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Slow Man
A Novel
by J. M. Coetzee
The latest novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author tells the story of an Australian photographer who must adjust his life after losing a leg in a bicycle accident.
Viking, 208 pages
09/22/2005
$24.95
ISBN: 0670034592
Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
The Independent Justin Cartwright
Coetzee is a unique voice; no novelist explores ideas and the power of literature and the sense of displacement so boldly. Slow Man will add to his immense reputation.
The New York Times Book Review Ward Just
Beautifully composed, deeply thought, wonderfully written.
TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Andrew van der Vlies
Slow Man... offers itself as a meditation on living and writing, and an enactment of Coetzee's prognosis for the novel as a genre, for what it must be. It is further witness to J. M. Coetzee's achievement as one of the most intelligent and important writers writing today.
Village Voice Benjamin Strong
In Slow Man, Coetzee confronts by analogy his own predicament, that of the obsolete dissident.
New York Review Of Books John Lanchester
[Slow Man] is a book for the noncasual reader of [Coetzee's] work; it is a book which, despite its transparent sentences, is designed to make the reader think hard; and for the reader who passes those two tests, it has a real emotional charge.
The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Lee Henderson
Along with his pessimistic temperament, Rayment's missing leg adds him to a literary continuum that includes Melville's reclusive Ahab and Beckett's reclusive Murphy, and both Invisible Men. [22 Oct 2005, p.D17]
Houston Chronicle Rachel Graves
I found the writing lovely, the clip remarkably brisk for a book that takes place almost entirely inside one man's head, and the ideas about self, loneliness and old-age provocative.
The Spectator Anita Brookner
It is no small achievement to have created such a miasma of feeling, to leave us convinced and unsettled, and above all face to face with imponderables to which there is no solution.
The Independent D J Taylor
Full of the deftest psychological touches and some acutely realised brooding on the old fictional firm of memory and desire, Slow Man's code--if code it is--stays resolutely, and tantalisingly, uncrackable.
Daily Telegraph Matt Thorne
It is an undeniably peculiar read, but Coetzee has profound things to say about ageing, writing, and accepting one's lot in life.
LA Weekly Brendan Bernhard
This is a pitiless, sometimes frighteningly lucid study of late middle age, physical deterioration and dwindling choices. Cheers!
London Review Of Books Peter D. McDonald
For all its playfully serious subversions of the realist tradition, Slow Man is not an annihilating or "merely literary" exercise. If it turns its back on the traditional novel, and exposes the limits of various other discursive conventions, it does so in order to affirm the truculent, dignified singularity of things
Publishers Weekly
Some readers will object to... the abstract forays into the mysteriousness of the writing process. It is to Coetzee's credit, however, a testament to his flawless prose and appealing voice, that while challenging the reader with postmodern shenanigans, the story of how Paul will take charge of his life and love continues to engage. [29 Aug 2005, p.35]
Salon Hillary Frey
This novel is a welcome addition to a unique oeuvre.
Los Angeles Times Natasha S. Randall
By climbing inside the labyrinth, Coetzee sacrifices his story to his ideas. As a novel, "Slow Man" is disappointing, but as a book of ideas, it is fascinating. [24 Sep 2005, p.E1]
Boston Globe Gail Caldwell
Coetzee has sacrificed his characters for his ponderous hypotheses about love and legacy and leaving a trace in the world.
Christian Science Monitor Yvonne Zipp
Slow Man has the distinction of being the worst novel I've read by a Nobel winner.
Daily Telegraph Siddhartha Deb
[Coetzee's] latest novel... gives the impression of being an amputee. It appears to possess ghost limbs--characters and ideas from earlier novels--and it doesn't seem to be aware that it is mistaking these spectral appendages for real ones.
Kirkus Reviews
Where is the author of Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace, now that we need him most? [1 Jul 2005, p.700]
Washington Post Ron Charles
[It's] no disgrace, but it's a disappointment.
 The average user rating for this book is 5.2 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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