This was a very thought provoking and beautifully written novel about a very unpleasant person. David Lurie is a 52 year old divorced English professor in Cape Town. When his weekly triste with a prostitute ends he stalks her for a while, but he is turned off by seeing her in ‘real life’ with her own children.
He turns his attention then to a student thirty years his junior and coerces her into a sexual relationship with him. He claims to have real feelings for her, but when she turns to him for help he is not interested. The girl’s family complain to the university and they try to hush it all up by getting him to apologise, but he refuses to admit that he has done anything wrong and chooses instead to retire.
To escape the city for a while, David goes to stay with his daughter in her smallholding farm/dog boarding kennels in the countryside.
We some better sides to his nature, for instance he bonds with some dogs and helps out at the local animal hospital but when his daughter is raped and her home burgled he is outraged and yet is not nudged towards any remorse at his similar act of using power to get sex from his young student.
Apparently there is a film with John Malkovich based on the novel which I might seek out.
Sarah Wray Writer 