Scan barcode
fantasynovel's review
4.0
Not as well-written as Disgrace, but that's not really the point. The prose is secondary in this deconstruction of Coetzee's use of rape as a metaphor for the necessary violence in ending apartheid. Basically—why did he have to use a woman's rape, and that woman's subsequent abnegation, as his metaphor? In this book, Lucy Curie objects. I found Lucy's character to be a fascinating portrayal of flawed human being. I also enjoyed the several arguments against Disgrace, which often voiced something that had been niggling in the back of my mind but was never fully realized. The author's note in the beginning is ridiculous, though I understand its reasoning. But come on. Trust the reader a little.
readingintheether's review
5.0
Fiona Snyckers somehow found a way to make literary criticism palatable. I've never read John Coetzee's Disgrace before, but I'm definitely interested in it now for sake of cross-examining the themes. There's too much going on in this book to rant about it here, but suffice it to say that I really, deeply enjoyed it.
linesuponapage's review
4.0
There have been a gazillion reviews on Coetzee's Man Book Prize awarded book, Disgrace, (academic and otherwise), and the meanings of what Lucy Lurie's rape means. I am not going to get into rehashing or putting my own take on Mr. Coetzee's book, as I see this book, Lacuna (the gap in Lucy's reactions, her emotions — the things Mr. Coetzee didn't add) as the answer to all things that were again — missing in his book. I am glad Ms. Snycker wrote this fictional response to a book so lacking emotion. Emotions are messy in the face of happiness, sadness, and trauma. What happens to emotions when you've been raped and then a book makes that rape world-famous though only part of the story is honest and true to what happened to you?
This is what Lacuna is all about. Lucy Lurie was raped at her father's farmhouse and author John Coetzee put her story (or the crux of her story) into his award-winning book, Disgrace. Lucy was already traumatized by 6 black men, did she really need another man to traumatize her more and then get a huge payoff from her trauma? In Lacuna, Lucy is a mess, I mean, when you think a person has hit rock bottom, Lucy has plunged to the depths of that canyon full of rocks, or so she thought she had fallen as far as she could. No one could imagine she could fall even further beneath the rocks until it happens.
Lucy's friend Moira tries to help Lucy to move forward, it's been two years since her rape. Two years since Coetzee released that darn book of his, shouldn't she be able to reconcile her life against the fictional telling of a woman who became the symbol of getting rid of apartheid through the putting of a White woman in her place by her Black neighbor? Lucy doesn't think so. She compares her victimhood to other rape survivors, not calling it survivorship as the masses want her to. She doesn't feel as if she is surviving.
Throughout the book, Ms. Snykers has Lucy going to a therapist and imagining things the therapist says to her. Things that help Lucy feel validated by her victimhood. This happens a lot throughout the book, scenes that a writer would place in her own book, scenes of success, rising above the victim mentality, becoming empowered by her strength, and coming face to face with author John Coetzee and having him apologize to her. We all daydream about different scenarios, don't we?
As someone who has never been raped, I am not sure that the "success" imaginings and then the inaction of Lucy's real life would help or hamper a rape victim if they read this book. I can only imagine that this is how a victim would really feel, but is it? I am curious to know... I don't want to assume anything when it comes to that kind of trauma.
There is a time in the story where Lucy contemplates, as a writer herself, whether a writer has the right to use reality in their fiction, she comes to the realization that without having the ability to use reality a writer would never be able to write any stories.
"It is part of the social contract that everything is fair game when it comes to fiction. If real life wheren't allowed to be the inspiration for fiction, we wouldn't have the works of Shakespeare, Austen, Adichie, Naipaul, or Didion. It is not just important for authors to be able to write without fear or favour: it is vital."
Then Lucy realizes that she has been so upset over the "Coetzee Overnight Success Story" that she has given her whole life over the last two years to this man and his fictional character. She has allowed him to be there for too long. She needed to take back her life, not let him have his story override what should be hers to mold into what she wants to become. This to me is when Lucy actually starts writing her success even in the midst of all her mess, that is until a bigger mess comes along and changes the whole narrative that Lucy believes is her life after the rape.
I don't find much fault with the feminist answering to a famous novel written in the 70s especially when the author, John Coetzee gives no rational voice to the victim as he did his fictional Lucy. I know it is a metaphor for the future of South Africa, the babe that is the product of a violent fate that Blacks have lived only to have Whites find out how violent Black's lives really have been through Lucy's rape. However, the one thing I can't get around in this book is the need to point a finger at the familial and turn another man into yet again the twist of trauma in Lucy's life. Hasn't she been through enough? Do we really need to go from being raped by 6 men, to another man traumatizing Lucy through his novel to the most important man in her life becoming the most traumatizing person overall? I just don't get the twist at the end of the book. It seems just another feminist move to blame all men for everything during a time when there were enough men already to hold accountable. Metaphor or not, it didn't need to be.
