22 Saturday 20 August 2016 The Daily Telegraph The Daily Telegraph Saturday 20 August 2016 23 BOOKS

he wondered about a writer’s “late ‘Where does passion come into style” – to him, it meant “an ideal of the picture?’ The boy does not a simple, subdued, unornamented answer but, in a gesture that This bug could language and a concentration on he, Simón, has not seen before, Messiah or questions of real import, even places three fingers of his right questions of life and death”. If that’s hand over his mouth. ‘Is this a so, then Coetzee was born late. But charade?’ asks Consuelo. ‘Must we save your life in The Childhood of Jesus (2013), guess?’ The boy does not stir, but to which The Schooldays of Jesus his eyes sparkle mischievously. is the sequel, there was definitely ‘I understand,’ says Alma. ‘Then something more arresting going on perhaps you can explain it to us,’ naughty than the expression of late style. says Consuelo. ‘There is nothing to “Confession: I have never explain,’ says Alma.” been tilting at microbes for too understood how [magicians] saw Steven Poole on how he long,” Yong writes, “and created a the woman in half,” John Updike hen, just when you’re world that’s hostile to the ones we wrote in a 1972 review. “And I do T prepared to ditch all this learnt to stop worrying need.” It turns out that opening not understand Vladimir Nabokov’s nonsense, there’s a murder. the window of a hospital room boy? new novel Transparent Things.” (Who would have thought any and love the microbe is beneficial for the patient (as The Childhood of Jesus was similarly Coetzee novel needed a spoiler Florence Nightingale long ago received two years ago. But, like warning, but if you don’t want to suspected), because it enables Updike, the reviewers who couldn’t know who gets it, look away now.) I CONTAIN pathogenic bacteria to leave and make head or tail of Coetzee’s odd There’s a slovenly man called MULTITUDES helpful ones to enter. Architects book stressed that their bafflement Dmitri who works in the museum by Ed Yong are studying how to build “good” was more of a confession than a next door to the Academy and is microbes into hospital walls. complaint. To borrow from Chris popular with the children but, with 368PP, BODLEY HEAD, One’s eyes do occasionally glaze J M Coetzee’s ‘The Schooldays of Jesus’ Rea, the refrain was: “I don’t know his lack of decorum, rubs Simón £20, EBOOK £9.99 over in the parade of bugs, but in what it is – but I love it”. up the wrong way. It turns out that the main Yong’s book is vividly is opaque, often boring – but ultimately What was there to “get”? he is in love with Ana Magdalena. enjoyable. He visits scientists The first problem was Jesus, or, When her body is found locked up in their labs, and they say funny brilliant. Duncan White wonders why rather, the lack of Jesus. Readers in a cubicle in the basement, Dmitri ÌÌÌÌÌ things. (“You can’t go wrong with expecting something like Philip claims that he raped and killed her. t’s commonly said that the mucus, because mucus is cool.”) For every reader that finds Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus This death brings the novel to human body contains 10 times He has a favourite bacterium, THE SCHOOLDAYS I his reticence frustrating, there and the Scoundrel Christ or Colm life. Hindsight fills the duck scene as many microbes as human Wolbachia, which hides in insects OF JESUS is another that finds pathos in Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary with significance. The children cells, but the ratio is closer to and other arthropods. It’s also an by JM Coetzee his restraint. What he withholds were disappointed. In Coetzee’s who threw the rocks were also half and half. Even so, the full example of how the new microbial does not necessarily disappear novel, a man called Simón takes gorging themselves on grapes: importance of that microbial science might save lives. One 272PP, HARVILL SECKER, from the book but shapes it by on the care of a little boy called “The children stuff their mouths; half is only just beginning to team is deliberately infecting £17.99, EBOOK £9.99 its absence. In a rare moment of Davíd, whom he meets on a boat their hands and faces are sticky be understood. As this densely mosquitoes with Wolbachia, exegetical candour about his own as they sail to a Spanish-speaking with the sweet juice.” Davíd, by fascinating and elegant book because it makes them immune work, Coetzee said that his second town (not in Spain), having been contrast, eats one grape at a time, shows, your bacteria not only to the viruses they usually pass on novel, In the Heart of the Country “washed clean” of their previous spitting out the seeds and “rinsing help digest your food but might to humans. If you release enough ÌÌÌÌÌ (1977), was organised into a series lives in God-knows-where. With a his hands fastidiously afterwards”. even direct the development of Wolbachia-laden mosquitoes s it possible for a novel of numbered paragraphs “as a way touch of Kafka, the boy once had a Following one’s appetite, we must your gut, “craft and tune” your into the wild, you might wipe out to be a series of boring of pointing to what is not there letter explaining who he was, but conclude, leads to violence. immune system and influence your dengue fever or even malaria. conversations punctuated between them”. he’d lost it. We don’t meet Jesus. But what is a life lived without behaviour. Each one of us, and Managing the microbial by silly dancing, but still be Omission has also been his The blurb of the novel described appetite? This is the debate that every other animal, is