The story of Wittold Walccyzkiecz, a Polish pianist who becomes infatuated with Beatriz, a stylish patron of the arts, after she helps organize his Barcelona concert. Although Beatriz, a married woman, is initially unimpressed by Wittold, she soon finds herself pursued and ineluctably swept into the world of the journeyman performer. As he sends her letters, extends countless invitations to travel, and even visits her husband's summer home in Mallorca, their unlikely relationship blossoms, though, it seems, only on her terms.
Haunting and surreptitiously heartfelt ... In an age of virtue signaling, Coetzee has the courage to bypass every fashionable position and reassurance and, by so doing, in The Pole, to catch some emotional truth, about loneliness and bewilderment and need, that really pierces ... An unstoppably readable riddle that takes all kinds of surprising turns.
Tightly focused, a late style ... At the same time, it represents a return of sorts — to the spareness of his early writing as well as to his fascination with artists as characters ... Among the pleasures of The Pole are the layers it reveals. It is a book not only of the living but also of the dead. What does love mean? Coetzee wants us to consider. And memory — what consolations can it offer when we know it doesn’t last? ... Deeply moving.
Gravid ... A simple thread on which to hang beads of perception. Coetzee, who is 83, retains a sure touch. This is a convincing late-period novel. If it doesn’t rank with this Nobelist’s finest work, it is no embarrassment. It’s a pared-down book that avoids the excess philosophizing that has dragged down some of his more recent novels.
