Eric Maas’s Reviews > Disgrace > Status Update

15. Confusing behavior at Petrus’ party.

I don’t understand a lot happening. Lurie’s unwavering trust in the police, okay… but Lucie’s refusal to confront or lack of need for justice is hard to follow. Toughest is Petrus’ standoffish manners, does he know things? Does he know what the boy did? did he invite him? Why does he not confront him and demand explaning?

Nothing escapes, except perhaps the gall bladder, which no one will eat. Descartes should have thought of that. The soul, suspended in the dark, bitter gall, hiding.

it’s easy to mistake Lurie’s thoughts on Petrus for objective information from an objective omniscient narrator. But this is his vile, opinionated prejudice talking and it is presented so obvious that one has to beware not to take it for granted. Actually, it says more about Lurie, who doesn’t seem to doubt his instinct, than about Petrus. The alternating remarks of how much he likes Petrus do not help.

13. Lucy tells her side of the story, edited as she wants it. Lurie keeps misreading her, not understanding. Cause guilt and salvation are abstractions. I don’t act in terms of abstractions.

Highest respect for Lucy knowing what’s important for herself and sticking to it…

The blood of life is leaving his body and despair is taking its place, despair that is like a gas, odourless, tasteless, without nourishment.

12. To the ER and spending the night at the Shaws’s

Not for the first time, he wonders whether women would not be happier living in communities of women, accepting visits from men only when they choose.

May people who do not believe in souls yet have them, and may their souls lead an independent life?>
p. 104

The day is not dead yet but living. War, atrocity: every word with which one tries to wrap up this day, the day swallows down its black throat.

11. Blunt and random violence. It came as unexpected as in real life and I am as shocked