Lacuna
5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
A feminist response to Coetzee’s masterwork Disgrace, and the moving story of a woman trying to put her life back together
Lucie Lurie is the victim of an act of terrible sexual violence, a gang rape at her father’s farmhouse in the Western Cape. In the grip of debilitating PTSD, she becomes obsessed with JM Coetzee, author of the celebrated Disgrace, a novel based on the attack she suffered.
Withdrawn and fearful of crowds, Lucy nonetheless makes occasional forays into the world of men in her search for Coetzee himself. She means to confront him. The character in his novel is passive and almost entirely lacking agency. The real Lucy means to right the record, for she is the lacuna that Coetzee left in his novel the missing piece of the puzzle. She plans to put herself back in the story, to assert her agency and identity. For Lucy Lurie will be no man’s lacuna.
“You are concerned for my sake, which I appreciate, you think you understand, but finally you don’t. Because you can’t.”
LUCY LAURIE IN COETZEE'S DISGRACE
Fiona Snyckers
Fiona Snyckers is the author of the Trinity series of young adult novels, the Eulalie Park series of mystery novels, and two high-concept thrillers, Now Following You and Spire. She has been long-listed four times for the Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize.
Read more from Fiona Snyckers
Lacuna: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lacuna Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNow Following You Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTrinity Rising Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe School Gates Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTrinity On Air Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Lacuna
Related ebooks
God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Disappearing Act: Journey of How a Poetess Grew up Within a Matter of Five Years. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDo Not Interrupt: A Playful Take on the Art of Conversation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another Place, Another Time Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTen Years of My Invisible War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhatever Happened to Interracial Love?: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babes in the Darkling Wood: A Novel of Ideas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVonnegut in Fact: The Public Spokesmanship of Personal Fiction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNuke Jersey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThin Places: The Ottawan Anthology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings101 Best Sex Scenes Ever Written: An Erotic Romp Through Literature for Writers and Readers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Married An Alien Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Letters From A Dead World: A Collection Of Short Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Koevoet: Experiencing South Africa's Deadly Bush War Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dying Inside Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Before History Dies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPromiscuous Knowledge: Information, Image, and Other Truth Games in History Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for J. M. Coetzee's "Dusklands" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnclaimed: The Memoirs of Jane E, Friendless Orphan, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Problem in Communication Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe TV Delusion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDamages: Selected Stories 1982-2012 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJohnny Came To Town: The Greatest Story Retold? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Exaggerated Life: Pat Conroy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beneath the Phoenix Door Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLate Knight Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHappiness: Ten Years of n+1 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fahrenheit 451: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5DENIAL: The Unspeakable Truth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While England Sleeps: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Literary Fiction For You
The Tattooist of Auschwitz: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Ugly and Wonderful Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden (Original Classic Edition) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Handmaid's Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If We Were Villains: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How It Always Is: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anxious People: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lady Tan's Circle of Women: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tender Is the Flesh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Queen's Gambit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Thinking of Ending Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Read with Jenna Pick Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Lagos Wife: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Lacuna
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Notwithstanding the #Me Too movement, women’s accounts of rape are still frequently disbelieved in favor of unsatisfying “he said-she said” narratives that all too frequently come down on the side of the powerful. One only needs to consider the Kavanaugh hearings or the many allegations against Trump to understand this sad fact. Snyckers explores this dynamic by re-imagining Lucy Lurie, the protagonist of “Disgrace” JM Coetzee’s award-winning novel that uses a brutal rape as a metaphor for racial reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa. Unlike Coetzee’s Lucy, a passive person devoid of agency, Snyckers’ Lucy is intelligent and belligerent, totally obsessed with scratching back her voice and agency from how they were portrayed in Coetzee’s novel. Snyckers’ creation is far from perfect. She suffers from PTSD, is withdrawn, afraid of crowds, deluded about finding Coetzee and making him understand her point of view, and at bottom, a deeply unreliable narrator. At its core, this engaging stream-of-consciousness narrative explores the relationship between fact and fiction in storytelling. It artfully explores the question of just who owns a story? Is it the artist, the subject, or the reader? Lucy begins her meditation with the strong belief that she owns her story and Coetzee has no right to use it for his own purposes. Clearly, one can make a successful argument that rape is a particularly ill-suited metaphor for South African racial reconciliation, yet the central question of the novel is never resolved. Instead, one comes away with the feeling that art needs to be judged on its own merits by those who consume it. The artist and the subject are merely conduits to carry ideas forward. Interestingly, this question appeared once again in all its messy glory in the recent press. Amanda Knox, the American student accused of killing her roommate while studying in Italy, objected to the adaptation of her story in the recent film, “Stillwater.” Clearly, such creations can interfere with healing from trauma. Notwithstanding, they still can contain artistic value. One could rightly argue that “Stillwater” may not have as much artistic merit as “Disgrace”, but it is not totally devoid of art.Snykers’ writing is accomplished primarily because it explores culture broadly with humor and insightfulness almost exclusively through Lucy’s internal monologue. She does so by identifying and criticizing Lucy’s ideas using multiple characters, including her long-time friend Moira, her therapist Lydia Bascombe, her love interest Eugene Huzain, her distant father, and her academic colleagues. It is ironic, however, that Snyckers’ fictional Coetzee plays no active role in the novel, except in Lucy’s mind. This is primarily a novel of ideas, but the plot, such as it is, still has a satisfying resolution.