Call number
FIC COE
Collection
Genres
Series
Publication
Viking (2013), Edition: First Edition Limited Issue, 288 pages
Description
"A major new novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Waiting for the Barbarians, The Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace Nobel laureate and two-time Booker Prize winner J. M. Coetzee returns with a haunting and surprising novel about childhood and destiny that is sure to rank with his classic novels. Separated from his mother as a passenger on a boat bound for a new land, David is a boy who is quite literally adrift. The piece of paper explaining his situation is lost, but a fellow passenger, Simón, vows to look after the boy. When the boat docks, David and Simón are issued new names, new birthdays, and virtually a whole new life. Strangers in a strange land, knowing nothing of their surroundings, nor the language or customs, they are determined to find David's mother. Though the boy has no memory of her, Simón is certain he will recognize her at first sight. "But after we find her," David asks, "what are we here for?" An eerie allegorical tale told largely through dialogue, The Childhood of Jesus is a literary feat-a novel of ideas that is also a tender, compelling narrative. Coetzee's many fans will celebrate his return while new readers will find The Childhood of Jesus an intriguing introduction to the work of a true master"--… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member bowedbookshelf
This strange and absorbing fiction from Nobel Prize winner Coetzee has a post-apocalyptic feel. We meet a five-year-old boy, David, and a man, Simón, who have been given names as part of their relocation from where and to where, we never learn. We know only that they are refugees and that they
The young boy David has lost his documents on the boat from Belstar so Simón determines to help him find his mother (“I will know her when I see her”). One day Simón finds a woman and offers the boy to her. She is not perfect: she has strange child-rearing techniques and is too liberal, but under the guidance of both Simón and Inès the mother, David grows a year older, learns to read, and enters school.
At this point we start to realize vivid parallels with the life of Jesus Christ as told in the Bible, for the boy begins to seem extraordinary in his grasp of or rejection of the written word, the number system, philosophical arguments, perhaps even commonly accepted ‘truth’ itself.
This slim novel demonstrates Coetzee’s mastery. The novel is both gripping and involving: who among us does not have firm child-rearing opinions? We are curious about the place David and Simón have landed and sympathize with Simón’s half-remembered passion for something outside the ordinary. The novel is almost completely dialog and yet we have a sense of the landscape, the people, and the dilemma they face. Coetzee raises important religious, philosophical, and ethical questions that have been debated over the ages but he dresses it in simple allegory rich with allusions.
From within the story we might recognize pieces of a worldview, perhaps a statement about the world today, another place where history is irrelevant. "'I have not let go of the idea of history,' says Simón, 'the idea of change without beginning or end.' [Simón is then challenged by his workmates. Climate is acknowledged, but history is not:] 'Consider now history,' counters Eugenio. 'If history, like climate, were a higher reality, then history would have manifestations which we would be able to feel through our senses.' He looks around. 'Which of us has ever had his cap blown off by history?'"
What is Coetzee really telling us? That Jesus is a myth created by ideas, ideas from a childlike sensibility? "‘Forgetting takes time,’ says Elena. ‘Once you have properly forgotten, your sense of insecurity will recede and everything will become much easier…Children live in the present, not the past. Why not take your lead from them? Instead of waiting to be transfigured, why not try to be like a child again?’" Consider again Paul Murray's, author of Skippy Dies, extensive rant against today's "kidult."
Simón, the man who still remembers remembering, who remembers passion, wanting, and something more, finds himself explaining to David the meaning of a book and is caught in his own explanation: “you don’t need love if you have faith.” Ah, so.
This is a book one reads quickly and ruminates long. Remember Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil? It is an opening to the soul of an author. “Why is he continually asking himself questions instead of just living, like everyone else?”
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stayed some time in a camp called Belstar where they learned Spanish in preparation for their move by boat to Novilla. People in Novilla can’t remember the past and appear to have no curiosity about it. They are kind, generous even, but appear emotionally and physically anesthetized. The young boy David has lost his documents on the boat from Belstar so Simón determines to help him find his mother (“I will know her when I see her”). One day Simón finds a woman and offers the boy to her. She is not perfect: she has strange child-rearing techniques and is too liberal, but under the guidance of both Simón and Inès the mother, David grows a year older, learns to read, and enters school.
At this point we start to realize vivid parallels with the life of Jesus Christ as told in the Bible, for the boy begins to seem extraordinary in his grasp of or rejection of the written word, the number system, philosophical arguments, perhaps even commonly accepted ‘truth’ itself.
This slim novel demonstrates Coetzee’s mastery. The novel is both gripping and involving: who among us does not have firm child-rearing opinions? We are curious about the place David and Simón have landed and sympathize with Simón’s half-remembered passion for something outside the ordinary. The novel is almost completely dialog and yet we have a sense of the landscape, the people, and the dilemma they face. Coetzee raises important religious, philosophical, and ethical questions that have been debated over the ages but he dresses it in simple allegory rich with allusions.