If, and this is a big IF it is to address Mr. Coetzee's narrative of poor young Melanie being abused by Lucy's father, David Lurie while as a professor, then fine, however, this is never even addressed in Lacuna and so, I feel it shouldn't even be anywhere in Lucy's story.
The fluctuation between imagery during Lucy's story and reality can sometimes be hard to handle. I would be reading along and then all of a sudden thinking, "there you go Lucy grab your life back" then wham — oh, sorry, that was just Lucy's musings again,
and back to the mess we go.
Vegan Eugene. I would really love to hear some opinions on him from others. What do you think??? Do you love him, hate him, or wish he had never entered the story? Let me know in the comments.
This is what Lacuna is all about. Lucy Lurie was raped at her father's farmhouse and author John Coetzee put her story (or the crux of her story) into his award-winning book, Disgrace. Lucy was already traumatized by 6 black men, did she really need another man to traumatize her more and then get a huge payoff from her trauma? In Lacuna, Lucy is a mess, I mean, when you think a person has hit rock bottom, Lucy has plunged to the depths of that canyon full of rocks, or so she thought she had fallen as far as she could. No one could imagine she could fall even further beneath the rocks until it happens.
Lucy's friend Moira tries to help Lucy to move forward, it's been two years since her rape. Two years since Coetzee released that darn book of his, shouldn't she be able to reconcile her life against the fictional telling of a woman who became the symbol of getting rid of apartheid through the putting of a White woman in her place by her Black neighbor? Lucy doesn't think so. She compares her victimhood to other rape survivors, not calling it survivorship as the masses want her to. She doesn't feel as if she is surviving.
Throughout the book, Ms. Snykers has Lucy going to a therapist and imagining things the therapist says to her. Things that help Lucy feel validated by her victimhood. This happens a lot throughout the book, scenes that a writer would place in her own book, scenes of success, rising above the victim mentality, becoming empowered by her strength, and coming face to face with author John Coetzee and having him apologize to her. We all daydream about different scenarios, don't we?
As someone who has never been raped, I am not sure that the "success" imaginings and then the inaction of Lucy's real life would help or hamper a rape victim if they read this book. I can only imagine that this is how a victim would really feel, but is it? I am curious to know... I don't want to assume anything when it comes to that kind of trauma.
There is a time in the story where Lucy contemplates, as a writer herself, whether a writer has the right to use reality in their fiction, she comes to the realization that without having the ability to use reality a writer would never be able to write any stories.
"It is part of the social contract that everything is fair game when it comes to fiction. If real life wheren't allowed to be the inspiration for fiction, we wouldn't have the works of Shakespeare, Austen, Adichie, Naipaul, or Didion. It is not just important for authors to be able to write without fear or favour: it is vital."
Then Lucy realizes that she has been so upset over the "Coetzee Overnight Success Story" that she has given her whole life over the last two years to this man and his fictional character. She has allowed him to be there for too long. She needed to take back her life, not let him have his story override what should be hers to mold into what she wants to become. This to me is when Lucy actually starts writing her success even in the midst of all her mess, that is until a bigger mess comes along and changes the whole narrative that Lucy believes is her life after the rape.
I don't find much fault with the feminist answering to a famous novel written in the 70s especially when the author, John Coetzee gives no rational voice to the victim as he did his fictional Lucy. I know it is a metaphor for the future of South Africa, the babe that is the product of a violent fate that Blacks have lived only to have Whites find out how violent Black's lives really have been through Lucy's rape. However, the one thing I can't get around in this book is the need to point a finger at the familial and turn another man into yet again the twist of trauma in Lucy's life. Hasn't she been through enough? Do we really need to go from being raped by 6 men, to another man traumatizing Lucy through his novel to the most important man in her life becoming the most traumatizing person overall? I just don't get the twist at the end of the book. It seems just another feminist move to blame all men for everything during a time when there were enough men already to hold accountable. Metaphor or not, it didn't need to be.
If, and this is a big IF it is to address Mr. Coetzee's narrative of poor young Melanie being abused by Lucy's father, David Lurie while as a professor, then fine, however, this is never even addressed in Lacuna and so, I feel it shouldn't even be anywhere in Lucy's story.
