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Summertime
by J.M. Coetzee | Literature & Fiction
Registered by livrecache of Hobart, Tasmania Australia on Thursday, September 24, 2009
Average 6 star rating by BookCrossing Members 

status (set by goodthinkingmax): to be read


7 journalers for this copy...

Journal Entry 1 by livrecache from Hobart, Tasmania Australia on Thursday, September 24, 2009

This book has not been rated.

This is my contribution to the 2009 Booker prize longlist reading challenge.
My plan is to read this first and then send it on a bookring.

Participants to be confirmed.

Tentatively:

star-light
freepages
Fleebo has the book
jubby
miss-jo
tqd
goodthinkingmax
sujie
. . .

Synopsis (from the booker prize website)

A young English biographer is working on a book about the late writer, John Coetzee. He plans to focus on the years from 1972-1977 when Coetzee, in his thirties, is sharing a run-down cottage in the suburbs of Cape Town with his widowed father. This, the biographer senses, is the period when he was ‘finding his feet as a writer’.

Never having met Coetzee, he embarks on a series of interviews with people who were important to him - a married woman with whom he had an affair, his favourite cousin Margot, a Brazilian dancer whose daughter had English lessons with him, former friends and colleagues. From their testimony emerges a portrait of the young Coetzee as an awkward, bookish individual with little talent for opening himself to others. Within the family he is regarded as an outsider, someone who tried to flee the tribe and has now returned, chastened. His insistence on doing manual work, his long hair and beard, rumours that he writes poetry evoke nothing but suspicion in the South Africa of the time.

Sometimes heartbreaking, often very funny, Summertime shows us a great writer as he limbers up for his task.

It completes the majestic trilogy of fictionalised memoir begun with Boyhood and Youth.
 

Journal Entry 2 by livrecache at Melbourne, A Bookcrossing member -- Controlled Releases on Monday, November 23, 2009

This book has not been rated.

Released 2 yrs ago (11/23/2009 UTC) at Melbourne, A Bookcrossing member -- Controlled Releases

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

On its way to another bookcrosser as part of the Mann Booker challenge 2009. I hope you enjoy it. 

Journal Entry 3 by star-light from Melbourne, Victoria Australia on Wednesday, December 02, 2009

This book has not been rated.

Arrived yesterday. It took me a little while to find the BookCrossing label, hidden away under the flap of the book. I'll start this one soon. I haven't read the previous two books in the trilogy so I'm not sure how much I'll get out of this one. 

Journal Entry 4 by star-light from Melbourne, Victoria Australia on Wednesday, January 06, 2010

This book has not been rated.

Posted to freepages earlier today. Comments to come. 

Journal Entry 5 by FreePages from Canberra, Australian Capital Territory Australia on Friday, January 08, 2010

This book has not been rated.


"Summertime" has arrived...in more ways then one....its over 37 degrees here today and we're forcast for a heatwave for the rest of the week!
This will be my first Coetzee! It's a funny one to start with, being the third in a trilogy, but I'm interested to have a taste of his writing.
Onto Mount Toobie it goes. 

Journal Entry 6 by FreePages from Canberra, Australian Capital Territory Australia on Wednesday, January 27, 2010

5 out of 10

This really wasn't my thing.
I found it disjointed and couldn't warm to it.
Could have been quite a conceited premise but all of the "fictional" characters weren't exactly in awe of Mr Coetzee.
Drawn to him maybe but not in a typical sense of the word.
Might have possibly liked it better if this wasn't my first of his work and perhaps if I'd read the first 2 in this fictional biography first.
It was a quick read tho'.
One thing that still has me puzzled is the title of the book. Why "Summertime"?

I've got another bookring to send to Fleebo so I'll hang on to this and send the two together.

Thanks for the opportunity livrecache, it hasn't put me off Coetzee, I'll try more of his work.

:-) 

Journal Entry 7 by FreePages at Canberra, Australian Capital Territory Australia on Monday, March 08, 2010

This book has not been rated.

Released 1 yr ago (3/8/2010 UTC) at Canberra, Australian Capital Territory Australia

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:


Summertime has ended for me and it's on it's way to Fleebo.

