Giữa miền đất ấy, một miền hoang, trần trụi, cay nghiệt và cô đơn.
Cầm cuốn sách trên tay, lật giở, gấp mở rất nhiều lần vì sự chán chường, ảm đạm của nó, thì mới biết, tồn tại trong một hoang mạc bị lãng quên bởi thế giới loài người khó khăn đến nhường nào. Ở chốn rộng lớn này, mọi thứ dường như nằm ngoài quy luật loài người, mọi thứ đều được cho phép và cũng không gì bị trừng phạt. Tất cả chảy vào một hố sâu, bị chôn chặt vào quên lãng. Cả hy vọng lẫn tuyệt vọng đều tồn tại có chừng mực, đôi khi lẫn lộn.

This was my first Coetzee read. It's quite disturbing, and when I first started reading his other books, I was disappointed that they were not similarly disturbing. But  Disgrace is just as uncomfortable - it just doesn't read that way throughout since it's written from the point of view of somebody very much like the author.

“It is possible that I am prisoner not of the lonely farmhouse and the stone desert but of my stony monologue”.

I suspect that the day the day was missing I was not there; and if that is so I shall never know how the day was filled. For i seem to exist more and more intermittently. Whole hours, whole afternoons go missing...Once I lived in time like a fish in water, breathing it, drinking it, sustained by it. Now I kill time and it kills me.

The narrator’s imagination is so strong, the line between reality and fiction blurs. The reader is never sure if what is happening is happening in the bounds of reality or her imagination. The narrator is aware of this and addresses it more than once:

The voices speak: “Lacking all external enemies and resistances, confined within an oppressive narrowness and regularity, man at last has no choice but to turn himself into an adventure.” They accuse me, if I understand them, of turning my life into a fiction, out of boredom. They accuse me...of making myself more violent, more various, more racked with torment than I really am, as though I were reading myself like a book, and found the book dull, and put it aside and began to make myself up instead...It is not in rebellion against true oppression that I have made my history but in reaction against the tedium of serving my father.

From the beginning of the novel, where the murder of her father and his new wife is suddenly revealed to be imaginary, when her father walks through the door and back into the narrative; to the very end, the narrator draws the reader in at the same time as ensuring one is never sure if what is happening, is actually happening.

I read this book in one single sitting. It took me 5 hours, bloodshot eyes and a splitting headache, and I'd do it all over again just to experience the emotional torpedo it is.

Coetzee's work is bedazzling. His command of language - razor sharp, Lycra tight; the sheer muscle force of his imagery, and the tight, vide-like grip he holds over every word on a page is the stuff of masters.

This book is startling.

Covers similar ground to Disgrace, but while Disgrace is polished and clear, Heart is more obscure. Coetzee explores the unreliable narrator and paragraphs are numbered as though marked in a diary where usual timestamps are not obeyed. Violent and unsettling throughout.

La historia narra la vida de Magda en una finca alejada de todos, Magda vive con su papá y Hendrick un criado negro, la vida empieza a cambiar cuando Hendrick lleva a la casa a su nueva esposa, una mujer llamada Ana (una niña casi), el papá de Magda se siente atraido por esta nueva mujer y es aca donde empieza la historia.
la verdad lo que no me gusto de la historia fue no entender que era real o no, ni siquiera en este momento estoy segura de ello, lei algunas reseñas para entender mas el libro y algunos consideraban que Magda estaba loca, lo que me hace mucho sentido, pero que siento que Coetzee no logro transmitirlo por si mismo, o si en verdad esa era su intencion. para mi la historia no tiene ni principio ni fin, no le veo una linea del tiempo clara, no entiendo porque Magda nunca se caso, sus condiciones personales de vida, que edad tenia, nada.
Estuve tentada a dejarlo varias veces pero queria saber que pasaria con ella en todo el cumulo de historias que habian en intermedio, y que uno que otro parrafo eran buenos y podia pensar en las palabras dichas.
recomiendo a este libro a personas que hayan disfrutado libros de filosofia y que no les importa que la historia no tenga una linea clara en su escrito, sino el trasfondo de las palabras y las frases cortas y profundas.

Well, that was just the feel-good read of the year, wasn't it?

