Volume 55, Number 1 · January 17, 2008
The Shadow Line
By Hilary Mantel
Diary of a Bad Year
by J.M. Coetzee
Viking, 231 pp., $24.95
Some writers begin by lulling their readers, some by shocking them. J.M. Coetzee begins by starting an argument. The narrator of Diary of a Bad Year, of whom we as yet know nothing, is speaking of the nature of the state. Hobbes is the first name to occur. Why are we starting with Hobbes, not with Aristotle? Because, says the constant reader, we are in the territory of Coetzee, the balladeer of the limp and the harelip; the lives of his characters are miserable, brutish, but not short enough, being frequently prolonged beyond any use their owners have for them.
Review, 4712 words
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