From within the story we might recognize pieces of a worldview, perhaps a statement about the world today, another place where history is irrelevant. "'I have not let go of the idea of history,' says Simón, 'the idea of change without beginning or end.' [Simón is then challenged by his workmates. Climate is acknowledged, but history is not:] 'Consider now history,' counters Eugenio. 'If history, like climate, were a higher reality, then history would have manifestations which we would be able to feel through our senses.' He looks around. 'Which of us has ever had his cap blown off by history?'"
What is Coetzee really telling us? That Jesus is a myth created by ideas, ideas from a childlike sensibility? "‘Forgetting takes time,’ says Elena. ‘Once you have properly forgotten, your sense of insecurity will recede and everything will become much easier…Children live in the present, not the past. Why not take your lead from them? Instead of waiting to be transfigured, why not try to be like a child again?’" Consider again Paul Murray's, author of Skippy Dies, extensive rant against today's "kidult."
Simón, the man who still remembers remembering, who remembers passion, wanting, and something more, finds himself explaining to David the meaning of a book and is caught in his own explanation: “you don’t need love if you have faith.” Ah, so.
This is a book one reads quickly and ruminates long. Remember Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil? It is an opening to the soul of an author. “Why is he continually asking himself questions instead of just living, like everyone else?”
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LibraryThing member gbill
A man and a young boy arrive in a new town, searching for both a place to stay and the boy’s mom. The man has no relation to the boy and simply met him on the boat. Most people in this new land are friendly and have muted most if not all of their desires. Food is basic and bland. Sex is either
It becomes apparent that in crossing the sea, the man and boy have washed the past completely away, and the novel is allegory. Putting the man and the boy in this strange place where they (and the reader) are a bit disoriented allows for Coetzee to delve into aspects of the human condition we don’t often think about, such as the relationship between beauty and desire (why does one lead to the other?), and the benefits to not pushing for technological advancement (just because it can be done, should it be?).
It is a book that requires thought despite its simple plot and restrained prose, and my review score bumped up a bit in writing this review. It’s clearly a reference to Christ not only from the title of the book, but also in flashes like the boy saying ‘I am the truth’ or possibly having ‘nowhere to lay his head’, though those are pretty rare. At first I was a little disappointed, thinking the allegory ‘weak’. Upon reflection, I think it’s a mistake to try to ‘map’ the characters directly to those in the Bible, or at least, to derive meaning in this way.
What is the main message in the novel? Suffer the little children. David, the boy, clearly needs to be suffered, as he is often not at all likeable. Embrace their imagination. Allow them to be non-conformists. Consider their fresh approach and other ways of thinking, even if dramatically different. They need guidance, but can also teach. And despite their immaturity today, they will blossom and do great things tomorrow. Even Christ was once a child.
Quotes:
On desire:
“From goodwill come friendship and happiness, come companionable picnics in the parklands or companionable afternoons strolling in the forest. Whereas from love, or at least from longing in its more urgent manifestations, come frustration and doubt and heartsore. It is as simple as that.”
And:
“You want to see this other woman because I do not provide what you feel you need, namely storms of passion. Friendship by itself is not good enough for you. Without the accompaniment of storms of passion it is somehow deficient.
To my ear that is an old way of thinking. In the old way of thinking, no matter how much you may have, there is always something missing. The name you choose to give this something-more that is missing is passion. Yet I am willing to bet that if tomorrow you were offered all the passion you wanted – passion by the bucketful – you would promptly find something new to miss, to lack. This endless dissatisfaction, this yearning for the something-more that is missing, is a way of thinking we are well rid of, in my opinion. Nothing is missing. The nothing that you think is missing is an illusion. You are living by an illusion.”
On faith:
“Faith? Faith has nothing to do with it. Faith means believing in what you do even when it does not bear visible fruit. The Centre is not like that. People arrive needing help, and we help them. We help them and their lives improve. None of that is invisible. None of it requires blind faith. We do our job, and everything turns out well. It is as simple as that.”
On intuition:
“’The moment I saw Ines, I knew. If we don’t trust the voice that speaks inside us, saying, This is the one! then there is nothing left to trust.’
‘Don’t make me laugh! Inner voices! People lose their savings at the horse races obeying inner voices. People plunge into calamitous love affairs obeying inner voices.’”
On seeing things in a different way; I thought over this one and decided to see it as a statement on ‘oneness’, things being part of a larger whole, that can’t be combined arbitrarily and then separated:
“While I was in hospital with nothing else to do, I tried, as a mental exercise, to see the world through David’s eyes. Put an apple before him and what does he see? An apple: not one apple, just an apple. Put two apples before him. What does he see? An apple and an apple: not two apples, not the same apple twice, just an apple and an apple. Now along comes senor Leon (senor Leon is his class teacher) and demands: How many apples, child? What is the answer? What are apples? What is the singular of which apples is the plural? Three men in a car heading for the East Block: who is the singular of which men is the plural – Eugenio or Simon or our friend the driver whose name I don’t know? Are we three, or are we one and one and one?
