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"Disgrace" is a very personal story for me, call it vanity. I am not David Lurie and I am certainly not 52 years old, but I think that people should learn to treat sexual affinities with some objectivity.
J.M. Coetzee brings forth the tensions of an under-formed and conflicted societal structure. It is not going to go away. "Lucies" will keep getting raped and society will protect the perpetrators, but "Melanies" who give it of their own accord, are free to get a shot at playing victim. What a "Disgrace"!...

I don't think the book is a good representation of Africa but character-wise, I do find this book interesting. Don't get that wrong, I don't like the book and I don't think the book is flawless either. I was more than a bit more than just peeved at David Lurie and his naive impression on the world and his sexuality that he regressed as a mature character. But I do think its an interesting book that talk about rape application and essentially a coming-of-age book in the body of an adult with a childlike mind."We put our children in the hands of you people because we think we can trust you. If we can't trust the university, who can we trust? We never thought we were sending our daughter into a nest of vipers. No, Professor Lurie, you may be high and mighty and have all kinds of degrees, but if I was you I'd be very ashamed of myself, so help me God. If I've got hold of the wrong end of the stick, now is your chance to say, but I don't think so, I can see it from your face." Page 35 Disgrace is a first POV narration and it does carry its limitation. David Lurie is clearly an unreliable narrative but human in every sense. He's prideful, arrogant, narcissistic and a fool with many degrees. He's a smart man but still an idiot nonetheless. The book's narrative is observant and often contradicts his action in so many ways which made the process of reading engrossing. Along the while, I forgot that he's a middle age man character which the book continuously reminded about. But it was clear that he was ignorant about many things on woman. Its hard to read the book without imagining a special Chinese water torture with him in it. Yes, he did get a karmic intervention which it took him by surprise and it does have its own facepalm moments when he became so obsessed about his daughter's situation and her apparently independence and stubbornness about the matter that he's literally taken off guard. The book is political and at times pushing his views through his characters. But at times, you did get caught up into his storytelling without anticipating it. The book is moderately visual but very clinical about the subject of sex. From Lurie's sexual escapades with Soraya, Melanie and Bev Shaw to the gang rape of his daughter and to his horror the child resulting from that rape. But for what its worth, Coetzee is surprisingly feminist, sensitive and stark about woman's issue. He did show exactly how rape is used as a weapon to manipulate a woman into subjugation. How Lucy was being manipulated into seeing that she was admitting defeat if she reported her rape because to her, it meant she was admitting defeat against her attackers. But as a result, she accepted her fate and willingly let herself fall into Petrus's manipulation who himself had a hand on her attacks. 'Hatred . . . When it comes to men and sex, David, nothing surprises me any more. Maybe, for men, hating the woman makes sex more exciting. You are a man, you ought to know. When you have sex with someone strange - when you trap her, hold her down, get her under you, put all your weight on her - isn't it a bit like killing? Pushing the knife in; exiting afterwards, leaving the body behind covered in blood - doesn't it feel like murder, like getting away with murder?'For all its worth, the core in this novel is about humanity with its flaws and adapting to change and forms of power abuse and difficulties when one faces frustrated views contradicting to oneself. Its hardly an enjoyable novel. Geographically unenticing. Stupid Marty Sue character with hedonistic tendencies. But still thought-provoking nonetheless.'The question is, does he have it in him to be the woman?'

Probably contains some spoilers

“Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible – the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest trees, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched. One was snaky looking, another like an octopus with long thin brown tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root.”

I was curious to read this book as it was considered a sort of prequel to Jane Eyre. So I guess this counts as fanfiction? At least it’s very well-written fan fiction!

The writing style is of course different from Jane Eyre. The depictions of the Caribbean are beautiful. It’s a relatively short book and it tells the story of Mr. Rochester's first wife, Antoinette Cosway, whom he met in Jamaica. The themes explored in the book are very postcolonialism (discusses the relationships between former slaves and slaveowners after Emancipation), identity (Antoinette is Creole and is therefore not accepted by either the blacks or the whites) and madness.

I’ve just finished reading a book about the Suffragette movement that looked into historical accounts of insanity in women. I had no idea that the word "hysteria" was first used to describe a supposed mental ailment that women suffered from all because they had a uterus. *sigh* Apart from being frustrated by that piece of pseudoscience, what's also frustrating is the fact that historically a lot of people were unaware that the environment one lives in can make one "crazy." Women in particular, who were often reliant on men and didn’t have their own freedom were obviously more likely to suffer from nervous breakdowns.

I’m pretty sure most readers will change their opinion of Rochester after they read this. I will definitely see him in a less than favourable light when I do re-read Jane Eyre.

I wish I had liked this book more. The idea behind it--the story of Antoinette/Bertha and Rochester before the events recounted in Jane Eyre, which is a book I love--was great, and this is primarily why I chose to read it; but in the end, I think I had set too high expectations.

The setting in the first and second part was really vivid and well-depicted (colours, smells, landscapes...) and made for a strong immersion. The narrative technique, with the switch in narrators, was in a way confusing, yet also an interesting method to represent Antoinette's unstable mind, and how she would become more and more unreliable.

On the other hand, the story moved too fast to my liking: I would have liked to see more of that distrust between Rochester and his wife, how exactly it settled in, as well as their arrival in England and what exactly happened there. As it was, the story jumped from one place to the other, and while I was able to piece everything together, I feel I could do so only because I knew the story of Jane Eyre</>. The latter made me want to read Jean Rhys's book; but I'm not sure that Wide Sargasso Sea may have made me want to read Jane Eyre, had I started with it instead of the contrary.