Jesus.

I don't often read books like this, and, even now, I can't even begin to describe what that category actually is. I remember reading Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure and fucking hating it. It was so filled with misery without the slightest attempt of hope or reason or a remote coming-and-going of happiness. It read like an endurance test. And I noticed some similarities between the general depressing tone of Jude The Obscure and In The Heart Of The Country. But J.M. Coetzee succeeded where Hardy failed by making the protagonist strangely engaging and sympathetic. I don't know how he did it, because...that bitch was straight-up nuts. However, I have to admit that I was generally intrigued by Magda.

The narrative was very first-person, given that there wasn't much dialogue, and I find that that style usually ends up sounding like a long, long half-assed diary entry. It was way more tell than show and it only worked because of the poetry style of narration. If it had been a stream of consciousness of complaining, I would've considered taking vengeance on the novel. But, instead, it reads like a long, really good Emily Dickenson poem (and I never actually dug her work). It provided a stillness of life that I don't often observe or acknowledge. I can't imagine any of us raised in the city or the suburbs having the patience to live on that South African farm because there's so very little culture and entertainment. Seriously, she did nothing. All she had was her insanity. If she didn't have her insanity, she would have killed herself out of boredom. Her misery and insanity gave her something, which was actually a pretty intriguing concept. Kids can have imagination, sure, but what if you lived in a place where that wasn't enough? What if you had to have an imagination that was so uncontrolled to survive the boredom that it had to become absolute madness?

I certainly did find the book exhausting though. Oh my god. I would look at it like a chore I had to do. But then once I was reading it, I'd remember how oddly intrigued I was by the narrator and how spectacularly impressed I was with the writing. It was a give-and-take feeling. If I came home from a long day at work, I'd tell the book to go fuck itself and read something else. Really, that 138 pages felt like 1,000. The novella probably aged me. Coetzee can write though. That dude can seriously spin some words.

I don't know how well-developed I'd consider the character of Magda, as her past doesn't often make an appearance (though I really liked the end when she asks her dead father if he remembers her favorite moments on the farm). I would've liked to know more about her childhood, but maybe that would've taken away from the main theme of feeling like goddamn crap. But one of the best moments of the book is when she talks about how happy she was playing with Arthur (page 48). You know every thought she has, sure, but how she came to be her wasn't really there. Then again, maybe who she used to be was always who she is so it didn't matter. I don't know, people. I'm not a fucking scientist.

BEST PART OF THE BOOK: My favorite part of the book was only two pages, I think. It's towards the end when the Spanish voices start coming from above. It lasts for a while, but she's still insane when she's dissecting what they mean and how the messages are relevant. However, there's, like, two pages where she starts yelling back and it seems like she's the sanest in that instant because she believes she's refusing the messages. But there's a speech coming from the "sky-gods" and she screams, "Spanish filth!" It was so relieving to see Magda divide herself up into two minds, one crazy and one sane. After spending the entire book in misery and isolation, she comes into her own sanity for a brief moment and refuses the crazy within her and she does it with gusto. It gave me a rather quick instant of awesome hope. I was honestly stoked for her. Her insanity actually cured her madness, I thought! But...it was short-lived.

I give this book three stars too because, honestly, Coetzee wrote an entire novella on misery and made it refreshing. However, I can't imagine why I'd ever reread this book unless I was tucked away in a cabin for the winter and wanted to get weird. I enjoyed an in-depth look at a character's constant feelings, but there wasn't too much of a plot for me to get into.

RANDOM LINES I FOUND INTRIGUING:

"I am not a happy peasant. I am a miserable black virgin, and my story is my story, even if it is a dull black blind stupid miserable story, ignorant of its meaning and of all its many possible untapped happy variants." (page 5) - I thought this sentence summed her up the best, and it was the first instance where I thought, this bitch is gonna be trouble.

..."whom I would vow to bend to a little lower, slave for a little harder than another woman in the dark, so as not to alarm him, and arouse, if the arts of arousal can be learned, and guide to the right hole, rendered penetrable with a gob of chickenfat from a pot at the bedside, and endure the huffing and puffing of, and be filled eventually, one expects, with seed by, and lie listening to the snoring of, til the balm of slumber arrive." (page 42) - She's as awkward horny as you can get and this description of sex was very...her. It made me feel awful inside.