On parenting:
“How do you think a mother and a father come together in the first place – the mother and father of the future child? Because they owe each other a natural duty? Of course not. Their paths cross haphazardly, and they fall in love. What could be less natural, more arbitrary, than that? Out of their random conjectures a new being comes into the world, a new soul. Who, in this story, owes what to whom? I can’t say, and I’m sure you can’t either.”
On vanity:
“We like to believe we are special, my boy, each of us. But, strictly speaking, that cannot be so. If we were all special, there would be no specialness left. Yet we continue to believe in ourselves. We go down into the ship’s hold, into the heat and dust, we heave sacks onto our backs and lug them up into the light, we see our friends toiling just like us, doing exactly the same work, nothing special about it, and we feel proud of them and of ourselves, all comrades labouring together with a common goal; yet in a little corner of our hearts, which we keep hidden, we whisper to ourselves, Nevertheless, nevertheless, you are special, you will see!”
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not wanted, or performed just to satisfy the man’s natural need. There are no desires to improve conditions or make manual labor more efficient.It becomes apparent that in crossing the sea, the man and boy have washed the past completely away, and the novel is allegory. Putting the man and the boy in this strange place where they (and the reader) are a bit disoriented allows for Coetzee to delve into aspects of the human condition we don’t often think about, such as the relationship between beauty and desire (why does one lead to the other?), and the benefits to not pushing for technological advancement (just because it can be done, should it be?).
It is a book that requires thought despite its simple plot and restrained prose, and my review score bumped up a bit in writing this review. It’s clearly a reference to Christ not only from the title of the book, but also in flashes like the boy saying ‘I am the truth’ or possibly having ‘nowhere to lay his head’, though those are pretty rare. At first I was a little disappointed, thinking the allegory ‘weak’. Upon reflection, I think it’s a mistake to try to ‘map’ the characters directly to those in the Bible, or at least, to derive meaning in this way.
What is the main message in the novel? Suffer the little children. David, the boy, clearly needs to be suffered, as he is often not at all likeable. Embrace their imagination. Allow them to be non-conformists. Consider their fresh approach and other ways of thinking, even if dramatically different. They need guidance, but can also teach. And despite their immaturity today, they will blossom and do great things tomorrow. Even Christ was once a child.
Quotes:
On desire:
“From goodwill come friendship and happiness, come companionable picnics in the parklands or companionable afternoons strolling in the forest. Whereas from love, or at least from longing in its more urgent manifestations, come frustration and doubt and heartsore. It is as simple as that.”
And:
“You want to see this other woman because I do not provide what you feel you need, namely storms of passion. Friendship by itself is not good enough for you. Without the accompaniment of storms of passion it is somehow deficient.
To my ear that is an old way of thinking. In the old way of thinking, no matter how much you may have, there is always something missing. The name you choose to give this something-more that is missing is passion. Yet I am willing to bet that if tomorrow you were offered all the passion you wanted – passion by the bucketful – you would promptly find something new to miss, to lack. This endless dissatisfaction, this yearning for the something-more that is missing, is a way of thinking we are well rid of, in my opinion. Nothing is missing. The nothing that you think is missing is an illusion. You are living by an illusion.”
On faith:
“Faith? Faith has nothing to do with it. Faith means believing in what you do even when it does not bear visible fruit. The Centre is not like that. People arrive needing help, and we help them. We help them and their lives improve. None of that is invisible. None of it requires blind faith. We do our job, and everything turns out well. It is as simple as that.”
On intuition:
“’The moment I saw Ines, I knew. If we don’t trust the voice that speaks inside us, saying, This is the one! then there is nothing left to trust.’
‘Don’t make me laugh! Inner voices! People lose their savings at the horse races obeying inner voices. People plunge into calamitous love affairs obeying inner voices.’”
On seeing things in a different way; I thought over this one and decided to see it as a statement on ‘oneness’, things being part of a larger whole, that can’t be combined arbitrarily and then separated:
“While I was in hospital with nothing else to do, I tried, as a mental exercise, to see the world through David’s eyes. Put an apple before him and what does he see? An apple: not one apple, just an apple. Put two apples before him. What does he see? An apple and an apple: not two apples, not the same apple twice, just an apple and an apple. Now along comes senor Leon (senor Leon is his class teacher) and demands: How many apples, child? What is the answer? What are apples? What is the singular of which apples is the plural? Three men in a car heading for the East Block: who is the singular of which men is the plural – Eugenio or Simon or our friend the driver whose name I don’t know? Are we three, or are we one and one and one?
