a way that makes many of his contemporaries look trivial. He is not afraid of looking pretentious, or earnest. His skill in making this book of parts work as a unity is impressive, and he hold some surprises to the very last. It may not be his best book, or the place to start; but if this is second-rank Coetzee, it is better than most contemporary writers' best.
'Elizabeth Costello' is a paradoxical book. It presents itself as a novel, but is based around previously published material that appeared at different times in different places and in forms that are not clearly novelistic or even fictional. We are told that it is fiction; but much of the material is clearly autobiographical in origin, and the central character, whose personality and concerns hold the disparate sections together, might be caricatured as Coetzee in a dress.
In spite of this variousness, and what one might call its centrifugal tendencies - the book threatening to fly apart - I found that 'Elizabeth Costello' works as a novel. It was published in the year in which Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the intelligence and seriousness that mark the author's earlier work are everywhere apparent. The book addresses ideas with remarkable directness, as though like Tolstoy Coetzee were striving away from fiction and towards the realms of philosophy; two sections dealing with vegetarianism were delivered as lectures and published separately in an earlier version as 'The Lives of Animals'. Even the chapters of the book are called 'Lessons', as though taken from a book of devotions or spiritual instruction.
Coetzee is not a loveable author: he makes the reader work to understand him, he does not condescend, his style is spare and comedy is not his forte (though there is dry humour here, an irony that some readers will like better). But he rewards careful reading in a way that makes many of his contemporaries look trivial. He is not afraid of looking pretentious, or earnest. His skill in making this book of parts work as a unity is impressive, and he hold some surprises to the very last. It may not be his best book, or the place to start; but if this is second-rank Coetzee, it is better than most contemporary writers' best.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not fun
This book has been well reviewed by others already - suffice to say then that I think Coetzee's output includes some of the best works of fiction ever written (Disgrace, Foe,... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Greystones113
Frustating rehash of previous works
Elizabeth Costello is an aging writer engaged on a tour of the world, taking part in debates, collecting awards and listening to talks.
Except she isn't. Read more
Except she isn't. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Victor Ward
Tout nu
In this more or less loosely constructed novel built around lectures given by the author's double, the Australian writer Elisabeth Costello, J. M. Read more
Published on 15 Feb 2010 by Luc REYNAERT
Very hard going
I found this dull, lifeless, very difficult to read - essentially very hard going. This is the first Coetzee novel I've read and based on this, I probably won't want to read any... Read more
Published on 6 Oct 2009 by AT
Considering evil, considering life
(Previously called The Lives of Animals in its first print, re-released as Elisabeth Costello in 2003)
This is a strange novel - would anyone else get away with it? Read more
This is a strange novel - would anyone else get away with it? Read more
Published on 16 Sep 2009 by Eileen Shaw
patchy and lacking in clarity
Many of the reviewers of this book have pointed to the fact that Coetzee crowbars in a variety of his own philosophical positions into a narrative, and that plot and character... Read more
Published on 29 May 2007 by Mr. Crow
slight confusion
Before deciding to write my own review I've taken a few minutes to read the others that are here already. Read more
Published on 5 Feb 2007 by Neil
Rather disappointing
Elizabeth Costello is an elderly Australian writer who travels all over the world to give and listen to presentations on a variety of subjects ranging from the role of African... Read more
Published on 13 Sep 2006 by Linda Oskam
A poor offering
Coetzee is a wonderful novelist, and has produced some of the finest work to come out of South Africa. Read more
Published on 9 Aug 2005 by "rewbe"
Awesome
In ELIZABETH COSTELLO, we find Coetzee confronting some of the fundamental structures of the society we have known for so long, forcing the reader to think and have an insight into... Read more
Published on 25 Feb 2005 by Sancho Mahle
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