I started reading this book some 2 or 3 years ago, to be honest, I don’t even remember exacly when. I was in a frenzy after J.M. Coetzee’s books. I read Summertime and Disgace by him. I loved those two books, but when I grabbed Life and times of Michael K, all the loving and the liking disappeared.

I couldn’t finish it, I couldn’t go on, it was sad, and it felt like there’s nothing to learn from it.

I’ve learned so much from the first two ones that, when I’ve been to England, I told stories about South Africa to a South African guy and he was convinced that I visited his native country. Well, I didn’t. Coetzee’s writing made me search for information about South Africa. I’ve always believed that a good book is the one that makes you read critics about it at a very serious level, or the ones that make you search for a plus of information about its themes. It was no wonder for me when I found out that this author received international, highly acclaimed prizes, including the Noble prize or the Man Booker prize. He’s totally worth it! But this one book in particular wasn’t one that I liked.

It has a message, that of searching deeper for the inner self in a world of war and tension, but the way the author put this into words disturbed me in a very non-respondent way.

All I can say is that the book left a bitter taste in my mouth and a pang of solitude, a cringe for human contact, and a deep unsatisfactory level of consciousness that a simple life is a difficult to achieve nowadays.

That’s all.

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I can’t recommend this book to everyone I know. I recommend it to those who are truly dramatic or to those that have a very pretty life, full of beautiful moments, so beautiful that makes them all bored within their borderless happiness, and want, for a change, to see life from a different perspective.

Haunting in a silent way. And weirdly peaceful in a war time- Life and times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee.

photo: goodreads.com