The Pole & Other Stories (J M Coetzee, Text) 

Aficionados of South African-Australian Nobel and Booker Prize-winning author J M Coetzee will be delighted with his new short fiction collection, The Pole & Other Stories. It explores philosophy and animal rights advocacy, and muses about ageing, death and the afterlife. All the stories feature a female protagonist. Readers of Coetzee’s 2003 novel Elizabeth Costello will enjoy four more stories about the eponymous Australian writer and lecturer. Now in her declining senior years, Elizabeth reveals much about growing old to John, her perennially faithful son. Like many of the stories in The Pole, the final tale ‘The Dog’, has been previously published elsewhere. It is a short, standalone piece about a woman who feels harassed by an aggressive dog. ‘The Pole’, the extended title story, is a fine, reflective literary work that will intrigue, abrase and tease. Beatriz, a graceful, stately beauty, works and lives in Barcelona. She hosts a concert for an ageing Polish pianist with a name she deems unpronounceable. The Pole sees himself in the role of the grand romantic poet Dante with Beatriz as Dante’s muse, Beatrice. Beatriz does not appreciate the Pole’s interpretation of Chopin or his ardent pursuit of her. She remains detached even after their tryst, until she receives the Pole’s posthumous poems and finally sees him ‘in his full selfhood’. This story is written with an elegance of expression that acts as a deliberate veneer to cover (or expose) the emotion, messiness and unpredictability of life. It epitomises ‘the art of fiction’.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Joy Lawn has worked for independent bookshops and blogs at Paperbark Words. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Reviews