"I must not fall asleep in the middle of my life." (page 43) - It's one quiet moment where she admits she's unhappy and wants to be happy in a way that weighs more on the joy than the desolation.

"The sex is smaller than I thought it would be, almost lost in a bush of black hair straggling up to the navel: a pale boy, a midget, a dwarf, an idiot son who, having survived for years shut away in the cellar, tasting only bread and water, talking to the spiders, singing to himself, is one night dressed in new clothes, set free, made much of, pampered, feasted, and then executed. Poor little thing." (page 69) - I was pretty impressed with this description of a man's junk. This also made me feel terrible.

If you ever wanted to give an example of an unreliable narrator, Magda from In The Heart of the Country would be it. This is a novel intended to challenge, provoke and confuse. Magda is a white woman (sometimes young, sometimes old) living on a very rural farm in South Africa, the daughter of a hard and emotionally enclosed (potentially abusive) man.

As the novel moves along, Magda’s repetition of certain themes/concepts are the only aspects we know with some certainty: her bitterness towards a neglectful father, her jealousy of any woman he spends time with, her attraction to Hendrick, her very low self-image, and her growing insanity.

Everything else is uncertain. There are three (possibly more) instances of Magda’s father dying, references to sex that are both assault and consensual, and flashbacks that we aren’t sure are memories or wishes.
Yet, it’s clear Magda is suffering. She is an intelligent woman denied a purpose and a chance to self-actualize, an existential crisis that spirals into derangement.

The novel also deals heavily with colonialism and race, reminding me of Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing. Magda, despite her race and position in the household, consistently refers to herself as a slave, conflating her situation with the servants. Is she justified in doing so? Yes and no. While she comes from a place of privilege, it’s clear she is socially constricted. She spends so much of the book focusing on her failure to be what society expects a woman to be – a “good” wife, a mother – and on how she feels she has failed in life because she hasn’t “given herself over” to be a wife to some man who will make excessive sexual demands of her. She correlates sex with power and is confused when other women show sexual desire. She has desire for one of the servants, which also confuses her, as she is not supposed to see him as anything but hired help.

In truth, I felt sorry for her. As much as her perspective grated on me (and at times I wanted to shake her), I understood the social climate in which she was trapped. She claims she has “freedom” (in that she lives off the grid without anyone to gaze upon her), but it’s clear she does not. If her relationship with Hendrik even happened, it is parallel to what she suffered under her father – she considers abuse to be affection and is confused by her unhappiness within it.

This is not a “fun” read, but an exercise. I’m glad I read it, but I’ll likely never again.

Some nice lines though:
"I am corrupted to the bone with the beauty of this forsaken world."

No coração da África do Sul, no centro de uma fazenda escondida do mundo, Coetzee montou uma narrativa perturbadora, plena de ambiente.

É este ambiente que destaco como ponto forte: o cheiro da terra, o som, a cor e uma personagem central fortíssima que consegue criar uma relação próxima com o leitor.

Contudo, se por um lado essa proximidade nos conduz à compreensão do seu pensamento, é também esse mesmo factor que nos leva a perder grande parte do interesse pela obra.

Todo o ambiente é completamente estraçalhado pelo amontoar de dúvidas, questões e sado-masoquismo da personagem príncipal.

Somos constantemente afogados em dúvidas que quebram o ritmo da narrativa. Se de início ainda há a tentativa vã de compreende-las, ao fim de algumas páginas, damos por nós a ler em velocidade cruzeiro e a deixá-las para a personagem principal.

Parti para este livro com expectativas elevadas, mas dei por mim a ser perseguido por uma amálgama verdadeiramente absurda de questões que, ao invés de espevitarem a minha vontade de leitura, travavam-na ao ponto de ser penoso dar a mão à personagem principal.

