Literature, especially great literature—and Coetzee’s is certainly such—tends to assist, to temper the small mistakes and weaknesses of life. This, in part, is its work, its mode of operation: to support, to restore, to liberate; to offer consolation as long as everything remains possible. […] Coetzee returns to his timeless themes: kinship with animals, ontological questions (of life, love, and death), and the nature of desire—the desire to understand the other, to grasp and coexist with “that which lies beyond us.” Beneath the simple, austere surfaces, unexpected depths are often revealed, shimmering with playful seriousness, humor, and a great existential paradox—the sense of how the past overtakes us until, one day, we overtake it.
The Guardian