Were We Right or Were We Right?: J.M. Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year

Publishers Weekly -- Publishers Weekly, 12/28/2007

The latest novel from 2003 Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee, Dairy of a Bad Year, is drawing reviews that can't help but compare it with his existing oeuvre, now 19 books strong.  Despite its unorthodox structure, most reviewers find Coetzee's familiar themes running through it.  And, apart from PW, many place it among his stronger works.

Here's PW's Review:
Nobelist Coetzee's 19th book features a stand-in for himself: Señor C, a white 72-year-old South African writer living in Australia who has written Waiting for the Barbarians. C falls into a "metaphysical" passion for his sexy 29-year-old Filipina neighbor, Anya, and quickly plots to spend more time with her by offering her a job as his typist. C's latest project is a series of political and philosophical essays, and Coetzee divides each page of the present novel in three: any given page features a bit of an essay (often its title and opening paragraph) at the top; C's POV in the middle; and Anya's voice at the bottom. C's opinions in the essays are mostly on the left (he despises Bush, Blair & Co., and is opposed to the Iraq War) and they bore Anya, who wants something less lofty. Meanwhile, Anya's lover, Alan -- a smart, conservative 42-year-old investment consultant who's good in the sack, and who stands for everything C despises -- becomes increasingly scornful and jealous, and eventually concocts an elaborate plan to defraud C. of money. Unfortunately, Anya is little more than a trophy to be disputed, and Alan as an unscrupulous, boorish reactionary is a caricature. While C's essays, especially the later ones inspired by Anya, hold some interest, this follow-up to Slow Year is not one of Coetzee's major efforts.

In a long, impassioned defense of Coetzee in the New Yorker, James Wood calls the novel “involving, argumentative, moving.”

Slate’s Judith Shulevitz says the novel “tries your patience at the formal level,” but applauds the “fiery, brilliant essaylets” along with the story itself.

Kathryn Harrison, in the New York Times Book Review, dwells on the ways the novel "compels us to ponder the relationship between Coetzee and his characters."

In a New York Times daily review, Richard Eder calls the novel "successively comic and biting, and by the end curiously moving."

Writing in the London Times, Neel Mukherjee finds it “[n]ever less than an uncompromisingly cerebral delight.”

Siddhartha Deb in Bookforum, calls it “brilliant,” and thinks the novel “may be [Coetzee’s] most successful diagnosis yet of what we are suffering from.”

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