Product Description

Elizabeth Costello is an Australian writer of international renown. Famous principally for an early novel that established her reputation, she has reached the stage where her remaining function is to be venerated and applauded. Her life has become a series of engagements in sterile conference rooms throughout the world - a private consciousness obliged to reveal itself to a curious public: the presentation of a major award at an American college where she is required to deliver a lecture; a sojourn as the writer in residence on a cruise liner; a visit to her sister, a missionary in Africa, who is receiving an honorary degree, an occasion which both recognise as the final opportunity for effecting some form of reconciliation; and a disquieting appearance at a writers' conference in Amsterdam where she finds the subject of her talk unexpectedly amongst the audience. She has made her life's work the study of other people yet now it is she who is the object of scrutiny. But, for her, what matters is the continuing search for a means of articulating her vision and the verdict of future generations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46680 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
For Australian writer JM Coetzee, winner of two Booker Prizes and the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature, the world of receiving literary awards and giving speeches must be such a commonplace that he has put the circuit at the centre of his book, Elizabeth Costello. As the work opens, the eponymous Elizabeth, a fictional novelist, is in Williamstown, Pennsylvania, to receive the Stowe Award. For her speech at the Williamstown's Altona College she chooses the tired topic, "What Is Realism?" and quickly loses her audience in her unfocused discussion of Kafka. From there, readers follow her to a cruise ship where she is virtually imprisoned as a celebrity lecturer to the ship's guests. Next, she is off to Appleton College where she delivers the annual Gates Lecture. Later, she will even attend a graduation speech.

Coetzee has made this project difficult for himself. Occasional writing--writing that includes graduation speeches, acceptance speeches, or even academic lectures--is a less than auspicious form around which to build a long work of fiction. A powerful central character engaged in a challenging stage of life might sustain such a work. Yet, at the start, Coetzee declares that Elizabeth is "old and tired", and her best book, The House on Eccles Street is long in her past. Elizabeth Costello lacks a progressive plot and offers little development over the course of each new performance at the lectern. Readers are given Elizabeth fully formed with only brief glimpses of her past sexual dalliances and literary efforts.

In the end, Elizabeth Costello seems undecided about its own direction. When Elizabeth is brought to a final reckoning at the gates of the afterlife, she begins to suspect that she is actually in hell, "or at least purgatory: a purgatory of clichés". Perhaps Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, which can be read as an extended critique of clichéd writing, is a portrait of this purgatory. While some readers may find Coetzee's philosophical prose sustenance enough on the journey, some will turn back at the gate. --Patrick O'Kelley, Amazon.com

Review
"'One of Coetzee's best...simply burns with creative passion' D.J. Taylor, Independent; 'An important book...Extraordinary' Independent on Sunday; 'Probably the best book on the (Booker) longlist, the one that will last...Every word counts. Every sentence lives' Evening Standard; 'A readable and engaging book...Demanding, playful, provocative...hugely enlightening and rewarding' Sunday Times; 'Richly rewarding' Daily Mail; 'Highly readable and bracing' Scotsman; 'Deals bravely with problems that few other writers dare to think about' Telegraph"

About the Author
JM Coetzee's work includes Waiting For The Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Boyhood: Scenes From Provincial Life, Youth, and Disgrace which won the Booker Prize, making him the first author to have won it twice. In 2003 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Customer Reviews

Disappointment
I am an admirer of JM Coetzee, and I started ‘Elizabeth Costello’ with anticipation. I finished it in disappointment.

This book is (as the author tells us) a re-working of previous material, in particular ‘The Lives of Animals’. It deals with several discrete issues, for example the conflict between the humanities and religion in Africa, the purpose of the novel in Africa, the nature of evil and whether a book that describes evil in detail is obscene, and, its main topic, whether we should eat animals or not. On all of these issues Coetzee has much of great interest to say, but the issues are probably better dealt with in the essay form.

In order, however, to treat all these topics in one novel, Coetzee has devised a framework which enables Elizabeth Costello to initiate discussion of them, in sequence. The topics do not all belong together in one book without this framework, and the framework is clumsy and contrived. The conversations, or lectures in two cases, in which the ideas are set forth, are all in one uniform voice, giving the characters no differentiation by way of their speech. I was reminded of ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ where the religious and moral arguments are presented by two characters debating eath other in the same voice.

This book is a polemic on issues dear to the author, masquerading as a novel. I have as much interest as any reader in the discussion of ideas, but I found the stage machinery creaky and the dialogue stilted. The non-polemic chapter at the end, where Elizabeth Costello awaits entry into a version of heaven, is beautifully and imaginatively written. But the earlier part of the book required an effort to finish: I was bored with it.

In the same order from Amazon I received ‘The Full Cupboard of Life’, the latest of the novels about Precious Ramotswe of the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Apart from being enjoyable to read (which any novel surely ought to be) it dealt with big human issues (honesty, courage, and gender relationships) in a subtle but literary manner. Just as Coetzee has done in ‘Disgrace’.

Portrait of the Famous Artist
Elizabeth Costello is a famous Australian writer who spends much of her later years travelling the world and giving lectures. Like many famous people Costello has an uncomfortable relationship with her fame. At times she simply goes through the motions, remaining disconnected from her speeches and satisfying many of her listeners. However, on many occasions sited throughout this novel she spontaneously decides to speak about something she actually believes in. The results are usually unpopular thoughts that her audience has no interest in. Costello is trying to sort through her past while coming to conclusions about the meaning of life. Her strained relationships with her children and sister leave her a highly isolated individual grappling with her battered psyche. Despite the unpopularity of her recent ideas, her fame rests securely in a novel she wrote many years ago that expands on the fictional life of James Joyce's Molly Bloom.

Coetzee has done something both astonishing and baffling with this novel. At the back of the book he lists his acknowledgements. The truth is that substantial amounts of this novel are lectures that Coetzee himself has previously given and/or published before. As the novel progresses these lectures are integrated less into the story until the final short section which seems to hang very precariously upon the end of the novel and bears no obvious relation to the story. Rather than give us just a straightforward critique of literary fame integrated into his story, Coetzee also mocks how novels are traditionally constructed by writing what amounts to very little story to link these disconnected works. This isn't to say that it makes a bad novel. On the contrary, the story is very effective. I only longed to hear more. Also, the lectures are incredibly interesting focusing on a range of subjects from the rights of animals to the meaning of representing evil in literature. We are given the voice of the artist who is uncertain about his creations and wary of the fame they have brought him, something that the majority of readers don't normally want to hear. Coetzee is able to make this interesting with his masterful use of language and compelling ideas. No doubt Coetzee's uncomfortable relationship to his literary fame has only been strained further having recently won the Nobel Prize. I wonder if he had been writing this novel a little later whether he would have also included the speech he delivered at that ceremony. While this is a fascinating work, I would suggest that if you are approaching Coetzee's work for the first time this strange, short and brilliant novel isn't the best thing to begin with. You might want to start reading some of his earlier and more straightforward novels like the brilliant Disgrace or Age of Iron.

Awesome
In ELIZABETH COSTELLO, we find Coetzee confronting some of the fundamental structures of the society we have known for so long, forcing the reader to think and have an insight into life. This thought-provoking novel which is actually a collection of essays with some having been published before as lectures, is a deep but entertaining book. Coetzee uses Costello Elizabeth as a fictional character to put forward these essays and uses other characters as critics to create a dialectical outlook for the book. It is this approach that I think made this book so unique. A reader is forced to think beyond his beliefs. And in so doing, the reader is forced to evolve. I recommend this book along with The USURPER AND OTHERS, NERVOUS CONDITIONS to any curious mind.