On parenting:
“How do you think a mother and a father come together in the first place – the mother and father of the future child? Because they owe each other a natural duty? Of course not. Their paths cross haphazardly, and they fall in love. What could be less natural, more arbitrary, than that? Out of their random conjectures a new being comes into the world, a new soul. Who, in this story, owes what to whom? I can’t say, and I’m sure you can’t either.”
On vanity:
“We like to believe we are special, my boy, each of us. But, strictly speaking, that cannot be so. If we were all special, there would be no specialness left. Yet we continue to believe in ourselves. We go down into the ship’s hold, into the heat and dust, we heave sacks onto our backs and lug them up into the light, we see our friends toiling just like us, doing exactly the same work, nothing special about it, and we feel proud of them and of ourselves, all comrades labouring together with a common goal; yet in a little corner of our hearts, which we keep hidden, we whisper to ourselves, Nevertheless, nevertheless, you are special, you will see!”
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LibraryThing member deborahk
I loved this book. I loved the story. I am not a religious person or a very deep person who can find or even searches for symbolism in the things I read. Can someone explain to me how this story relates to Jesus?
LibraryThing member mdreid
I've read a number of Coetzee's books, including "Foe", "Summertime", "Youth", "Disgrace", "Elizabeth Costello", "Diary of a Bad Year", and "Slow Man". Once again with this book, Coetzee's prose is spare, precise, and beautiful. However, unlike his other recent novels, this one is not playing with
I enjoyed being carried along through the novel despite not really quite understanding what he was trying to get at, if anything. I got the feeling that all the characters, places, items, and scenes were all proxies for something, perhaps some reimagining of, as the title suggests, Jesus's childhood. But I'm sure it's not only that, if at all.
Interestingly, Don Quixote is weaved into the middle of the story in what seems to be an important way. Curiously, Simón only ever refers to its author as Benengali, not Cervantes, playing into David's habit of taking everything at a romantic face-value.
Overall, I'd say it's not his best work but perhaps that's because it was a little too oblique for me. But still, his writing is worth the price of admission alone.
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the line between Coetzee's life and the characters in his books (i.e., there is no character in this book whose name is "Coetzee"). That said, there are a number of sections that are heavy on philosophical musings about the nature of what is real, relationships, power, etc.I enjoyed being carried along through the novel despite not really quite understanding what he was trying to get at, if anything. I got the feeling that all the characters, places, items, and scenes were all proxies for something, perhaps some reimagining of, as the title suggests, Jesus's childhood. But I'm sure it's not only that, if at all.
Interestingly, Don Quixote is weaved into the middle of the story in what seems to be an important way. Curiously, Simón only ever refers to its author as Benengali, not Cervantes, playing into David's habit of taking everything at a romantic face-value.
Overall, I'd say it's not his best work but perhaps that's because it was a little too oblique for me. But still, his writing is worth the price of admission alone.
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LibraryThing member shayrp76
4 Stars
This is an uncorrected galley provided by Penguin
A man and a boy have traveled far across oceans to reach a new land. Once there they learn the native language, Spanish, and are given new names. Their ages are determined solely on physical appearance. Washed clean of their memories, like
I will start off by saying that this is the first work of this author’s that I have read and I am thoroughly impressed. My only complaint is that it did take me awhile to get with the flow of the pacing. That might just be the fact that I am unfamiliar with the author. I cannot stress enough that I enjoy reading anything that makes my brain go into overdrive and that’s exactly what just happened. First of all there are the characters and their story line which in itself is intriguing. Then there is this underlying mystery of why can’t they remember anything and where did they come from? Possibilities galore were running through my head the whole time. This is one of those novels that make you evaluate life and possibly relate to on some level. I really enjoyed it and will gladly recommend it.
This is an uncorrected galley provided by Penguin
A man and a boy have traveled far across oceans to reach a new land. Once there they learn the native language, Spanish, and are given new names. Their ages are determined solely on physical appearance. Washed clean of their memories, like
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everyone who comes to new country, the man, Simon, sets out with the difficult task of finding David’s mother. On instinct alone he finds the woman he believes is the mother. The woman, who is successfully persuaded of the role, recognizes her son’s intelligent and unconventional wisdom as brilliance. The school and authorities see it negatively, however, and wishes to quell it by taking him away. Simon, who sees both points of view, must decide if he will help mother and son escape.I will start off by saying that this is the first work of this author’s that I have read and I am thoroughly impressed. My only complaint is that it did take me awhile to get with the flow of the pacing. That might just be the fact that I am unfamiliar with the author. I cannot stress enough that I enjoy reading anything that makes my brain go into overdrive and that’s exactly what just happened. First of all there are the characters and their story line which in itself is intriguing. Then there is this underlying mystery of why can’t they remember anything and where did they come from? Possibilities galore were running through my head the whole time. This is one of those novels that make you evaluate life and possibly relate to on some level. I really enjoyed it and will gladly recommend it.
