I am always looking for books with genuinely unlikeable protagonists, and long after reading Alissa Nutting’s Tampa, I have finally found another one of these characters - David Lurie, the protagonist of this book. He is selfish, obstinate, a sex addict, with hints of ephebophilia cropping up here and there. The narcissistic, impersonal way he treats different kinds of women gave me some harsh insight on whatever kind of sexual predator he is. Yet despite his repulsive behavior and thoughts, he cannot be so easily reduced to just that phrase.

It's hard to talk about this book without discussing the fate of Lucy, David's daughter. To me, her actions are wrong, frustrating, and disturbing - she seems like the archetypal woman doomed to excessively punish herself. There might be a case to be made for what she chooses, solely based on her own definition of dignity, but it's a very difficult one. Perhaps her warped, self-sacrificing behavior is her way of accepting her lot in life, perhaps it’s a result of being raised by an equally warped man and a seemingly distant mother. Perhaps her unwillingness to let her father step in is a result of his original sin - his failure as a patriarch, as a man.

Books aren't bad because they're difficult, and this isn't a bad book. My actual complaint with Disgrace is that at times it felt like a torturous puzzle, kind of like a Haneke movie. Whenever I felt a certain way towards David or some of the side characters, something happened that made me immediately sympathize or be disgusted with them. I know that a lot of life is like this, but as the events keep piling up in the last 30 or so pages, it really began to feel like a moral exercise. Ulitmately, I didn’t like the direction the story went. It felt excessive, but I will give the author credit for not really trying to put an optimistic spin on the story that would probably have read as hokey. A smaller issue I have is that while I liked the harsh, intentionally pretentious(?) à la Lolita writing style, I thought the Byron stuff was much too overwrought for the payoff.

Disgrace makes me feel like such a midwit that I wonder what the point of the book was. I definitely feel much more despair having read it. I'm glad I read it now rather than at any point in the future.