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Foe by J. M. Coetzee
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Foe (original 1986; edition 1988)

by J. M. Coetzee (Author)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
1,848419,040 (3.43)144
This review will overflow with cliché. Such is the sum of my experience. Fox is a meditation on silence. Coetzee explores the natural aspects of such. The sea and wilderness yield no ready wisdom. Such doesn’t communicate in our jejune terms.

There is also an algebra of silence by design. It is a poetry of omissions. It is the fruit of doubt and a coveted rank of humility. The narrative currents of our lives are larded with the silence, we adorn them with caprice and detail. Coetzee intervenes into what understand as a novelistic tradition, a landmark to judge our way. He ruminates and consider alternatives. This disorients and we may grow uneasy. As matters coalesce, he neglects close, only a hum and the whisper of the surf remain.
( )
  jonfaith | Feb 22, 2019 |
English (39)  Spanish (2)  All languages (41)
Showing 1-25 of 39 (next | show all)
Could have done without reading this ( )
  vdt_melbourne | Jan 23, 2023 |
Susan Barton hazatér hosszadalmas hajótöréséből Angliába, és megkísérli eladni történetét Crusoe-stul, Péntekestül Mr. (De)Foe-nak, a híres írónak. Coetzee becsapósan olvasmányos könyve tulajdonképpen nem tesz mást, mint a Defoe-regény, és az annak alapjául szolgáló igazi esemény közé beilleszt egy harmadik sztorit – az egészet egy nő szemszögéből újramesélve. Ezzel pedig bevisz minket az alternatív igazságok labirintusába – hiszen honnan tudhatjuk, hogy Susan Barton nem hazudik-e? És vajon Mr. Crusoe mit titkolt el? És maga Defoe miért olyan formában regényesítette meg az egészet, amilyenben? (Hogy Coetzee-ről már ne is beszéljünk. Alighanem ő a legnagyobb simlis a bagázsban.) Az igazságot talán csak Péntek tudja – aki ezáltal válik a regény igazi kulcsfigurájává –, csak hát ő meg néma. Szívás. Mindent összevetve ebben a regényben az a trükk, hogy bár egy alapvetően egyszerű cselekménnyel operál, de ez csak a látszat, mert az elbeszélés tulajdonképpeni terén kívül számtalan kérdés bukkan fel – ezeket nemhogy az olvasónak kell megválaszolnia, de esetenként még neki is kell feltennie. Ahogy Coetzee mondja: „…ha a történet laposnak is tűnik, az csupán annak tudható be, hogy makacsul leplezi mondanivalóját.”

Megj.: Ehhez képest nagy kár, hogy Coetzee helyenként (különösen az utolsó harmadban) bántóan túlbeszéli az egészet. De azért érdekes könyv. ( )
  Kuszma | Jul 2, 2022 |
When I set aside J M Coetzee's Foe for Novellas in November, I had completely forgotten that I'd read it before.  Indeed, I had even posted at Goodreads an embarrassed 'review' from my 2002 reading journal that seemed like the thoughts of a stranger, not of my own mind.
I feel that my rating is wrong... the fact that I didn't understand it at that long ago time in my reading journey means that it's not the book that should be rated, it's me. The reader who read it 15 years ago is not the same reader as the reader now, and I bet if I read it again now after many years of reading and enjoying postmodern novels, I'd rate it very differently.

Twenty years later, here we are, and I certainly have changed my rating.  I rarely rate books with five stars, but Foe is brilliant.

By the time I got to Part III of this cunning little book, increasingly I was finding myself amused.  Mr Foe, seeking to reassure (or maybe to dupe) Susan Barton who is beginning to doubt her own existence, says to her:
'But if you cannot rid yourself of your doubts, I have something to say that may be of comfort.  Let us confront our worst fear, which is that we have all of us been called into the world from a different order (which we have now forgotten) by a conjuror unknown to us, as you say I have conjured up your daughter and her companion (I have not).  Then I ask nevertheless: Have we thereby lost our freedom? Are you, for one, any less mistress of your life?  Do we of necessity become puppets in a story whose end is invisible to us, and towards which we are marched like condemned felons? You and I know, in our different way, how rambling an occupation writing is; and conjuring is surely much the same. (p.135)

Ha!