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LibraryThing member lucybrown
When Simon is teaching 6-year old David, a refugee to Novilla along with Simon, to read Simon reproaches David that he must submit to what is on the page, not fill it in with his own fantasies. That he must not just look at the pictures and then guess at the story. David, ever petulant, ever
Novilla, the refugee city to which David and Simon have emigrated, is a hollow world. There is enough, but nothing more. There is goodwill but no passion. There is no irony. Simon remarks this several times. The good people of Novilla are flatly honest and good. Simon needs more. David simply doesn't fit at all in this world. What is it? The afterlife, an afterlife, the circle of hell that one ends up following the path paved with good intentions? A Utopia? An Untopia?
Simon keeps expecting irony, but finds none. He also looks for spices, and meat. In a world where the music is actually called Anodine. Simon is out of luck.
What am I going to submit to on this page. A world without irony, passion, spice, and meat isn't worth living in no matter how peaceful and well- intentioned the residents. When Simon tells a school official that there are things above the law, be responds, the law is "enough" for her. Sounds like a Pharisee to me. I'd hit the road too.
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adverse to any reasoning but his own, rebels against this method. What is Coetzee getting at here? If he is advising us as readers to submit to what is on his page, what part? The title? David shares affinities with Jesus, but are we to submit to David as a modern day Jesus; David a wilfull, whining, overly-cosseted, hard headed brat? That is not the picture of the Christ we are taught at Sunday School, but how must Jesus have appeared to his neighbors in the poor desert village of Nazareth. His reasoning made no more sense to the Pharisees than David's does to the local school. David's parentage is odd, chosen by an intuitive force. David is well beloved of his chosen parents and described by them in terms that echo the Gospels. David is tempted by Daga (dagger). While nearly always self-centered, David does show flashes of generosity and abhors suffering. One can go on and on with parallels. His best friend-Fidel, his dog-Bolivar, the name of the young man who joins them on their journey, Juan, his virgin mother, Ines (holy). Is it a stretch that the dissident little rebel is fed to the school teacher señor Leon? It is quite fun to find these possible parallels. The problem is that they don't add up. Nothing remains constant in its symbology. Why?Novilla, the refugee city to which David and Simon have emigrated, is a hollow world. There is enough, but nothing more. There is goodwill but no passion. There is no irony. Simon remarks this several times. The good people of Novilla are flatly honest and good. Simon needs more. David simply doesn't fit at all in this world. What is it? The afterlife, an afterlife, the circle of hell that one ends up following the path paved with good intentions? A Utopia? An Untopia?
Simon keeps expecting irony, but finds none. He also looks for spices, and meat. In a world where the music is actually called Anodine. Simon is out of luck.
What am I going to submit to on this page. A world without irony, passion, spice, and meat isn't worth living in no matter how peaceful and well- intentioned the residents. When Simon tells a school official that there are things above the law, be responds, the law is "enough" for her. Sounds like a Pharisee to me. I'd hit the road too.
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LibraryThing member eachurch
Intriguing, imaginative story which explores the question: 'What constitutes a meaningful life?' Neither David nor SImon can bring themselves to fully accept the (very odd) society they find themselves in. The perils of accepting a way of seeing the world that doesn't seem to mesh with their own
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ways of seeing causes struggles for both of them. However, David, by virtue of being younger, doesn't have the same filter mechanisms that SImon has which, in a society which relies on unquestioning, and passive compliance, makes him dangerous. A philosophical novel that is both playful and entertaining. Show Less
LibraryThing member Laura400
This is a strange book, but fascinating. For me, it succeeded brilliantly, but it succeeded on its own terms, which are not those of a conventional novel. In some ways, it's almost anti-novelistic. Even its style is unusual: the narrative feels hamstrung and uncomfortable, consciously stiff, yet
In subject, it circles around a number of big issues, including power, politics, philosophy, faith and messianism.
The title is, like the book, both attractive and challenging, clever and a little unsettling. I can't help thinking that it would have made nearly as much sense had it been titled "The Childhood of Jim Jones" or even "The Childhood of Hitler."
This is not a book everyone will like, and I'm not sure I can even predict who will. The estimable Joyce Carol Oates says it is "clearly an allegory," but confesses she's not sure of what. I suspect that's what could make it frustrating for some, but satisfying for others.
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persistent.In subject, it circles around a number of big issues, including power, politics, philosophy, faith and messianism.
The title is, like the book, both attractive and challenging, clever and a little unsettling. I can't help thinking that it would have made nearly as much sense had it been titled "The Childhood of Jim Jones" or even "The Childhood of Hitler."
This is not a book everyone will like, and I'm not sure I can even predict who will. The estimable Joyce Carol Oates says it is "clearly an allegory," but confesses she's not sure of what. I suspect that's what could make it frustrating for some, but satisfying for others.