a whole systems in humans themselves, I good? In The Schooldays of oblique method of confronting it as an allegory – but of what? consumes Simón, increasingly community of ecosystems. meanwhile, is a new frontier in Jesus, JM Coetzee pulls it political issues, especially those Not very obviously of Christ’s isolated as he tries to be a father Ed Yong’s book is about medicine. There has already off. This is another opaque book of South Africa in Waiting for the childhood. Coetzee gave a reading to his strange son, who appears the development over been a lot of hype about from an ascetic author who finds Barbarians (1980) and The Life of the book in Cape Town in which above earthly desires and exhibits the last few decades of faecal transplants, in a way of denying you everything and Times of Michael K (1983), he let slip that he had wanted to supernatural powers (he seems this new understanding which “doctors take stool you want while somehow giving where the brutalities of apartheid leave the cover and title page blank. able to read some characters’ in biology. Microbes from a donor and install you what you need. are approached not directly but Perhaps he was worried about the minds). Davíd says that the boy who are crucial to nearly all it in a patient’s guts”. When you try to describe allegorically. Sometimes the Advertising Standards Authority. killed the duck was “shining”, and life; and now they are This, it turns out, can Coetzee’s novels – bleak, hinterland of the narrative has The action (if one might call claims he can “save” both the duck fashionable, too. quickly cure chronic unsparing, experimental been shaped by personal suffering; it that) of The Childhood of Jesus and Ana Magdalena. Later, he says Scientists investigate diarrhoea caused by the C – they sound unappetising. scholars looking at his notes and takes place in the town of Novilla, he knows his own “true name”. the bacteria that live difficile bacterium, but the You might consume them early drafts have shown how a bland socialist utopia, outside Could he be Jesus after all? At one helpfully inside animals, suggested benefits for other to make sure your reading important the disintegration of his conventional history or geography, point, he even cuddles a lamb. such as light-emitting squids; disorders, such as obesity diet has enough intellectual marriage was to Dusklands (1974); in which people eat bean paste Phrases that sound like scripture or worms, in which it is the and even autism, are unproven. roughage. Coetzee is certainly his relationship with his mother on crackers, take a functional occasionally erupt into the text bacteria that enable body parts In the future, however, scientists not interested in writing books approach to sex and have little in (“pillar of grace” and “It is just air, to regenerate. As Yong explains, See the light: may be able to design a microbial for escapism or entertainment. Could Davíd be the way of fun. As immigrants to air that blows where it listeth”) but in a splendid example of the bacteria help ecosystem for each patient from His is a philosophical approach this bureaucratic city, Simón and they don’t give any clarity. Coetzee, remarkable and somehow amusing squids glow in scratch and pack it into a pill, to to literature. He uses fiction Jesus after all? At Davíd are eventually assigned of course, is more than capable of facts with which his book is stuffed: the dark treat a wider variety of illnesses. like steel wool to scrub away at names and ages, then they go being teasingly obscure and one “The only bit of the flatworm that Medicine, Yong suggests, may himself in the hope of revealing one point, he even and find a woman, Inés, whom senses that, at his most po-faced, he can’t regenerate is the bacteria- become more like ecology: unadorned truths. His aesthetic, cuddles a lamb Simón somehow persuades to is wryly undercutting himself. free head. The tail will regrow a restoring the ecosystems of the

too, is suitably parsimonious: become Davíd’s mother. The THE TELEGRAPH MERRITT FOR WESLEY It is Simón – the Joseph of this brain but the brain alone will not human body to harmony. every sentence is scraped clean. boy is unusually gifted, and scenario – who exhibits more produce a tail.” The female beewolf, One scientist gives out an To his critics, this makes to Age of Iron (1990); the death of school becomes a problem. The of its misery by breaking its neck. children) pushes your patience. down from the stars and things Christian virtue than the lordly on the other hand, a fearsome bee- Overselling the Microbiome Coetzee a joyless proposition. his son in a fall to The Master of St authorities soon want to ship Davíd On the 11th page, the “feathered The owners of the farm – the Three like that. Davíd refuses to let Davíd. He is generous, humble eating wasp, passes onto its young Award to colleagues or journalists Who wants to read abstract or Petersburg (1994); his relationship off to a special institution. They carcass” is buried in a shallow Sisters – take an interest in the Simón watch him practise. When and sincere, even when wracked a strain of bacteria that themselves he feels are exaggerating the academic ideas expounded in with his daughter to Disgrace. decide, instead, to do a runner. grave. By the 12th page, the grave precocious six-year-old child and he finally “dances” for him, it by doubt, and sacrifices almost produce life-saving antibiotics for importance of all this. Yong prose that is tasteless and dry? Since leaving Cape Town for This is where The Schooldays has been desecrated by scavengers suggest he join Señor