Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee

With snow falling and covering the country in a blanket of white, it’s a perfect excuse to stay at home, curled up in the warm with a good book.  And for some reason it’s at times like these that I would ideally pick up a classic novel and immerse myself within its pages.  However, despite my instincts, instead I reached for the next Booker, and although it can be a rather unpredictable process, thankfully J.M. Coetzee’s second Booker-winning novel was actually a treat.  I read this book in pretty much one sitting, mainly because it’s quite short but also because it was captivating.

The story follows Michael K a black South African who has a cleft lip and since being born, even by his mother, has been judged as having learning difficulties due to this deformity.  He is placed in an institution by his mother as a child and grows up to become a gardener.  However, his mother becomes ill and he agrees to take his mother from Cape Town, back to where she grew up in the countryside.  They encounter many obstacles in their improvised ricksaw, due to apartheid, the civil war and his mother dying en route, but he remains committed to burying her ashes on the farm where she grew up.

He tries to forge a life for himself living off the land, not bothering anyone else and yet people involved in the civil war keep bothering him and interfering with his life telling him what to do and physically removing him to various institutions where they try to dictate what should be important to him.  He is admitted to a medical ward at a rehabilitation camp and the medical officer struggles with his emotions of compassion towards this malnourished man with a cleft lip.  He struggles to understand, and yet respects how Michael K seems to live outside of the trivialities of the ‘wheel of history’.

This is a simple story told by simple story-telling about a simple man, which manages to be totally engaging, emotionally impacting and enriching, so that it makes you reflect on what is truly important in life.  A very affecting, sometimes heart-wrenching, book that will have me reflecting on the issues raised within its pages for a considerable amount of time to come.