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LibraryThing member USCLibrary
I had expected this book to be “reverse engineering” – based on the person that Jesus became, you can guess at how he must have been raised. But it’s not about the historical Jesus. It’s about a boy called David, who may or may not be an incarnation of Jesus.
David is lost. He doesn’t
Simon arrived on the same ship as David. Like David, he has lost his identity (in the Lethe?), but retains some physical memories, which make it very difficult for him to accept the passionless bonhomie of his new compatriots. He cannot bring himself to settle for platonic relationships, bland food and philosophy. He devotes himself to helping David find a mother. But once she is found, Simon finds himself without a purpose. Without David, he despairs of his life.
Luckily for Simon, David needs him. David’s magical thinking and inability or unwillingness to acknowledge rules gets him kicked out of school and sent to an institution. Simon and David’s mother decide to spirit David away from his enemies, akin to the flight into Egypt.
It would seem that all the characters are dead, and have gone to Purgatory. You end up in Purgatory, rather than in heaven or hell, if you are unbaptized, or have minor sins on your soul, at the time of your death. You must be purified before you can go on to heaven.
It would also seem that David represents Jesus, and Simon represents St. Joseph. Why, then, is Jesus in Purgatory? I don’t know. I’ve read this book twice, and I can’t figure it out.
This novel humanizes Jesus and his parents. It helps you to understand how Jesus must have been perceived by his contemporaries during his life. And it makes you think about how Jesus would be received if he were to return to Earth.
David is unlikeable. His affections are indiscriminate. He doesn’t prefer Simon or his adopted mother, Ines, to strangers or criminals or animals, although his “parents” love him and are devoted to him. This of course is true of the Biblical Jesus, but I never thought about how Jesus’ unconditional love would have hurt his parents.
Ines, who represents the Virgin Mary, is also unappealing. Like the Virgin, she believes her son to be a superior creature who should never have to submit to authority. The Bible doesn’t portray the Mother of God as being indulgent and a braggart, but I suppose her trust in Jesus might have made her obnoxious to other moms.
Simon, though, is a gem. He suffers many indignities as he tries to be the man of his family. He is spurned by Ines, slapped by her brother, rejected by David, criticized by his friends, obliged to beg, sleep outdoors and unplug toilets. But he doesn’t let anything keep him from protecting David.
I think if you have no knowledge of Christianity, you could still enjoy the story. The writing is masterful. The words are all carefully chosen. The information given is all pertinent – no filler here. The author gives you what you need and no more.
David is lost. He doesn’t
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know who he is, who his parents are, or where he is from. His memory has been wiped clean during his voyage to an unnamed land. The government provides generously for its refugees, and the residents are full of “goodwill.” But David is still five years old, and alone.Simon arrived on the same ship as David. Like David, he has lost his identity (in the Lethe?), but retains some physical memories, which make it very difficult for him to accept the passionless bonhomie of his new compatriots. He cannot bring himself to settle for platonic relationships, bland food and philosophy. He devotes himself to helping David find a mother. But once she is found, Simon finds himself without a purpose. Without David, he despairs of his life.
Luckily for Simon, David needs him. David’s magical thinking and inability or unwillingness to acknowledge rules gets him kicked out of school and sent to an institution. Simon and David’s mother decide to spirit David away from his enemies, akin to the flight into Egypt.
It would seem that all the characters are dead, and have gone to Purgatory. You end up in Purgatory, rather than in heaven or hell, if you are unbaptized, or have minor sins on your soul, at the time of your death. You must be purified before you can go on to heaven.
It would also seem that David represents Jesus, and Simon represents St. Joseph. Why, then, is Jesus in Purgatory? I don’t know. I’ve read this book twice, and I can’t figure it out.
This novel humanizes Jesus and his parents. It helps you to understand how Jesus must have been perceived by his contemporaries during his life. And it makes you think about how Jesus would be received if he were to return to Earth.
David is unlikeable. His affections are indiscriminate. He doesn’t prefer Simon or his adopted mother, Ines, to strangers or criminals or animals, although his “parents” love him and are devoted to him. This of course is true of the Biblical Jesus, but I never thought about how Jesus’ unconditional love would have hurt his parents.
Ines, who represents the Virgin Mary, is also unappealing. Like the Virgin, she believes her son to be a superior creature who should never have to submit to authority. The Bible doesn’t portray the Mother of God as being indulgent and a braggart, but I suppose her trust in Jesus might have made her obnoxious to other moms.
Simon, though, is a gem. He suffers many indignities as he tries to be the man of his family. He is spurned by Ines, slapped by her brother, rejected by David, criticized by his friends, obliged to beg, sleep outdoors and unplug toilets. But he doesn’t let anything keep him from protecting David.