Hope you get more from this then I did, although I am pleased I had the opportunity to read it.

Posted today.
 

Journal Entry 8 by Fleebo from Sydney, New South Wales Australia on Tuesday, March 09, 2010

This book has not been rated.

Received safely, thanks. I am always nervous of new Coetzee books... 

Journal Entry 9 by Fleebo at Sydney, New South Wales Australia on Thursday, May 27, 2010

6 out of 10

Weird. Just.... it was weird. I have to assume that the whole thing is a joke, with everyone in it complaining about what an unattractive, antisocial, crappy lover the author is.
It was easy to read, and not very long, or I would not have bothered finishing it. Maybe Coetzee imagined that only people who idolise him like his fictional biographer would read it, and take it as an amusing fiction, but I'm inclined to believe every unflattering word about him even if he did write it himself. This book will win him no new fans. 

Journal Entry 10 by miss-jo at Sydney, New South Wales Australia on Friday, July 09, 2010

6 out of 10

I have a confession to make here - I don't like Coetzee. I studied his 'Life and Times of Michael K' for my HSC, and found it really painful to read because of its uninteresting, passive and often unlikeable characters. Studying it helped me to discover the excellence of his prose, but even so, I would never voluntarily read any of his work.

Having read Summertime, my opinion has only been reinforced. His writing is still beautiful, but his characters are still the alienating element. What makes it even weirder is that it is the character that is supposed to be the author who is most repellent of all, which will influence me even further against reading more of his works.

Fleebo passed this on to me, so I'll pm jubby to see if she's up for it
Eta that I think jubby may have a life at the moment, so I'll try tqd instead. Can we drop jubby down the list? 

Journal Entry 11 by wingtqdwing at Sydney, New South Wales Australia on Tuesday, August 03, 2010

This book has not been rated.

Thanks miss-jo, it turned up in the mail today safe and sound! I'm getting the first two books in the trilogy from the library asap, as I'd like to read them properly as a trilogy. But I'll try not to hold this one up for too long! 

Journal Entry 12 by wingtqdwing at Sydney, New South Wales Australia on Saturday, March 26, 2011

7 out of 10

This is the third in Coetzee's autobiographical trilogy, which started with Boyhood and continued with Youth. The first two books were less factual autobiographies, rather than word paintings of moods and emotions. They were very good. In these books, Coetzee distanced himself from the story by never using "I", it was always about "him". But I felt there was a great truth to what he was relating.

Summertime was less successful for me. For some reason, it's a series of interviews of people important in Coetzee's life, and they're being interviewed by Coetzee's biographer after his (Coetzee's) death. It was a bit *too* distant, and given the obvious factual inaccuracy of Coetzee's death (he's still alive and well), one could only take the whole book with a HUGE grain of salt. Was his history all still too close to him (emotionally, or in time) to be more direct about it? Is he protecting other people in his life by not referring to anything in a concrete and direct manner?

And he came across as a very (VERY) awkward man. While I didn't expect him to big-note himself, I was surprised that there was no self-deprecating humour to it. (Which might be a cultural thing, Australians don't tend to be so serious with emotions. Emotions are bad, ngkay.)

Overall, I don't think it particularly worked well. The first two books of the trilogy were quite marvellous, but this one was just a bit strange, with its distant voice and unpleasant portrait. Did he really dislike himself that much, that he'd write a book where he's so needy and wrong?? Puzzling.

I shall pass this on to the next Booker-Prize-Reading-Challenge-participating bookcrosser I see... Thanks for the chance to read this, livrecache! It made me read a whole three Coetzee books, and I'm no longer that scared of him. 

Journal Entry 13 by goodthinkingmax at Sydney, New South Wales Australia on Sunday, March 27, 2011

This book has not been rated.

Turns out I'm "The next Booker-Prize-Reading-Challenge-participating bookcrosser" TQD saw. Not sure what to expect from this after hearing opinions from Fleebo and TQD at the pub. I need to decide whether to track the first two books down before reading this one.  



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