Boyhood by J.M. Coetzee

This book is about a boys childhood in South Africa in the end of 1940. it is the winner of the Nobel prize for literature 2003. In the book we follows Johns childhood by reading his thoughts and descriptions. He is clever but also very special, living with his mum, dad and little brother. John is an Africaan witch has higher status then colored people but lower then English people.

When I was reading the book I waited for something to happen but it never did and for me that are used to fantasy and adventures that was something new. I found the book a little slow but it was also interesting to read about a boys childhood in Africa, in some parts I could recognize myself and in other parts it was totally different against a Swedish childhood. Johns relation against his mother was also interesting, he felt both love and hate towards her, hating her because he blamed her for not being normal but still loved her for not treating him like all mothers treated their children. But mostly it was love and I think that the writer tried to show an Oedipus complex between John and his mother. Through the book John described himself as different and always seemed to be elder then he was. Always first to school and the best in the class because he was terrified of being punished by the teachers (beaten) for that terror he feels wimpy and blames his mother who never has beaten him. I recognized myself as a child in his silly questions to his mother “Who do you love most of me and my brother?” or “Who would you save first if our house was burning?” and his mother answers is the same as my mothers “ I love you all equally much” or “I would save both of you at the same time”. When I read the book and had got to known the characters better I began to think that the big happening would be that John killed someone because he seemed to be capable to do that and I thought something were going to happen, but it did not. But in the end of the book Johns hate against his father was so big that he hopped that his father would kill himself something I find very harsh and odd for a 10 year old boy to think about I never really understood why John hated his father so but perhaps he did not want to share his mother with anyone. Reading about John was a little bit difficult both because of the language that was different then what i am used to, and because John is a complex boy that sometimes is like an adult and sometimes like a child.

An interesting story about a slighter different childhood than mine, but not a particularly exciting story that made me want to read for hours.