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Summertime (Hardcover)

by J.M. Coetzee (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
RRP: £17.99
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  • This item: Summertime by J.M. Coetzee

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Harvill Secker; First Edition edition (13 Aug 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1846553180
  • ISBN-13: 978-1846553189
  • Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 13.8 x 3.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 4,133 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #3 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > C > Coetzee, J.M.

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Product Description

Review

`More tricky autobiographical fiction from the master of the form' --Marie Claire

"The cumulative effect of Coetzee's unblinking honesty and...seriousness, is an understanding of the creation of a great writer" -- Sunday Telegraph Books

`Coetzee, 69, is in a beautifully reflective mood here...Summertime shows...he is an intense outstanding and very enjoyable talent.' -- Scotland on Sunday

`What Summertime offers is a subtle, allusive meditation' -- Financial Times

`Summertime is both an elegant request...and ample evidence, once again, why that request should be honoured'
--The Observer

`A poignant, cubistic portrait...of the artist as outsider.' --TLS

`it represents a way of breaking the genre of the memoir by over- and under-fulfilling its demands at the same time' --New Statesman

`I'm a huge fan and this latest novel has only increased my ardour.' --Radio Times

"Clever, tricky, a redefinition of what fiction is."
--Grazia, Kate Mosse

'his finest work of the past decade' --Times Literary Supplement

`This novel is so compelling I defy anyone not to finish it at a sitting' -- Seven Magazine in Sunday Telegraph

"brilliant... a playful meditation on life, truth and art --Tatler

`has a humour and humanity that should win new fans' --Independent

`Not since Disgrace has he written with such urgency and feeling'
--The New Yorker

Product Description

A young English biographer is working on a book about the late writer, John Coetzee. He plans to focus on the years from 1972-1977 when Coetzee, in his thirties, is sharing a run-down cottage in the suburbs of Cape Town with his widowed father. This, the biographer senses, is the period when he was 'finding his feet as a writer'. Never having met Coetzee, he embarks on a series of interviews with people who were important to him - a married woman with whom he had an affair, his favourite cousin Margot, a Brazilian dancer whose daughter had English lessons with him, former friends and colleagues. From their testimony emerges a portrait of the young Coetzee as an awkward, bookish individual with little talent for opening himself to others. Within the family he is regarded as an outsider, someone who tried to flee the tribe and has now returned, chastened. His insistence on doing manual work, his long hair and beard, rumours that he writes poetry evoke nothing but suspicion in the South Africa of the time. Sometimes heartbreaking, often very funny, "Summertime" shows us a great writer as he limbers up for his task. It completes the majestic trilogy of fictionalised memoir begun with "Boyhood" and "Youth".
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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Summertime
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Customer Reviews

19 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (19 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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43 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A portrait of the artist... as a supporting character, 24 Aug 2009
By Jonathan Birch (Manchester) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
Ostensibly, J.M. Coetzee's Summertime is a third instalment of autobiography, succeeding Boyhood (1998) and Youth (2002) (both of which, incidentally, are excellent). But this description belies the book's true nature in two ways. First, Summertime is so far from being a conventional autobiography it's essentially a work of fiction. Second, it's a terrific book in its own right, and can be enjoyed without any prior knowledge of its forerunners.

The book begins in a style resembling Boyhood and Youth. Brief scenes from the life of Coetzee, now a thirtysomething in 1970s apartheid South Africa, are narrated in crisp third-person prose. Coetzee, we learn, is a down-and-out, unemployed and living with his elderly father, disgusted by apartheid but stuck in a rut of inaction verging on paralysis. But each scene stops abruptly, clearly unfinished, and after 15 pages the narrative stops altogether. What's going on? Here emerges the book's central conceit: Coetzee has died, leaving behind notebooks of assorted scraps. A would-be biographer, seeking to reconstruct "the story" of Coetzee's life, interviews a number of people who knew Coetzee at that time, and transcripts of these (fictional) interviews occupy most of the book's remainder.

The interviewees give us little vignettes in which Coetzee is a ghostly figure, a barely-there anonynimity, content to be manipulated and exploited by stronger characters: a man defined by his fleeting and unsatisfying connections to others. He is a supporting character. "I am perfectly aware it is John you want to hear about, not me," says Julia, Coetzee's one-time lover. "But the only story involving John that I can tell, or the only one I am prepared to tell, is this one, namely the story of my life and his part in it, which is quite different, quite another matter, from the story of his life and my part in it."

What a wonderful antidote to most autobiographies, in which the author is the protagonist in "My Story", steering a course through life like a Greek hero at the helm of a ship. Lives aren't like that. And what a remarkable fictional achievement, since, after all, the "interviews" are pure fiction. Coetzee imagines himself as he must have been viewed by others (scruffy, shy, maladroit, and not a bestselling-author-in-waiting), and does so with great perceptiveness and self-effacement, through a skilfully crafted range of utterly convincing other-voices.

John Berger famously wrote that "never again will a single story be told as though it were the only one". In this rich and intelligent work, Coetzee emphasizes that this goes for life stories too.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Review of Summertime JM Coetzee by Amanda Bennett, 6 Jan 2010
By A. M. Bennett "Amanda Bennett" (Bournemouth University) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Book Review

Summertime by J M Coetzee

Summertime (2009) is the third of South African John Coetzee's fictionalised autobiographies following Boyhood (1997) and youth (2002). The inspired novel centres around a young English biographer who is working on a book about the late writer, John Coetzee, focusing on the years 1972-1977 when Coetzee was in his thirties.
Following the premature end to his six years in America, John returned to South Africa to live in the outskirts of Cape Town with his widowed father. This period is emphasised by the biographer as an era when Coetzee was `finding his feet as a writer'.
Never having met Coetzee, he embarks on an exciting journey of interviewing a number of characters who were physically and emotionally involved with him.

