Boyhood: Scenes From Provincial Life [Paperback]

J. M. Coetzee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1998

Coetzee grew up in a new development north of Cape Town, tormented by guilt and fear. With a father he despised, and a mother he both adored and resented, he led a double life--the brilliant and well-behaved student at school, the princely despot at home, always terrified of losing his mother's love. His first encounters with literature, the awakenings of sexual desire, and a growing awareness of apartheid left him with baffling questions; and only in his love of the high veld ("farms are places of freedom, of life") could he find a sense of belonging. Bold and telling, this masterly evocation of a young boy's life is the book Coetzee's many admirers have been waiting for, but never could have expected.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Until writing this book, the author of Waiting for the Barbarians and other acclaimed novels has remained determinedly private about the personal experiences that sparked his writing. In Boyhood, describing his youth in the third person, J. M. Coetzee limns the halting struggle toward maturity of a sensitive, bookish boy contemptuous of his weak father who yearns--and fears--to loosen a powerful attachment to his mother. He evokes the narrowness and cruelty of South African society in the years following World War II with the same austere yet passionate prose that distinguishes his fiction. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this slim, interesting volume, Coetzee, a South African writer distinguished both as a novelist (Master of St. Petersburg, LJ 9/1/94) and an essayist (Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship, LJ 3/15/96), reflects about who he is and why he writes as he does. Using third-person narration, these "scenes" read more like a novella than a true autobiography. Coetzee develops his character, a young boy on the verge of adolescence, through a richly detailed interior monolog. Trying to make sense of his place in his family, his parents' unhappy marriage, his conflicting needs for nurturance and independence from his mother, and his complicated feelings about the racially segregated society in which he lives, Coetzee struggles with basic questions of identity and purpose. The honest intensity he uses to examine his thoughts and actions leads to a foundation of self-understanding and confidence from which the writer was formed. Well recommended for writing programs and collections in general and multicultural literature.?Denise S. Sticha, Seton Hill Coll. Lib., Greensburg, Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 014026566X
• ISBN-13: 978-0140265668
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #113,757 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #7 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > African > Central & South African
  • #32 in Books > History > Africa > South Africa

More About the Author

J.M. Coetzee's work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Foe, and Slow Man, among others. He has been awarded many prizes, including the Booker Prize (twice). In 2003, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An unsentimental childhood, June 3, 2000

By 

Lindsay van Niekerk - See all my reviews

This review is from: Boyhood: Scenes From Provincial Life (Paperback)

Having grown up in Cape Town in the 1960's at a time before apartheid was rigorously enforced, JM Coetzee's account of his boyhood, while on the surface austere and aparently joyless, was pure pleasure for me to read. I revelled in the absolute accuracy of his descriptions and the ruthless, heartless honesty of a child who must function in a world that is often alien and confusing. It brought back numerous incidents of my own childhood - the stuff that nowadays is unacceptable to disclose. Along with Tobias Wolf's This Boys Life and Truffaut's The 400 Blows, Boyhood is a wonderfully honest record of childhood.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spare, but wonderfully insightful, September 18, 2002

By 

J. F Malysiak "macafferty" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Boyhood: Scenes From Provincial Life (Paperback)

Touching, illuminative, and compulsively readable, the first volume of South African writer J.M. Coetzee's "autobiography" is a wonderful introduction to the writer if you aren't familiar with him (as I wasn't). His prose style is spare but descriptive, and conveys South Africa in the late '40s and early '50s as seen through the eyes of a child. Not big on "plot," but based more upon observation, Boyhood is a quiet triumph.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A killing-you-softly tale, December 15, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Boyhood: Scenes From Provincial Life (Paperback)

Not quite a memoir, not quite fiction, Boyhood is elegant and powerful in the way of J.M. Coetzee's novels, only more so. A white boy growing up in post-WW2 South Africa may not appear an awfully exciting proposition. But this is not quite a book on South Africa, either. Its images will disturb you, lead you astray: at times Boyhood reads like a darkly intriguing fairy-tale. The detached third-person narrative has surprising effects: the story becomes more moving, the thinking more probing. Perhaps the truly African ingredient here is the passion beneath the simple sentences on common enough childhood experiences. A rare book that will tug at your heart, despite the author's reputation for "austerity" and "intellectually forbidding" writing.