![]() ![]() ![]() Lacuna is narrated from Lucy’s perspective and she herself is the lacuna, the empty space that dares to speak up and talk back, reclaiming her own story. The aforementioned rape happens while he is visiting his daughter Lucy’s farm. Disgrace is told from the close third-person perspective of David Lurie, a white college professor in Cape Town who has disgraced himself in an affair with one of his students. ![]() I picked up my old paperback copy of Disgrace recently before diving into Fiona Snyckers’s Lacuna, a novel in deep “intertextual conversation” with Coetzee’s original work. I also remembered its tone the novel is told in a flat, understated but precise prose that makes it feel impossible to argue with either the book’s literary quality or its moral authority. I first read Disgrace back in college, and I remembered the book mostly for its harrowing depiction of the main character’s daughter being sexually assaulted during a home invasion on an isolated farm. The friend reported that the book, published in 1999, had caused a fervor upon its publication, that many South Africans considered the work to be racist, and that the vitriol was believed to have prompted Coetzee’s subsequent decision to emigrate to Australia. Several years ago during a dinner party at my home, a friend from South Africa noticed that I had a copy of J.M. Please note, this review contains mentions of sexual assault. ![]()
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