Nota: 2.0/5.0

I liked this. It's interesting to read such an early Coetzee work and see the early development of a style and of ideas that are so recognizable from his classics. This book is not as good as something like Disgrace or The Life and Times of Michael K for example but it is recognizably from the same author in a way that I found interesting. In the Heart of the Country is maybe not as refined or polished as his best books but there's definitely parts of it where his prose is as striking and unforgiving as anything in his later works. Much of what I like so much about Disgrace can certainly be found here: it is ambiguous, subtly political, thoughtfully understated and detail-oriented but with so much emotion threatening to explode under the surface. There's no catharsis in a Coetzee novel. The prose is brimming with all this passion but he allows it to build up and frustrate, leaving the reader grasping for some kind of resolution. The closest we get in In the Heart of the Country is in a scene near the end of the book when Magda confronts Hendrik in an explosive rant about her loneliness, sexual desires and insecurities, but right after her speech, the very next line is "where was it in this torrent of pleas and accusations that he walked out?" It reminds me of the scene in Disgrace where the daughter asks her father if hatred and violence doesn’t make sex more thrilling for him, and he quickly changes the subject, leaving the accusation hanging awkwardly in the air. In In the Heart of the Country, he accentuates this by dividing the book into a series of 250-odd numbered sections, none much longer than a paragraph or two. For the most part they are broadly continuous, but there are moments in the book where Coetzee very deliberately juxtaposes the sections for interesting effect. There's moments where Coetzee describes multiple versions of the same event, leaving it unclear which version is true and which imagined. There's another moment about halfway through the novel that I love, as Hendrik helps Magda deal with the dead body of her father. After several sections of the two of them working on cleaning the room containing the body, Coetzee writes:

"156. [...] We shove the room off. Slowly it rises into the air, a ship of odd angles sailing black against the stars. Into the night, into empty space it floats, clumsily, since it has no keel. We stand in the dust and mice droppings, on ground where no sun has shone, watching it.

157. We pick up the body and carry it into the bathroom, Hendrik taking the shoulders, I the legs."

The structure of the book allows Coetzee to make this sudden switch, starting from the fantastical image of a room gently floating away and then jerking the reader into a cold description of laboriously disposing of a body. I read that Coetzee chose this structure because he was inspired by the technique of montage in cinema, and wanted a way of accentuating everything that he leaves unwritten, between the sections. The juxtaposition from 156-157 I think is a good example of what makes this technique so interesting. There's a real ambiguity to the narrative, and even by the end of the book we're not clear on what's happened and what was imagined, who's dead and who's alive, etc. Magda's father is killed and comes back to life on two different occasions. I'm sure there's more to it, but I think the structure of the book foregrounds that ambiguity in a way that makes it more striking. We implicitly assume continuity between paragraphs in a regular book but Coetzee's decision to number the paragraphs breaks that continuity and it makes it easier for him to snap us back and forth between imagination and reality, past and present.

It reminded me a lot of The Life and Times of Michael K in that respect. I read an essay about the theme of time in The Life and Times of Michael K. There's a quote apparently in Coetzee's essay collection Doubling the Point in which he distinguishes between "historical awareness" and the "eschatological" conception of time. The former sees the past as real and continuous with the present; in the latter, there is only ever an infinite present. Coetzee was apparently inspired by a short story of Kafka's called The Burrow as an example of eschatological time, writing that "in The Burrow, time does not move through transition phases. There is one moment and then there is another moment; between them is simply a break. No amount of watchfulness will reveal how one moment becomes another; all we know is that the next moment happens." As such, "life consists in an attempt to anticipate a danger that cannot be anticipated because it comes without transition, without warning." This is a major theme in The Life and Times of Michael K, in which the main character escapes from "historical time" by digging a burrow in the hills and simply living moment to moment, attempting to withdraw from the bureaucracy and state of emergency of apartheid South Africa. The numbered paragraphs in In The Heart of the Country strikes me as a way to convey this same phenomenon of eschatological time. The abrupt juxtaposition of the paragraphs evokes that same idea of an eternal present without continuity or transition. It's probably easy as the reader to explain all the narrative inconsistencies in the novel as being caused by the narrator Magda going mad, but that might be too simplistic for a book in which time simply does not operate in a smooth, continuous, historical fashion. Magda talks about this herself near the end of the book. "Perhaps I am wrong to picture time as a river flowing from infinite to infinite bearing me with it like a cork or a twig, [...] perhaps there is no time, perhaps I am deceived when I think of my medium as time, perhaps there is only space, and I a dot of light moving erratically from one point in space to another, skipping years in a flash, now a frightened child in the corner of a schoolroom, now an old woman with knobbly fingers, that is also possible." In his essay, Coetzee talks about how historical time is manufactured in order to ease the anxiety of eschatological time; the main character in The Burrow can not anticipate danger because there can be no prior warnings in a system of eschatological time where moments simply occur at random. Being able to anticipate an event necessarily requires some continuity between the past, present and future. As a result, the character in The Burrow tries to manufacture historical time to address this. I'm not sure I follow the significance of this idea when applied to the context of apartheid South Africa. In any case, it's an evocative technique when applied to the character of Magda. I'm not sure this is the point, but I think her isolation and inability to connect with others is nicely captured by the lack of temporal continuity in the novel. As she says herself, she's simply a "dot of light moving erratically from one point in space to another."

