Book Review

Summertime (2009)

J.M. Coetzee
Reviewed by Keith Staskiewicz | Jan 04, 2010
Summertime, J.M. Coetzee | Summertime by J. M. Coetzee
Summertime by J. M. Coetzee
EW's GRADE
A+

Details Release Date: Dec 24, 2009; Writer: J.M. Coetzee; Genres: Biography, Fiction; Publisher: Viking

The third entry in J. M. Coetzee’s series of fictionalized memoirs stretches the distance between author and subject, even though they are the same man. The book is written as a succession of invented postmortem interviews with people who knew the author as a young novelist in South Africa. Summertimeis navel-gazing founded on the daydream of imagined death — yet it’s still immensely readable, and the structural affectation is outweighed by the voices of the eulogizers. Coetzee portrays his younger self as scrawny and pretentious, but even if this insistent humility is just another form of self-aggrandizement, the result is enthralling. A–

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Originally posted Dec 30, 2009 Published in issue #1084 Jan 08, 2010 Order article reprints

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