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J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace is a lean novel with an ending more akin to a well-crafted short story. This is a good thing.

The novel centers on various forms of disgrace, starting first with that of the protagonist, David Lurie, a twice-divorced 52-year-old professor who seduces a student. Lurie’s shamelessness leads first to foolish decisions, then to an unwillingness to repent privately or publicly, and finally with frustration in dealing with his daughter, Lucy, an unconventional mid-twenties woman who has turned her back on comfortable city living to run a farm. Though initially relieved with the cultural shift of rural South Africa (even with questionable neighbors), David Lurie soon gets dragged into what will become his daughter’s disgrace.

What starts as a brief retreat from the pressures of college town judgment becomes a slow repentance. The word is never spoken, and the path is not linear, but under the weight of horrible actions—both to and from himself—David Lurie arrives at that low place. Many of the decisions the characters make are foolish—in fact, I’d go so far to say there isn’t a character who doesn’t seem foolish—but these flaws make them sadly realistic. Coetzee completes his symbolic skeleton with illusions to Byron and in the treatment of unwanted animals. Eloquent in its brevity, Disgrace carries a heavy story with admirable lyrical prose. Three stars.