Summary Of Boyhood By J. M. Coetzee

Book review – Boyhood
The novel ‘’ boyhood ‘’ (1997) is written by the author J.M. Coetzee and is about a young boy and his childhood in South Africa in the town Worcester. The boy in the book is the author Coetzee and his life between the age 10 to age 13 and his way to adjust to the society and to find himself as a person. The book describes the love and the hate that Coetzee has for his mother, and the shame that he feels for his father combined with the isolation from his classmates. Boyhood is not only about Coetzee himself but also about South Africa and the apartheid. Rather than discussing the evils of apartheid, Coetzee lets his readers see how apartheid affects relationships through events in his own life.
The relationship between the young boy and his mother is a love-hate relationship. He wants to separate himself from her, and determines to share nothing with her. When his mother doesn´t have enough money for three circus tickets and choose to stay outside in the blazing sun waiting for him and his brother, he sees her behaviour as ‘’blinding, overwhelming, self-sacrificial love’’ that demands ‘’a debt of love’’ which he is unwilling to pay. In the ending of the book, it´s clear that he cannot escape her influence and judgement because he is aware that she ‘’can stop loving him’’ and realises that he is bound to her. Coetzee does not like his father. His father was a soldier, and played rugby and cricket, but he is not excellent in any of these three things,