Part I begins with Susan Barton's narrative about her experience as a castaway, which we learn later has been written in an attempt to make some much needed money.  Washed up on an island where she finds Cruso and Friday, whose names of course are those we know from our childhood reading of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.  She was on her way home to Britain after a fruitless search in the New World for her unnamed daughter who was abducted by a trader.  En route to Lisbon the crew mutinied, 'insulted' her and then cast her adrift with the dead Captain.

(Her use of the term 'New World' and the euphemistic 'insulted' gives the reader an indication of the era in which this tale is taking place. And Coetzee's dialogue is flawless.)

Playing with the reader, Coetzee begins her description of the desert island with a nod to Daniel Defoe:
'For readers reared on travellers' tales, the words desert isle may conjure up a place of soft sands and shady trees where brooks run to quench the castaway's thirst and ripe fruit falls into his hand, where no more is asked of him than to drowse the days away till a ship calls to fetch him home. (p.7)

Debunking the idea of a lush paradise, her desert island lacks the ingenious contrivances fashioned by Robinson Crusoe because her Cruso has salvaged only a knife and after many years on the island has used it only to make a rudimentary shelter.  Their diet is monotonous because there are no plants that can be cultivated for food, there are no fauna suited to animal husbandry, and there are no fruits falling from the trees or otherwise. They live on a kind of weed, and fish, caught by Friday.

Worse than that is that Cruso has no initiative.  He resists all Susan's efforts to encourage improvements in their tedious life, and continues building useless terraces for plants that can't be cultivated in them.  He has lapsed into inertia and a morose listlessness, unable and unwilling to talk, to share his personal history, or to offer any consolation.

The slave Friday is mute, because his tongue has been cut out.  He follows orders, but there isn't much for him to do.  He has a kind of dignity that the others lack...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/11/07/foe-by-j-m-coetzee/ but note that from this point on there are spoilers there. ( )
  anzlitlovers | Nov 6, 2021 |
In Foe, J. M. Coetzee delivers a different spin on the Robinson Crusoe story. By adding some new characters and giving the original author, Daniel Defoe a major role, he reworks the story and raises the question of artistic license – where is the line between fiction and reality, imagination and fact?

Susan Barton is a widow who is tossed overboard during a mutiny. Her tiny boat brings her to a desert island that is, in fact, Crusoe’s island. She joins with Crusoe and Friday in their quest for survival on this barren island. Crusoe has become comfortable in his solitude and has no wish to leave his island while Friday cannot say what he wants as his tongue has been cut out and so he cannot express himself. When they are rescued from the island, Barton and Friday return to England while Crusoe dies on the journey. Susan comes into contact with author Foe and she feels that since she was there and he was not, her version, although rather dull, should be the one told leaving no allowance for the author to use his imagination to liven up the story.

I found this a fascinating addition to the original story. I particularly found the character of Friday very interesting. His tongue was removed giving him no voice, very much like the black South Africans during apartheid. With it’s sharp observations and interesting angle on the art of storytelling I thoroughly enjoyed Foe. ( )
  DeltaQueen50 | Apr 5, 2021 |
Fancy being driven to pictures.

When I read a novel, I'm looking for this:



and this:



with big hints along the way like:


and this:



I thought I was doing fine with this Coetzee I found in Leiden recently. There's a woman and she is on a desert island for a while and then she's rescued and she's bogged down with Man Friday and Daniel Defoe's in it writing her story and I thought I got it. But I couldn't help feeling now and again like:



and trying to figure it all out made things worse.



Frankly, in the end, I felt like I was in the middle of xkcd's google map directions (goodreads has made a hash of this, please go link: here to see it:



I don't know, Mr Coetzee. I really don't know. I wish when I'd got to the lake and saw the trouble ahead, I'd just turned back. I'm going to have a lie down and a nice cup of tea now. That's if I'm still alive, if I was real. Perhaps the book has the answer to that. ( )
  bringbackbooks | Jun 16, 2020 |
Fancy being driven to pictures.

When I read a novel, I'm looking for this:



and this:



with big hints along the way like:


and this:



I thought I was doing fine with this Coetzee I found in Leiden recently. There's a woman and she is on a desert island for a while and then she's rescued and she's bogged down with Man Friday and Daniel Defoe's in it writing her story and I thought I got it. But I couldn't help feeling now and again like:



and trying to figure it all out made things worse.