I think if you have no knowledge of Christianity, you could still enjoy the story. The writing is masterful. The words are all carefully chosen. The information given is all pertinent – no filler here. The author gives you what you need and no more.
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LibraryThing member aine.fin
A post-apocalyptic or dystopian feel to it which reminded me of Margaret Atwood but we never learn what has happened to the world as we know it. The "gifted" David is a strange child who's otherness is heightened by how normal everybody else seems. Simon does his best for him but the assignment of
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the child to a stranger to be his mother remains vague. Memorable. Show Less
LibraryThing member amaraki
Don't know what to say about this book. It drew me in to keep on reading it though it had no plot. Perhaps it was the language, though plainspoken and straightforward. The central dilemma was pretty much solved half way through. The chapters were like a series of dreamscapes. I could recognize
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certain truths and universals and then the story would just fade away and something else would come up. The allegorical aspect was quite tiresome to me -- I'm not back in school to strain my brain to get what he might be signifying all the time. And then the child -- how obnoxious and unsympathetic for such a grand title. Interesting that I cannot come up with tags for this book. Show Less
LibraryThing member Smiler69
This slim novel made for an interesting read, though I can't say what it was really about. I say this because it's an allegorical tale, and while I don't mind allegories per se, I very rarely am able to find the underlying message unless it's kindly spelled out for me. In this story we have an
Simón took David under his wing when the boy was found wandering on the incoming boat on his own. David had carried a letter with him, probably relating who his parents were and who would pick him up on arrival, but this letter was lost. Simón decides they will find David's real mother somehow, and not long after settling down, getting a job as a stevedore and a reasonably comfortable apartment, he briefly meets a woman, Inès and immediately decides because of some gut feeling he has, that she is the boy's mother. He somehow convinces Inès of this too, and she eagerly overpampers David by giving in to his every whim, preventing him from playing with other boys (a bad influence), or from going to school (he's too clever for school). Simón keeps a daily contact with them, and decides to teach David to read and write by giving him an abridged young reader copy of Don Qixote. When the boy is forcibly sent to school because of local regulations, he is found to be disruptive in class and refuses to learn his lessons along with everyone. As I said, I never did find out the why of the novel's title. I suppose we are meant to draw parallels between David and the young Jesus, but I couldn't say for sure. The book is written very simply and mostly in dialogue, and the characters are intriguing enough to keep the reader interested. I'll be interested to read some reviews to see what other readers have made of this tale.
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older man and a five-year-old boy who arrive in a new land where they are made to adopt new names (David for the boy, Simón for the man) and must learn to speak Spanish. This country is never named, though we are told most of the events take place in the city of Novilla. This is where all the residents arrive and go through the same process as immigrants, and are expected to leave the past behind. In this place there is a collective amnesia about the past and little understanding of appreciation for passionate desires, be they sexual or food-related. Simón took David under his wing when the boy was found wandering on the incoming boat on his own. David had carried a letter with him, probably relating who his parents were and who would pick him up on arrival, but this letter was lost. Simón decides they will find David's real mother somehow, and not long after settling down, getting a job as a stevedore and a reasonably comfortable apartment, he briefly meets a woman, Inès and immediately decides because of some gut feeling he has, that she is the boy's mother. He somehow convinces Inès of this too, and she eagerly overpampers David by giving in to his every whim, preventing him from playing with other boys (a bad influence), or from going to school (he's too clever for school). Simón keeps a daily contact with them, and decides to teach David to read and write by giving him an abridged young reader copy of Don Qixote. When the boy is forcibly sent to school because of local regulations, he is found to be disruptive in class and refuses to learn his lessons along with everyone. As I said, I never did find out the why of the novel's title. I suppose we are meant to draw parallels between David and the young Jesus, but I couldn't say for sure. The book is written very simply and mostly in dialogue, and the characters are intriguing enough to keep the reader interested. I'll be interested to read some reviews to see what other readers have made of this tale.
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LibraryThing member VicCavalli
The Childhood of Jesus is not for readers who demand credible characters set in credible settings with credible dialogue. Vastly removed from the stark brutality of earlier works like Waiting for the Barbarians, the ethereal, delicately surreal world created by Coetzee in The Childhood of Jesus is
The book is a journey with no return in a cyclical world where sex is discussed as a philosophical issue, not as a formidable, passionate reality at the core of human experience. Unlike the extreme impotence of some of the characters in Waiting for the Barbarians, Michael K, and Foe, in this novel Coetzee presents David’s guardian / father, Simon, as a stranger in this new world of memory loss and rootlessness, a stranger because he feels an instinct for sexual connection: “I am an ordinary man with ordinary needs. . . . [And] I am starved of beauty. . . . [f]eminine beauty” (138-39). There is no reciprocal passion in the book, not a single scene of shared sexual intimacy between any of the characters. Occasionally, Elena “allows [Simon] to make love to her. . . . [but she] has little sexual feeling for him, that is clear; but he likes to think of his lovemaking as a patient and prolonged act of resuscitation, of bringing back to life a female body that for all practical purposes has died” (61).