Arroyo’s involves sitting still in the back of everything for his adopted son. the young beewolf grubs. hopes he doesn’t deserve one, Martin Amis claimed Coetzee had Adelaide in 2002, he has either of Jesus picks up the thread. The and all that is left is the “head with Academy of Dance, all fees paid. the car with his eyes closed and Davíd’s questing takes him The rhetoric of scientific and in the main I agree. His book “no talent” and that “his whole inhabited fictional alter egos, assembled family, trying to keep a empty eye sockets and one foot”. The boy says he does not like “a slight smile on his lips”. Simón increasingly into the abstract. language, Yong points out, stands may contain many disgusting style is predicated on transmitting such as Elizabeth Costello in low profile, have just arrived at a Welcome back to Coetzee country. dance and Simón confesses to the rather wonders what the boy is The dances he performs are in the way of a fuller appreciation stories from the frontier of absolutely no pleasure”. How, Elizabeth Costello (2003) and Slow farm outside a town called Estrella. Horrified by what happens to sisters: “he has tired us out with his being taught. each named after a number of microbial wonders. Labels microscopic science, but it is then, has a writer who refuses Man (2005) and Señor C in Diary Even if Coetzee had persuaded his the duck, Davíd interrogates Simón wilfulness, his mother and me. He When the Academy hosts an and increase in complexity and such as “pathogen” or “parasite” strangely comforting. so much to his readers been of a Bad Year (2007), or written publishers, this time around, to about why justice isn’t done and is like a bulldozer. He has flattened open night, he sees for himself. mystical power as they go up: are applied to fixed entities, but We all travel through a accepted as a literary master? austerely about his younger self leave the cover and title page blank, why the rock-throwing boy seems us. We have been flattened. We First, there is a demonstration of first it is dance number two, what they describe is more like cushioning cloud of our own The Schooldays of Jesus is the in the third person in Boyhood there could have been no doubt as to show no remorse. The pattern have no more resistance.” Hearing the astrological dances. Then Davíd then three, then five, and then a “behaviours”. “Symbiosis”, on the bacteria. So, as Yong writes sixth of his books to have made (1997) and Youth (2002). In to the author. Coetzee to the core, is set: Davíd asks questions, Simón this, the boy “smiles to himself ”. takes the lead in an “ant dance”, transcendental seven. He even other hand, misleadlingly implies prettily: “A polar bear trundling a Man Booker Prize longlist. If it Summertime (2009) he upped the the story unfolds in the present answers with patience, Davíd Having verged on the irritating, wearing a cap with antennae. It is threatens to turn it up to 11 (“It’s thoroughly positive cooperation. solo through the Arctic, with wins in October, he will become stakes: imagining himself dead, he tense; adjectives are sparse and is dissatisfied. There is a long the novel veers alarmingly toward not enticing to the reader. A scene one louder, isn’t it?”). Yong is careful to say that it is nothing but ice in all directions, the first writer to have won the adopted the voice of his biographer carefully deployed. Socratic dialogue about “sexual the tedious. Davíd does enrol in in which Davíd demonstrates Simón’s problems are concrete more complicated than that. And is completely surrounded.” Even award three times (Hilary Mantel and painted a deeply unappealing It doesn’t take long for Coetzee intercourse” (“Do you put a balloon the Academy and, wearing his a dance to the Three Sisters and it is his questions, not the the truth has implications for how when you think you’re alone, you and Peter Carey have both won portrait of himself as a “cold fish”. to give us a dose of one of his on your penis, Simón?”). When gold slippers, learns all about the To order this encapsulates why this stuff is so boy’s, that captivate. Coetzee we live. To order this aren’t really. twice). Coetzee first won it in 1983 Having taken us beyond his favourite themes, too: cruelty Simón and Inés find a man to tutor metaphysics of pure dance from book from the off-putting: has done it again. Through the Since only a tiny minority of book from for The Life and Times of Michael own death, how much of the toward animals. On the sixth page, Davíd in maths, a debate ensues a beautiful but haughty teacher Telegraph for “‘Bravo!’ says Valentina. ‘Was invocation of a strange and mostly bacteria cause human illness, the the Telegraph K and then in 1999 for Disgrace; self is there left to scrape away? some boys throw stones at a duck over what numbers are. called Ana Magdalena, wife of £15.99 plus that a dance of passion?’ ‘It is a alienating world he sucks you into modern overuse of antibiotics for £16.99 plus Steven Poole’s Rethink: the Surprising History of New Ideas in 2003, he was made a Nobel Coetzee is now 76. In his published and one breaks its wing. On the This pattern is at first endearing, Señor Arroyo. There’s talk of £1.99 p&p, call dance to call down Three,’ says the interrogating the fundamentals: and antibacterial everything is £1.99 p&p, call is published by Random House Laureate to boot. correspondence with Paul Auster ninth page, a man puts the duck out even amusing, but soon (like real bringing the “noble numbers” 0844 871 1515 boy. ‘And passion?’ says Valentina. what we live for, and why. harmful to our health. “We have 0844 871 1515