Frankly, in the end, I felt like I was in the middle of xkcd's google map directions (goodreads has made a hash of this, please go link: here to see it:



I don't know, Mr Coetzee. I really don't know. I wish when I'd got to the lake and saw the trouble ahead, I'd just turned back. I'm going to have a lie down and a nice cup of tea now. That's if I'm still alive, if I was real. Perhaps the book has the answer to that. ( )
  bringbackbooks | Jun 16, 2020 |
This review will overflow with cliché. Such is the sum of my experience. Fox is a meditation on silence. Coetzee explores the natural aspects of such. The sea and wilderness yield no ready wisdom. Such doesn’t communicate in our jejune terms.

There is also an algebra of silence by design. It is a poetry of omissions. It is the fruit of doubt and a coveted rank of humility. The narrative currents of our lives are larded with the silence, we adorn them with caprice and detail. Coetzee intervenes into what understand as a novelistic tradition, a landmark to judge our way. He ruminates and consider alternatives. This disorients and we may grow uneasy. As matters coalesce, he neglects close, only a hum and the whisper of the surf remain.
( )
  jonfaith | Feb 22, 2019 |
I certainly did not understand this book to the fullest. Still, I really liked it, somehow; I can't wait for our discussion on it in class... ( )
  UDT | May 1, 2018 |
My first - but not my last - Coetzee. I was fascinated by this tale of a lady castaway who finds herself on Crusoe's island and then tries to sell her story to Defoe. Part homage to the one of the earliest of novels, part fable, the novel has a wonderful twist about midway through and then continues to spiral into fantasies about writing, authorship, and speechlessness.

I loved it. ( )
  laurenbufferd | Nov 14, 2016 |
In the spirit of Foe, a story about this book... I bought this book at a recent $5 A Bag book sale at the library. Having walked away with 4 bags of books, it seemed like a pretty successful sale in and of itself. However, fate intervenes (dun dun DUN) and, picking it up to read tonight, I see a very familiar name scrawled in the front cover, a date/locale, and a seal imprinted on the title page. None other than the name of my favorite teacher back in high school and the date of my graduation. A favorite teacher that has since passed away but is sorely missed. Coincidence might be the invention of the storyteller here, but it's a coincidence I'm very happy about.

The book itself was interesting, both as a reinvention of Crusoe and a stand-alone. I was almost expecting a The Yellow Wallpaper twist to come into play. Definitely worth the read. ( )
  lamotamant | Sep 22, 2016 |
A fascinating look at storytelling--approached through another author's story.

Coetzee introduces Susan Barton, lately a female castaway, as she approaches the author Foe to tell the story of herself and the late Cruso on their desert island before rescue. Friday, Crusoe's servant/slave and now hers (for whom she has forged a note stating he is freed), is a mute with no tongue. Just as Friday cannot tell his story, can Susan tell hers? Is it worth telling, or must Foe make it more interesting? Is it then her story? What was her real story?

Fascinating and clever--and I am SO glad I read Robinson Crusoe first! ( )
  Dreesie | Apr 12, 2016 |
Not my favorite Coetzee. The story didn't engage me the way other of his stories have. Perhaps I have a psychological block on the epistolary form--I don't care for the characters the way I should. ( )
  R3dH00d | Aug 26, 2014 |
At only 157 pages, Foe is a rather short novel that reinvents Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. While the novel is still set in the eighteenth century, a new character is introduced in the form of Susan Barton, a woman stranded on the same island as Robinson Crusoe, who is just 'Cruso' in this novel. Foe is divided into several parts. It starts by relating the life of Susan Barton, Cruso and Friday on the island. After the death of Cruso and the rescue of Friday and Barton, the female protagonist returns to England and wants Cruso's story to be told. As she does not consider herself creative enough to tell the story herself, she turns to the author Foe for help. This makes for the second part of the novel, which for the main part consists of letters of Barton to Foe. Throughout the whole novel, a strong focus is placed on the relationships between Susan Barton and the respective male characters, namely Cruso, Foe and Friday. This is especially true for the third and fourth part of the novel, which focus on the relationship between Susan Barton and Foe, on the one hand, and the protagonist's relationship to Friday on the other hand. Towards the ending, there is a twist in the story and it ends on a somewhat strange note.

Since I liked the original Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe a lot, I definitely wanted to give this novel a try. After finishing the novel, I still have not decided which reading of it I like most. Actually, the ending left me a little confused, which I find is a good quality in a book. The novel lends itself to several kinds of reading, the most prominent one probably placing a focus on words and language. As Friday had his tongue cut out by slavers, he is not able to speak and communication with him is only possible on a very low level. This theme is prevalent throughout the book. A second theme that I find quite intriguing is the different kinds of relationship between Susan Barton and the male characters in the book. Coetzee's choice to introduce a female character and thereby rewrite the story of Robinson Crusoe with a woman on the island provides a fresh and interesting perspective. To my mind, this almost begs for a gender reading of Foe.