The Coetzee that we are introduced to, through a series of interviews, is lonely and uncomfortable with almost every aspect of his life. Further on in the novel, a more humuorous side is developed as Coetzee becomes sexually involved with a number of female characters. He takes up dancing in attempt to woo a woman, only to make a fool of himself. Coetzee continues to place himself in awkward situations throughout the novel creating an ongoing theme of comedy for the reader to enjoy.

Within the novel, he is regarded with mistrust by his family as he engages in manual labour in penitence for his country's long history of `making other people do our work for us as we sit in the shade and watch'. His love for the Coetzee family estate in the Karoo remains as passionate as ever it was in Boyhood but everywhere else he is lost. South Africa has become a `loud angry place'.

Summertime is a captivating portrait of life, and like most lives it is full of dichotomy and everyday moral struggles. It is biographical in most of its elegant content, yet largely fictional in the manner of its telling. It is meant to be about one man, however it spends most of the time exploring the lives of the characters John was involved with. This unpredictable period of John's life is presented by women who John believed he had a significant relationship with. Unfortunately, it was unrequited love, and from the female side of the story, their relationships held no passion.

Dominating the Man Booker Prize Summertime is said to be his most popular work since Youth was published seven years ago, also another enticing read.
In style and character, one gets the feeling that this portrayal is true to the man Coetzee feels himself to be. It is an exercise in self awareness and honesty which makes his autobiographies such a joy to read, exploring the life of one of our greatest esteemed writers.

By Amanda Bennett

Bournemouth University
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Cold Fish Are Jumpin', 6 Oct 2009
By Mooch (Manchester, England) - See all my reviews
Focusing on a five-year period in the seventies, a biographer in 2008/9 has conducted interviews with a handful of people who knew a now-dead writer named 'John Coetzee.' Summertime is made up of transcripts of these interviews and fragments of the dead man's diary-notebooks.

When I think of the phrase 'fictionalised autobiography,' I think of a book in which the story is basically true but utilises some literary devices in order to better tell the tale and perhaps includes a large degree of self-serving embellishment. With this endlessly fascinating new novel, Coetzee twists this so much it is inside out.

He has taken the idea of semi-autobiographical fiction and switched the two halves around, so to speak: he obscures the fiction beneath a veil of fact. He gives his central character his own name, aspects of his history, his nationality and his literary career but other crucial details are not accurate. For example, it is hugely important throughout the novel that the character is unmarried, a loner bordering on asexual, but in fact during the period covered in the book - 1972-77 - he was married and had two young children (according to Wonkipedia anyway (I know, I know.)) The usual question of "how much of the author is in the character?" becomes here "how much of the character is not in the author?" After reading this playful, fertile and surprisingly swift little book your mind will be pregnant with questions: to what extent does the truth behind fiction matter? To what extent can fiction illuminate truth while obscuring it? Can one write one's own life? How much of us is left behind in the minds of others after our physical demise? How truthful would that picture be, and how much would that matter? And on and on. (Of course maybe he just wanted to write his ex-wife out of existence!)

While Coetzee is constructing his playground of dualities - fiction/fact, art/artist, public/private (dichotomizing around, you might say) - it is surely no accident how blackly funny it all is: instead of massaging the reality into a more flattering shape, the version Coetzee creates of 'himself' is certainly not a self-serving one. He uses every opportunity to humiliate 'himself' in the most excruciatingly personal ways, to the point of over-kill. It's as if Charlie Kaufman remade Rashomon. Also interesting is Coetzee's depiction of the time and place (seventies South Africa, as apartheid was itself coming apart though long before it was finally dismantled), but of course the book forces us to question how truthful one man's perspective can be, on himself, his companions and his times.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Homo sapiens sapiens
The third part of J.M. Coetzee's fictional autobiography is a remarkably original work of art.
J.M. Coetzee is already dead. Read more
Published 22 days ago by Luc REYNAERT

5.0 out of 5 stars A twist on your average storytelling novel.
A twist on your average storytelling novel, this novel contains a group of individuals divulging notebooks; all acquiring their views and experiences with the author J.M. Read more
Published 24 days ago by Roxanne Hughes

4.0 out of 5 stars An enjoyable literary achievement
For me, this is a (sadly) rare book in that it is an impressive literary achievement, yet remains an accessible and enjoyable read. Read more
Published 26 days ago by T. Hartland

4.0 out of 5 stars JM Coetzee Summertime Review, Shortlisted for Booker prize 2009
John M Coetzee's death has prompted a young English biographer to embark on a biography of the late writer. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mr. LE DAVIES

2.0 out of 5 stars Where was it all heading?
I've not read any J.M Coetzee before and I just wasn't gripped by this book as a whole. Some of the segments worked well - I particularly liked Margot's section - but it all... Read more
Published 1 month ago by LoobyLou2

3.0 out of 5 stars Coetzee on Coetzee but lacks objectivity
Coetzee seeks to make his readers uncomfortable, putting one on edge so one is never sure about one's emotional response. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mick Read

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful read
This book was un-put-downable. The style of writing draws the reader in and creates a world that is believable. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Tilly Thumb

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointment
Those who enjoyed the previous 2 books in this trilogy - Boyhood and Youth - will no doubt want to read Summertime, but I came to this book cold. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Russell V. Dove

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful
Coetzee's unflinching portrait of the artist - a fictionlized version of himself - through the eyes of others is fascinating. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Hamsun

5.0 out of 5 stars A self's play of mirrors
Impossible for John Coetzee not to create something new, something amazing, something you'll read over and over again to find new delight. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Helene Passtoors

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