The fluctuation between imagery during Lucy's story and reality can sometimes be hard to handle. I would be reading along and then all of a sudden thinking, "there you go Lucy grab your life back" then wham — oh, sorry, that was just Lucy's musings again,
and back to the mess we go.
Vegan Eugene. I would really love to hear some opinions on him from others. What do you think??? Do you love him, hate him, or wish he had never entered the story? Let me know in the comments.
bobthebookerer's review
4.0
This is a complex and, at times, claustrophobic book, and seemingly delights in wrongfooting you.
Using Coetzee's 'Disgrace' as a starting point, this book constantly plays with the reliability of the narrator, either directly with the character telling you as such, or through the slow realisation that some scenarios in the book don't make sense (a therapist who goes wildly off-script). There is even a factual error on the first page that it took me a long time to realise might have been intentional (suggesting that Coetzee only won any prizes after he released Disgrace, that being his second Booker win).
Coetzee takes on the role of our narrator's nemesis or perpetual foe, almost the thing she fixates on to try to process some of the incredible trauma she has been through. Her unreliability then starts to take on a new tone, where we realise that not only is she dangerous, but also in danger, and it starts to puncture holes in some of the expectations we have of women to tell 'perfect' and 'logical' stories about their own assault whilst they are still dealing with the after-effects of it.
I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Using Coetzee's 'Disgrace' as a starting point, this book constantly plays with the reliability of the narrator, either directly with the character telling you as such, or through the slow realisation that some scenarios in the book don't make sense (a therapist who goes wildly off-script). There is even a factual error on the first page that it took me a long time to realise might have been intentional (suggesting that Coetzee only won any prizes after he released Disgrace, that being his second Booker win).
Coetzee takes on the role of our narrator's nemesis or perpetual foe, almost the thing she fixates on to try to process some of the incredible trauma she has been through. Her unreliability then starts to take on a new tone, where we realise that not only is she dangerous, but also in danger, and it starts to puncture holes in some of the expectations we have of women to tell 'perfect' and 'logical' stories about their own assault whilst they are still dealing with the after-effects of it.
I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
kelsn's review against another edition
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
storytimed's review against another edition
4.0
This is a really interesting book! It's a response to another novel by J. M. Coetzee a South African White woman who cw assault is gang-raped by a group of Black South African men & decides not to seek justice & has a magic baby as a metaphor for the end of apartheid . The premise of Coetzee's novel is sounds pretty damn racist and sexist! & Lacuna presents a metanarrative where Lucy, the White woman at the center of Coetzee's book, is a real person who had this book written about her trauma
The narrator is purposefully hostile and unruly and unreliable & the novel examines Coetzee's work as well as the aftermath of assault with some pretty cogent gender analysis but not much about race, which is on purpose because.... Lucy is a Karen lmfao
I think throughout the novel she's often responding to imagined attacks? Or imagining attacks, from her therapist or from J. M. Coetzee etc. etc. etc.
Which makes sense because she actually was attacked, but also at the same time I think we cannot attribute it all to her trauma. She has this like.... reaction to threats to her ego where so much of her actions and the narrative becomes reputation management
There's a really interesting ending where a Black woman calls her out and tells her to write this book. But because you can't trust the narrator you're not sure if this is a thing that actually happens in the novel or the narrator trying to write herself absolution for her own racial blindness
Interesting book! I feel like I wouldn't necessarily rec it as a "good book" but it's very much not trying to be a good book if that makes sense
The narrator is purposefully hostile and unruly and unreliable & the novel examines Coetzee's work as well as the aftermath of assault with some pretty cogent gender analysis but not much about race, which is on purpose because.... Lucy is a Karen lmfao
I think throughout the novel she's often responding to imagined attacks? Or imagining attacks, from her therapist or from J. M. Coetzee etc. etc. etc.
Which makes sense because she actually was attacked, but also at the same time I think we cannot attribute it all to her trauma. She has this like.... reaction to threats to her ego where so much of her actions and the narrative becomes reputation management
There's a really interesting ending where a Black woman calls her out and tells her to write this book. But because you can't trust the narrator you're not sure if this is a thing that actually happens in the novel or the narrator trying to write herself absolution for her own racial blindness
Interesting book! I feel like I wouldn't necessarily rec it as a "good book" but it's very much not trying to be a good book if that makes sense
xh_reads's review against another edition
challenging
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
I like the idea of this book. I disliked the execution.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Sexual violence, and Fire/Fire injury
evilisarelaysport's review
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
ksteph18's review against another edition
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0