What I especially liked about the novel is the perspective and the themes mentioned above. This novel is moving, interesting, different, thought-provoking, and beautifully composed. On the whole, 4 stars for this reading experience. ( )
1 vote OscarWilde87 | Aug 13, 2014 |
An odd little book, which will make no sense to you whatsoever if you haven't read Robinson Crusoe, and not all that much sense if you haven't read Moll Flanders, and even having read them both, I'm not sure how much sense it makes to me, since I know very little about Defoe's life. It is, however, an interesting meditation on the writer's life, particularly when it comes to 'speaking for' other people and so forth. If you care about that sort of thing, I guess you'd get something out of this. If you find that all a bit tedious, but still want to read a book by Coetzee about another author... go with the Master of Petersburg. ( )
  stillatim | Dec 29, 2013 |
I sell books for a living. Some customers, staff, friends, and I have a joke about a way that I encourage people to try a book: I give them a sort of verbal book "trailer" or preview, slightly facetious sometimes, at other times quite seriously pointing up a theme I want a particular reader to find in that book. Viz.:



CUSTOMER: Have you read Murakami's Dance Dance Dance? Is it good?

ME: How much do you like Kafka?

CUSTOMER: He's confusing, but I like his stuff.

ME: [pointing at the Murakami novel] Guy walks into a hotel. It looks different from last time. Last time, he was here with a lady. He wants to find the lady. This time, the hotel has a metaphysical floor with something strange going on. Madness ensues.



Or:



CUSTOMER: Should I really read Moby-Dick?

ME: You liked Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, right? [Customer nods] And you like books with main characters who are really observant and introspective, right?

CUSTOMER: So Ahab is like Nemo and - Ishmael is introspective?

ME: Yeah. It's the introspection that matters. That's why you read that book. Otherwise, the plot is pretty simple. Guy and a whale get in a fight. Whale pwns him. Guy swears revenge. Observer observes how this parallels the broader human condition. Madness, and a lot of detail about whale blubber, ensues.



Or:



11-YEAR-OLD CUSTOMER: Are Goosebumps books really scary?

ME: I thought you liked stuff like Anne of Green Gables.

CUSTOMER: But I want a scary book.

ME: Goosebumps books aren't really scary. Every single chapter is like, So me and my friend notice this thing. Aaagh! It's scary! Chapter 2: It's just the dog's shadow. But then we notice something else. Aaaagh! Chapter 3: It's Uncle George. But then we notice... blah blah blah.

CUSTOMER: Whatever. What's a scary book then?

ME: I know one about this girl who lived in the 1800's in England, and she wasn't married and she wasn't rich, so she had to be a teacher. Because that was basically it for girls back then, that or being a servant. So she gets this teaching job at this big old dark house teaching just one kid. It's weird, but it's a job. Then she starts hearing the crazy laughter. Then a fire breaks out. [dramatic pause] Madness ensues.



After hours, conferring with staff in a silly mood:

STAFF PERSON: ...and I said [insert three-sentence leader]. Madness ensues!

ANOTHER STAFF PERSON: If you were going to recommend [book], what would you say?

STAFF PERSON: [even shorter, and sillier, leader]. Madness ensues?

ANOTHER STAFF PERSON: What about the Bible?

STAFF PERSON: God said, Let there be light. Madness ensues!



I explain this so that you know how we tell stories, stories that you already know, in our manner, for our purposes. So that you know how I convey stories, since it is my life's place to purvey them. And so that, once you have read this mirroring mirror of a story, in which the human condition - a state of constantly trying to select and state context to explain the whither-we-will or whither-we-fall movements of our deep selves, before and inside and through the words - shews itself in the "truer" story of Crusoe told by a hitherto unknown witness, herself an unreliable narrator, you will see the story I saw in the story, told as truly as I can tell, which is to say, not with exactitude but with fortitude and honesty and, I think, a genuine love.



YOU: What did you think of "Foe"?

