RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewFrom a personal library, one would expect personal criticism. But Coetzee provides no such thing, if by personal we mean sentimentalized reflections on the moments in his life at which he encountered such books or the lessons he has taken from them and tried to bring into his own fiction. In fact, these essays could be described as antipersonal. The hero is always the writer under discussion … Coetzee is as perspicacious and erudite a guide as one could hope for. His biographical sketches of the life and times of the authors he addresses are excellent, concretely informative while also marbled with interesting tidbits … He is gravedigging, with probity, with the greatest reverence for the craft they share, and in this way is saying thank you in the only way one writer can really say it to another, which is by writing about them well.
