Scenes from Provincial Life

Summertime "This is the third instalment of a life so reserved, so repressed, so seething with polite rage and restrained despair that it could only be approached through a third-person voice... it is wonderful stuff. But then, Coetzee is wonderful: edgy, black, remoreselessly human, witty, and often outright funny... "-- Irish Times "Boyhood "This life is described with such skill, such exactitude and such relentlessness that I found myself gasping for air... Coetzee has achieved something universal in his work... a fine book, probably the best description of a childhood I have ever read." "--The Times" Youth "Only a writer as great as J. M. Coetzee is capable of infusing meditation on the spoilt hope of youth with such clarity, flency and poise... The quality of the writing and its unflinching truthfulness make it exhilarating." "--Daily Mail"