I enjoy time alone as much as the next person, but after a lightning strike fried the alarm system at the house last week (an ongoing insurance saga), I felt a certain level of anxiety from having to spend yesterday evening entirely alone without the security of having a loud siren to scare away potential intruders.

After finishing the novel Disgrace and flipping through some sewing books, I decided that the only way I could truly relax was if I had a cookie. It was nearly midnight. Surely, no one would attempt to murder a girl in her home-made apron while she was baking cookies at nearly midnight.

I baked six delightfully yummy caramel and chocolate chip cookies using a simple recipe in Small-Batch Baking, a book with recipes to yield small portions for two or three people. Now, if only I can make two or three friends.

In Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, David Laurie finds himself in a disgraceful, embarassing situation: his career as a mediocre professor at a south African college is over after he is discovered having an affair with one of his students. Uninspired but only mildly dejected, David decides to temporarily move in with his estranged daughter who lives simply on a farm in a remote area outside of Grahamstown. His daughter Lucy, hard-boiled and closeted, runs a small market in the town and tends to her dogs she keeps in a kennel. Neither seem very enthusiastic about living together and float through their days apathetically. The lifestyle seems idyllic, perhaps a little meaningless, until three African men break into the home, set David’s face on fire and rape Lucy.

The violent interruption left me flabbergasted but what’s more astonishing is Lucy’s reaction: refusal to press charges, pursue legal action or even to acknowledge the incident.

It’s hard to appreciate Disgrace without prior knowledge of south Africa and its peoples, Coetzee offers only brief descriptions of the setting focusing mainly on the verbal exchanges and inner dialogs the main character. Lucy’s bizarre obligation to Petrus, her African neighbor, and David’s inability to tuck away his disdain for “them” could probably be better understood with a clearer understanding of south African culture.

The hundreds of reviews on Amazon.com differ greatly when it comes to describing what makes Disgrace a great short novel. Is it controversial? Is it racist? Does it criticize or condone a post-apartheid south Africa? Is David any better than the “jackal boy”? Does history speak through us?

Dewey at the hidden side of the leaf, a book blog of epic proportions, hosted a fabulous blog carnival of book reviews and recommendations. Consider your summer reading taken care of.