ME: Three Prosperos and a Caliban walk into a book. Madness ensues. ( )
2 vote Nialle | Jun 20, 2013 |
In general, I enjoy reading books which tell a well-known story from a different perspective. The Wide Sargasso Sea showed how using today's standards, Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre is a sexist, overbearing boor. And Gregory Maguire's Wicked is a brilliant and complex retelling of the children's classic The Wizard of Oz. But I felt there were many problems with Coetzee's Foe. This is a retelling of the classic Robinson Crusoe through the eyes of Susan Barton, a woman who is castaway on Crusoe's deserted island many years after Friday's arrival. The 3 are rescued and returned to England. Susan retells her story to a man named Daniel Foe, only her story is bleak, oppressive and filled with endless days of emptiness and despair. Friday's history and background remains unknown because his story can't be told - he is mute when someone (Crusoe possibly) removed his tongue. The story on it's own paints an interesting view of England at that time from the view of someone who is barely surviving. But the book had little to do with the original Robinson Crusoe and what was kept of the original book, changed the plot so drastically that I didn't feel that it gave me a different view of the same story. Instead, it was it's own story (mediocre from my point of view) that had snippets from the original. ( )
  jmoncton | Jun 3, 2013 |
Surprisingly subtle little book that manages to bring in all sorts of complicated ideas about freedom, individual identity, gender, and in particular about the way a written narrative constrains and shapes stories, and the ways writers mine memory, testimony and imagination. Coetzee presents us with plenty of questions to think about, but very few answers. Very nicely written: not pastiche 18th century English, but not intrusively anachronistic either.

More interesting than I expected. ( )
  thorold | Aug 18, 2012 |
Great, yet confusing... I love Coetzee's style and I like the way he takes Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and turns it into something different altogether. The book keeps you guessing all along, and it never becomes clear what is actually going on. Is Susan Barton crazy, is the girl really her daughter, is Foe playing a trick on her?
More than being a 'story' in which you actually get to find out what's going on, Coetzee focusses more on underlying questions. He explores what it means to be a writer, to 'have a voice', to deal with other people's stories. Added to this are questions of colonialism and slavery vs freedom, making it a complex book, which contains a lot of issues.
Though in a way this style of writing makes books diffcult to follow and often confuses, I very much like the way in which it forces you to think more deeply about the issues that are introduced. Whereas most novels can be read simply as stories, without going into the deeper layers, Foe is a novel that forces you into these deeper layers and entices you to think more seriously about what the writer really wants you to get from the book. ( )
  Britt84 | Jun 22, 2012 |
I knew nothing of this book before selecting it from a bookbox, but was intrigued when I saw on the blurb about its connection with Robinson Crusoe, a book I read years ago.

Coetzee takes the story of Robinson Crusoe, as told by Daniel Defoe and gives it a clever twist, that Defoe's source was Susan Barton, a woman who was on the island with Cruso (sic). Barton tells Foe of her struggle to find her daughter, who was kidnapped, in the New World, and of her arrival onto the island where Cruso and Friday have lived for many years.

There's more to the book than just a clever rewrite, there are underlying issues. As is said, history is told by the victor, and thus it is that the writer of a tale has the final say, with Foe cherrypicking his source's experiences. Barton loses control of her own story, with Foe's pen being mightier than her own voice. Parallels are drawn between her story and that of Friday's, a man who is unable to speak, robbed of his speech by slavers. Foe's world is a man's world, and a white man's world at that, with Barton and Friday both unable to express themselves, to get themselves heard. Barton uses what she can to try to save her daughter and get Foe to write her story, her femininity, the only tool she's got.

Foe is a marked departure from the other books I have read by the author (Disgrace, The Age of Iron, The Life and Times of Michael K), but for me can only solidify his position as a Nobel Prize winning author. ( )
2 vote soffitta1 | Jan 2, 2012 |
Susan Barton is on a quest to find her kidnapped daughter whom she knows has been taken to the New World. She is set adrift during a mutiny on a ship to Lisbon. When she comes ashore, she finds Friday and a Cruso who has grown complacent, content to forget his past and live his life on the island with Friday—tongueless by what Cruso claims to have been the act of former slave owners—in attendance. Arriving near the end of their residence, Barton is only on the island for a year before the trio is rescued, but the homesick Cruso does not survive the voyage to England. In England with Friday, Barton attempts to set her adventures on the island to paper, but she feels her efforts lack popular appeal. She tries to convince novelist Daniel Foe to help with her manuscript, but he does not agree on which of her adventures is interesting. Foe would prefer to write about her time in Bahia looking for her daughter, and when he does write on the story she wishes, fabulates about Cruso's adventures rather than relating her facts. Frustrating Barton's efforts further, Foe, who becomes her lover, is preoccupied with debt and has little time or energy to write about anything. Barton's story takes a twist with the return of someone claiming to be her missing daughter.

