Book Review: "The Childhood of Jesus" by JM Coetzee

I'm going to have to break it to you here and now: I have not read much JM Coetzee. I have read a little bit. I read Disgrace, which is often considered his masterpiece though I didn't considered much of it compared to his book Slow Man which is pretty good and goes along well with another book if you're reading Saramago's Blindness any time soon. Next, I think I read The Death of Jesus some time ago and remembering not really thinking much of it. I have kept trying again with JM Coetzee because though I do not think too much of him, I definitely do not dislike him. I think his stories are fascinating, but there is so much symbolism that there is normally no room for introspection, analysis and having those thoughts about what he actually meant. It is almost too apparent as Animal Farm is about its criticism of the Soviet Union.

The Childhood of Jesus is about an immigrant system in which the immigrants arrive and their memories are wiped clean. They start life with a new name, a new identity, new everything. All they still have left is their stuff and themselves. 'David' is one of the main characters of this book and so is 'Simon' (I told you it was too obvious, did I not?) There is also an unnamed child involved which belongs to 'David'. 'Simon' states that he will help 'David' find his mother. He admits it will be nearly impossible since they do not know what she looks like, where she is and they do not know what 'David's' real name is.

As the story progresses, there is almost a Brave New World quality to it in which the authorities are starting to see that this 'David' is a disturbance to public order as everyone seems to love him unconditionally and for no reason (of course, this is relative to faith). I liked the depth of the part concerning looking for 'David's' mother, and I think this is possibly the best written part of the whole book - but where Coetzee falls a little bit flat is in his over usage of symbolism once again. It doesn't feel like you can take a deep dive into the book, it feels like you are bobbing about at the shallow end, hoping to sink down but you never do.

Another problem I had with this book, and you know I will scream and shout about this - the book is mostly just dialogue. I despise books that are all back and forth dialogue and no atmosphere. I know Coetzee means well but my god, this was a drag to get through. Not only do you have to keep track of who is talking but then you have to follow some sort of story whilst the characters are going back and forth with each other. I think that if the dialogue was cut down a little and Coetzee employed the tactics he did in his book Disgrace then we probably would not have been here.

All in all, I really wanted to enjoy this book because the plot seemed so promising. I do not think that this is purely the work of JM Coeztee and is probably also someone else advising him of what people like to read. It just seems so different from his better novels. Coetzee has a great talent but I think that this book was possibly not the best way to go about showing people. I hope he gets back to writing more stuff like Disgrace soon because that was a lot better than this, even though there were still flaws.