The Life & Times of Michael K

This is Literature with a capital L, and the two of us don’t get along. It could well be that I suffer from the late Dorothy Parker’s Congenital Lowness of Brow, but books like this leave me scratching my head and wondering what I’m supposed to make of them.

It’s not the writing. The writing’s fine: clear and clean and easy to read. There’s a good narrative too, pulling you along page after page and making it difficult to stop because you want to find out what’s going to happen next.

At least until somewhere around the two-thirds mark. At which point this story of a South African man lost and wandering through a fictional civil (?) war begins to slip away from the description of a reasonably identifiable world and its daily concerns – shelter, food, fear, safety – into the less-than-relatable thoughts of the man himself.

Why, when there's a deserted house nearby to provide shelter does he construct and sleep in what is in effect his grave? Why does he starve himself and then, later, refuse all attempts to nourish him? Why does he refuse the simple operation to repair his cleft lip? What is he looking for?

At which point better men and women than me might reply, ‘But that’s the point. These questions are the reason for reading the book. To make you wonder what it is that constitutes a life.’ And that’s fine. If there’s meaning and value in these questions for them, I’m happy. For them. For myself, I’d rather read something that offers some kind of answer, however banal. Because if the purpose of art is to shed some light on our existence and help us understand – or at least contemplate - our place in the world, then I believe a book like this fails. It promises illumination, but all it does is lead us into a darkened room, shut and lock the door behind us, and then walk away.