Also, the frequent set pieces where Coetzee stages surprise philosophical discussions are almost comical, the most extreme being the entirety of Chapter 16 where Simon is unplugging a toilet while discussing the dual nature of humans—a discourse on philosophical anthropology—with David, a five-year-old boy!
Equally interesting and occasionally comic is Coetzee’s ubiquitous use of biblical echoes. The reader can’t go more than six pages in any direction without a biblical resonance; whether it’s something like “Because by football alone you cannot live” (110) on the comic side, or, “You can’t expect me to commit myself, sight unseen” (254) on the more serious side, the novel creates a Kafkaesque / Quixotic world where the characters want “to start a new life” (276). The reader never senses that Coetzee is presenting a simplistic quest, however, because “They have no map. [They have] no idea what lies ahead on the road. In silence they drive on” (262). And yet, the book does imply the opposite of nihilism as “All great gifts come out of nowhere” (263).
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a fusion of Kafka’s The Castle and Cervantes’ Don Quixote, permeated by the author’s rational philosophical interests undergirded with the mysticism of mathematics. The characters are “new arrivals” on page 1, and about to become fresh “new arrivals” on the final page of the novel (277).The book is a journey with no return in a cyclical world where sex is discussed as a philosophical issue, not as a formidable, passionate reality at the core of human experience. Unlike the extreme impotence of some of the characters in Waiting for the Barbarians, Michael K, and Foe, in this novel Coetzee presents David’s guardian / father, Simon, as a stranger in this new world of memory loss and rootlessness, a stranger because he feels an instinct for sexual connection: “I am an ordinary man with ordinary needs. . . . [And] I am starved of beauty. . . . [f]eminine beauty” (138-39). There is no reciprocal passion in the book, not a single scene of shared sexual intimacy between any of the characters. Occasionally, Elena “allows [Simon] to make love to her. . . . [but she] has little sexual feeling for him, that is clear; but he likes to think of his lovemaking as a patient and prolonged act of resuscitation, of bringing back to life a female body that for all practical purposes has died” (61).
Also, the frequent set pieces where Coetzee stages surprise philosophical discussions are almost comical, the most extreme being the entirety of Chapter 16 where Simon is unplugging a toilet while discussing the dual nature of humans—a discourse on philosophical anthropology—with David, a five-year-old boy!
Equally interesting and occasionally comic is Coetzee’s ubiquitous use of biblical echoes. The reader can’t go more than six pages in any direction without a biblical resonance; whether it’s something like “Because by football alone you cannot live” (110) on the comic side, or, “You can’t expect me to commit myself, sight unseen” (254) on the more serious side, the novel creates a Kafkaesque / Quixotic world where the characters want “to start a new life” (276). The reader never senses that Coetzee is presenting a simplistic quest, however, because “They have no map. [They have] no idea what lies ahead on the road. In silence they drive on” (262). And yet, the book does imply the opposite of nihilism as “All great gifts come out of nowhere” (263).
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LibraryThing member stillatim
It's been some time since I finished this; it had been many, many years before that that I finished a Coetzee novel and felt even remotely satisfied. The Australian novels, for me, at least, were dull meta-fiction with very little to recommend them; all books are a bit metafictional, and I don't
A few of my GR friends really hated this book, and I imagine if you really like the Australian novels before it (Costello etc...) you'll probably hate it too. If you liked Michael K, on the other hand, you'll probably prefer this one to them.
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find much to enjoy in books that do little else. So although CoJ replays a few of Coetzee's standard tropes (most obviously, the Kafka-like abstraction), I was glad that now I can look forward to reading him again. This could almost be an oulipean deal, with each chapter incorporating a well-known passage from the Christian bible; it could also be an attempt to think through the problems of migration (well known to the author, of course) or of refugee crises; it could also be an attempt to think about what heaven would actually be given the hellish nature of the world that we actually know. And, of course, an attempt to answer the question what Jesus would have been like. In that, it reminds me a bit of Thomas Mann's 'Joseph' series, which I'm also reading: Coetzee's 'Jesus' and Mann's Joseph are both insufferable young men. Joseph grows out of it, I'm assuming. There's no real reason to think that Coetzee's 'Jesus' will. A few of my GR friends really hated this book, and I imagine if you really like the Australian novels before it (Costello etc...) you'll probably hate it too. If you liked Michael K, on the other hand, you'll probably prefer this one to them.
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Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2015)
Maine Readers' Choice Award (Longlist — 2014)
Booklist Editor's Choice: Adult Books (Fiction — 2013)
The A.V. Club best books (2013)
Pages
288
ISBN
0670014656 / 9780670014651