I don't get the ending at all--the themes of blacks without a voice I get, and that Susan Barton does not have a voice of her own, only as a provider of a story to Foe-- ( )
  Dottiehaase | Aug 15, 2011 |
I liked this story, must now read Robinson Crusoe! ( )
  siri51 | Jan 3, 2011 |
I have not read "Robinson Crusoe" but this did not prevent me from enjoying Coetzee's imagining of its creation. His writing is as impressive as ever and his careful rendering and interweaving of characters, themes, and symbols is complex and breathtaking. Susan, Cruso, Friday, Defoe, love, sex, motherhood, creative inspiration, loyalty, loss, and Africa are like tangram pieces, constantly shuffled and rearranged to explore the acts of writing and storytelling. ( )
  mdreid | Nov 12, 2010 |
This is my second shot at reading Coetzee. The first, Lives of Animals, wasn't enjoyable. Foe wasn't either. It's not the talent - he's definitely talented. It's more the tone. There was no warmth to the writing, no sense of welcome from the author to the reader. I'm used to that in other writers, but normally they'll write that way as almost a challenge to the reader. With Coetzee, I feel like it might be a total indifference and that's just unpleasant. Maybe I'm wrong though. I'm going to give him three strikes, so I'll have to ask around to get a suggestion on the book I should try. ( )
  Sean191 | Oct 4, 2010 |
I read Robinson Crusoe so that I could read this, as I had heard how wonderful it was. Reading the two so close together certainly provides added layers to Foe - it was fascinating to explore how Robinson Crusoe might really have lived, and how the original may really have been put together. This book highlighted the shifting nature of reality, and questioned whether we can really believe the reality of Crusoe's stay on the island that it put before us. Did he really live like that? Could he really have lived like that,taming the environment and living a relatively civilised life?

The idea that certain parts of the original, such as Crusoe's salvaging of crucial supplies, or the arrival of the 'cannibals', were fabrications of Defoe's meant to spice up the story a bit, is very interesting. How might we be being fooled by a fictioneer who is nominally telling the truth?

A really wonderful work by a true genius. ( )
  notmyrealname | Aug 21, 2010 |
J.M. Coetzee's "Foe" is, in many ways, the sort of modern literature that many readers love to hate. The novel has a plot – Susan Barton, the novel's narrator, gets shipwrecked on an island with a mysterious man named Cruso and his slave, Friday, and struggles to tell her story – but if you were feeling uncharitable you could argue that all of this is just a vehicle for Coetzee to investigate the nature of storytelling. For what it's worth, this little book a formidable intellectual exercise, maybe one of the densest, most intricately constructed novels I've ever read. Cruso's island becomes an analogue for colonialism, capitalism, and maybe a few other isms. As another reviewer has noted, Friday's silence hangs over the book like a puzzle and a curse, and the narrator's attempts to ascertain the nature of his consciousness becomes the book's central quest. Later in the book, Susan also fights to present her experience accurately to both Cotzee's readers and Mr. Foe, or rather, Daniel Defoe, as he struggles to make it fit to narrative convention. This book is highly recommended to grad school students looking to struggle with postmoden ideas who just don't have the time to go through all seven hundred or so pages of Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow."

This review's in danger of becoming nothing more than reportage of "Foe's" themes and major conflicts, but that wouldn't really do the book justice. I was surprised at how pretty, and how human, Coetzee's novel could be, unusual in a genre that many readers consider unpleasantly dry and didactic. Susan Barton's not exactly a likable character, but she's still more than an empty vessel for the author's ideas. Her desire for independence, her loneliness, and her confusion all seemed genuine and were, at times, genuinely affecting. "Foe's" written in consciously antiquated language, but you never get the impression that Coetzee's showing off, and his descriptions of Cruso's island have a certain somber, windswept grandeur. This novel's a supremely economical piece of work, lending it a sense of honesty and directness that's sometimes absent in similarly high-flown literary endeavors. This was my second time through "Foe," but there's enough here to merit further rereading. I can honestly say that I look forward to picking it up again a few years from now to see what else it yields. ( )
1 vote TheAmpersand | Feb 14, 2010 |
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Penguin Australia

2 editions of this book were published by Penguin Australia.

Editions: 0241950112, 0141399384

 

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