It's worth mentioning that I read the version of the book published in South Africa, where all the dialogue is written in Afrikaans. I don't speak Afrikaans but I speak Dutch, and the two are more or less mutually intelligible. I'm glad I read it this way and I think it contributed in a way to my understanding of the book. It certainly contributed to that same feeling of ambiguity at least, in that it added another layer of fog to my understanding of the narrative. I had to laugh at the end of the book when Magda starts trying to communicate with the Spanish machines and is inexplicably able to understand them despite not speaking Spanish, the same way I was able to understand Magda despite not speaking Afrikaans. More to the point, Coetzee probably chose to write the dialogue in Afrikaans because, as far as I understand, Afrikaans was considered the language of apartheid and white supremacy during the days of apartheid. I'm glad I was able to read it in Afrikaans, just for its added significance in the context of the racial politics of the novel.

Coetzee books are quite difficult a lot of the times and again I'm sure a lot's gone over my head. But nevertheless I just like the way he writes. You can tell that this is an earlier work of his and there's moments I don't like as much (what was the point of the Spanish god-machines in the sky at the end?). But his description of the countryside in particular remains striking. The symbolic significance of the insect motif wasn't always clear to me, but regardless it's a unique touch that adds a really striking texture to his prose.

This book FUCKED WITH MY HEAD. I mean, as a reader I'm usually the metaphorical pervert in the corner waiting for something seedy to happen but this, THIS was even beyond my voyeristic interests.

Even though Magda is clearly past her prime I couldn't help but see her as a child, a really fucked up child, but a child nonetheless. So when she has that opening fantasy where she's hanging out in front of her dad's door naked I felt like a pedophile. She's completely helpless but she's amazingly self aware. As a character she's all at once crazy and very accutely aware that she's not normal, which is a bit jarring. She's almost like a two headed snake because she has this totally crazy and completely helpless side but she also has this raving mad, i'm gonna shove my dad in a grave so the flies will get the fuck out side. Coetzee seems to be repeatedly suggesting that it's Magda's lack of sex that makes her crazy (as exhibited by her using chicken fat as lube... What.The.Fuck.), and I suppose the fact that her only experience with sex by the end is repeated rape doesn't help to set her mind straight at all. I feel like I'm not doing it justice because by the time she started burrying her father I tried not to dig too deep into her psyche for fear of throwing up all over the pages. But I still wanted to know EVERYTHING. Because I'm a sick, sad little lady. I swear though, if she ended up raping that little kid as an old woman at the end I would have thrown the book in the trash... too bold Coetzee, too bold. I had the most grotesque image of a wiley eyed old lady doing the insert penis in vagina fingers and it MIGHT have scarred me for life.

I'm still unsure how I feel about any of the characters, but maybe that's what Coetzee is trying to get at. The big question is are they truly evil or are they victim of circumstance? I think that's an overwhelming question in a setting like South Africa where you have these racial divides and these social stigmas that they can't help but try to keep. But then you get into the undertones and how there are moments where Magda will say one thing but mean another and Hendrik will respond to the former with his words but the latter with his smile, etc. So did she shoot her father because she felt she was correcting an evil act he committed by sleeping with Anna? Did she shoot him because she's simply bat shit crazy? Is daddy a hard ass because he has to be or is he just kind of a dick? Did Hendrik help her burry the master because he still felt bound to serve or simply because he hoped to get paid? Or was it because he was pissed that someone else was banging his wifey? And was Anna sleeping with the master because she really had no choice or is she just a dirty little slut? Coetzee makes her out to be such a timid little child but I feel like these questions are open for interpretation with each character.

