Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

It seems a lifetime ago that I read Robinson Crusoe and I can hardly remember anything from it other than knowing it's obvious storyline of a guy being marooned on an island. I wondered whether or not it would make any difference in regards to reading Foe. In the end it didn't really matter, as I found this messy re-working not that special anyway. Of the four Coetzee novels I've now read, Foe I found to be the weakest. It's a clever idea, giving the classic a deconstructionist turn by adding new characters and including the original author himself, with his disputed reactions and shrewd wisdom, and it's written well enough, but when compared to his extraordinarily convincing novels Waiting for the Barbarians & disgrace then Foe just isn't on the same island, more like stuck on a reef.
The young castaway widow Susan Barton is really central to this parable tale, and not Cruso (Coetzee omits the e from his name), who is an irascible, lazy, imperious man who has little interest in actually trying to escape from the island, with poor old Friday just moping at his side without the ability to talk seeing as he has no tongue, which could be viewed as a social emblem for black South Africans, seeing as Coetzee has used allegorical political material before. After rescue, Cruso snuffs it, and back in England, the main focus is of Susan and Friday's travels and then Foe, and her efforts to persuade him to turn her account of life on the island into an adventure book. He on the other hand is far more interested in Susan's two years spent in Bahia, which was a time of indifference to her. This side-story, then sort of becomes the main story, when the supposed daughter of Susan shows up out of nowhere, and yet she has no recollection of her. But she does in fact have a missing daughter who was abducted and conveyed to the New World. She went looking for her in Brazil before taking a ship to Lisbon and becoming the captain's lover before the sailors mutiny wreaks havoc. I found there to be too much going on in the last third of the novel, like it's pulling in all sorts of directions not knowing where it wants to go. I didn't think much of its ambiguous ending either. I did though like Susan Barton, in the fact that she took on the responsibility of trying to find a safe passage home for Friday, who was completely lost at sea wandering around southern England with her. She could have quite easily just left him in a ditch somewhere. Still, would probably have been better off reading Defoe's classic - that will always stand the test of time, whereas this won't