The whole book was just, ugly. Coetzee did an amazing job showing distaste for just about everything. There's a scene where she puts on pink slippers and his description of them made me think, "ew, she nasty." But I love that because there is nothing likeable about anyone or anything in this book. The people are all shitty and if not shitty then there's still nothing to like about them (I know I question whether or not they're evil but that's a big step away from shitty... I think).

I think that this was a really interesting follow up to The Body Artist because it was almost a total contrast. You don't really get to know the characters in the body artist and you don't really care to (but you want to care... you just can't), but you get to know Magda SO well through her self awareness and personally, I could have done with less. It's also a really interesting contrast to the style of narrative used in each because I think Chris was right, the incomplete sentences and the jumbled nonsensical thoughts coming from The Body Artist were very accurate to the way we think, but it still made it hard to read. This was so complete and overly self aware that I found myself thinking "there's no way she's got all of this happening in her head like this" but I found out so much more.

I also wanted to mention how ridiculously cool Coetzee's use of repetition is in this book. It's one of the ways that he fully acknowledges Magda's insanity. We learn about an event for the first time and that account is immediately discredited by a 2nd and 3rd version of the same story. No event is given more credit than the next and we are left to decide which version is the truest, if any are true at all.

The last book I read by Coetzee (aptly titled "Disgrace") was just as miserable, but there's something about the way he writes, somehow draws me in and all at once disgusts and intrigues me. I think that poetic is a pretty accurate description, which is also why I think it feels so exhausting to read. At times it's not just that she's crazy, it's that Coetzee writes in such an abstract or unnatural way that you really have to work to figure out what the fuck he's talking about. But somehow I want to know more about this filthy farm in South Africa where people shoot their dads and speak shitty Spanish. That's where I think Coetzee comes out on top. He succeeds in making the reader WANT to know about such ugly people in such an ugly place where there is no hope, only blood, fire, flies and probably some really shitty coffee.

All in all I gave it a 3, I feel like Coetzee almost wants you to hate the book because he wants you to hate South Africa in that setting and all of the shit that happens there. Besides that, the whole not knowing exactly how to feel about the characters kinda made me not sure about how I should feel about the book as a whole.

One thing is for sure, that Coetzee thoroughly succeeded in grossing me the fuck out.

The lines:

"But who would give me a baby, who would not turn to ice at the spectacle of my bony frame on the wedding couch, the coat of fur up to my navel, the acrid cavities of my armpits, the line of black moustache, the eyes, watchful, defensive, of a woman who has never lost possession of herself?" - Ya right, I'd totally hit it.

"This monologue of the self is a maze of words out of which I shall not find a way until someone else gives me a lead. I roll my eyeballs, I pucker my lips, I stretch my ears, but the face in the mirror is my face and will go on being mine even if i hold it in the fire till it drips. No matter with what frenzy I live the business of death or wallow in blood and soapsuds, no matter what wolf howls i hurl into the night, my acts, played out within the macabre theatre of myself, remain mere behaviour. I offend no one, for there is no one to offend but the servants and the dead." - This simply blew my mind.

"It cannot be otherwise, if i am simply sucking this history out of my thumb how am i to explain those three wooden benches stacked at the far end of the room, and the easel behind them on which Jakob used to hang his coat?" - I feel like this is one of her rare moments of sanity, where she's questioning how she sees things and so she grips onto something mundane to regain some concept of reality.

"Here in the middle of nowhere i can expand to infinity just as i can shrivel to the size of an ant. Many things I lack, but freedom is not one of them." - Again, so good.

Only 139 pp but w/ dense and convoluted sentences acting as speed-bumps the entire way. Dark, difficult. If Olive Shreiner and Faulkner had a baby, and also the baby was insane, this is the book it would write