The Pole by J. M. Coetzee is at once moody and mysterious – full of tension.

This novella centers around Beatriz and Wittold. She’s a 40-something music lover; he, a 70-year-old piano master from Poland.

When Wittold comes to Barcelona for a recital, Beatriz, as a favor to her best friend who has arranged the Pole’s visit, is asked to play hostess to the pianist after his concert. This isn’t a task she welcomes, but it is made a bit more bearable by a couple of fellow patrons who join them for dinner. She doesn’t like the Pole’s music, his interpretation of Chopin. She endures the evening, thankful when it is over.

After his visit, Wittold mails Beatriz a CD of his music and arranges to visit again by teaching lessons near her. This is the beginning of Wittold’s declarations of love for her, which include an invitation to run away with him to Brazil.

It would take less than an afternoon to read this intensely psychological portrayal of a relationship between pursuer and pursued. There’s a palpable sense of want, of lacking, of expecting and maybe even hoping for more. Though over and over Beatriz says she doesn’t want a relationship with Wittold, it is obvious she is intrigued by his affection and most of her actions speak very differently.

With explicit allusions to both Chopin’s personal life and Dante and his Beatrice, connections to the arts are woven throughout. Perhaps someone more musically inclined would recognize the mood and movement of a concerto.

This mostly third-person limited narrative reminds me of the poignant accuracy with which Ian McEwan accesses inner monologues. This may be an unfair comparison since Coetzee predates McEwan and is similarly prolific, but McEwan is a bit more well-known.

This is probably unjust as well given that Coetzee has won two Booker awards – the first to do so – as well as the Nobel Prize in Literature. As for the Booker, he’s been long-listed three other times and shortlisted a fourth. Those who know my affection and reliance on the Booker understand my affection for Coetzee.

The Pole is a book I can tell will stay with me. I will turn over in my head questions about Beatriz’s motivations. For me, it is sad. And maybe for her too. Is this life? Do we secretly hope life – and the people we love or have relationships with – will be more exciting, more vibrant, and more exceptional than they are? What is our acceptance of the ordinary?

For as little as the novella The Pole requires upfront, it offers much that you’ll want to consider once you’re finished. It would make for a great discussion, and I highly recommend to those who enjoy pondering a book well beyond its close.

After the concert, Beatriz asked the Polish pianist why Chopin lives on. The Pole responds, because he tells us about ourselves, desires which are sometimes not clear to us, or for that which we cannot have. Beatriz doesn’t not understand. The Pole knows he hasn’t the English to make himself clear; listen to the music, he advices.

And at the end of the dinner, the hosts of the concert say good-bye to the pianist who thanks Beatriz for her profound questions. “I will not forget,” he tells her.

The lady forgets the pianist, returns to her life. She and her husband lead separate lives, in separate bedrooms; it is a good marriage based on respect and secrets. She didn’t like the Pole’s interpretation of Chopin, didn’t care for him, but did like how he took her seriously. No one takes her seriously.

Beatriz is shocked to hear from the Pole, who sends her CDs of his Chopin, then invites her to join him where he is teaching. Beatriz is perplexed. She does not trust him but they met again. He tells her that she is his Beatrice to his Dante, and he will love her all his life. She is confused, she is nothing like what he imagines, she feels nothing towards this man. He is over seventy, she is in her forties. She is content with her settled life. He offers his undying love. She does not know what she wants. Perhaps she pities him.

This is a strange love story, one-sided and hobbled by not having a common language, by his inability to convey passion to her cool solitude. After the Pole’s death, Beatriz still is not able to escape his devotion, their dialogue continues.

We understand Beatriz’s perspective, so that the Pole appears awkward and clumsy, the antithesis of a fervent lover. He cannot woe her with words, and even his poems to her are translated by a non-literary translator and lose their power. His Chopin interpretation had left her cold, for the music did not transport her, had no romanticism. He insists on his eternal love, which he can never fully express; even his aging body is against him.

A surprising, haunting, short novel.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

This book is about an elderly Polish pianist who visits Spain and falls in love in Beatriz. Beatriz at first doesn’t care for Witold, the pianist, but slowly he doesn’t leave her thoughts.

I think the book was good but I felt frustrated with Beatriz most of the time. This may well be a story of unrequited love and missed chances, but also about denial and not knowing yourself well enough. It reminded me a little of The Remains of the Day.

I enjoyed some of Beatriz’s rumination and contradictions, but in the end I was too bored with her cruelty.

On a personal level, books about aging men having affairs are entirely uninteresting to me. Actually, books about anyone having an affair tend not to do it for me.
The Pole regards this scenario differently, certainly. This novel looks at the affair, first of all, from the woman's point of view. A woman who is disinterested in general. Or old enough not to be caught up in the whims of passion. The pole's outsized admiration of this woman is really the core of the novel. A man who has put all of this meaning into another human being he barely knows. Why? Why would anyone do this?

HIS desire. HIS admiration. HIS needs. She is repelled, enticed, then repelled again. Caught up in it, but without any passion.

In the end, it's a fascinating look at an affair, at a man's desire, and at desire in general at a later age. I struggled through the beginning as I felt it was going to be another novel about a 'brilliant artist' finding 'his muse'. It is, in a way, but it isn't as well. There always seems to be this dichotomy in Coetzee novels. Personally, it was only once I finished it that the real essence of this novel reached me.

While I did not love the "love story" told, as it felt desperate and a bit aggressive, I appreciated Coetzee's writing.

Beatriz, a Spanish matron, found herself entertaining a elderly Polish pianist after his performance at her music circle. He fell in love with her and pursued her with suggestions that she meet him, that she travel to Brazil with him, that she was his peace. She was repelled at first but her cool relationship with her unfaithful husband led her to agree to invite him to stay with her at her husband's cottage when he was in the vicinity. She eventually slept with him but after the visit was over, she put him out of her mind and out of her life.
Coetzee is a writer who delves into a person's interior life and lays it bare on the page. I could see Beatriz unwillingly drawn to this man who seemed to be infatuated with her. She wanted to see an image of herself in his eyes that would make her understand his love for her. Maybe she did not understand love at all.
This short novel is written in numbered paragraphs - an interesting format - and is fairly short. Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC of this book; the opinions are mine for which I was not compensated.

This is one of those books that I feel must have gone over my head. Either that, or it was just a bit on the boring side. Our MC's is a musician, a, pianists to be exact late in life, in his 70's. There's not a lot I can say about this, I feel that this is a book that has to be experienced, you will either love it or feel like I did... which is that I felt a bit bored, and also a tad bit... eye rolly. Coetzee was being dramatic, like in the sense that I wanted to tell him to chill. That not everything is so intense, life is not always (or really ever) like a poem by Dante.

I think it was supposed to be like some big commentary or reflection on love & connection and all the various ways that we as people can ache for love, yearn for love, yearn for people, connect with people, even people that are out of reach, etc etc.

Beatriz is a much younger married woman who's supposed to entertain a polish pianist Witold Walczykiewicz before and after the recital that her social group organized with Withold. She doesn't exactly fall in love with his playing or his interpretation of Chopin's work, but he becomes obsessed with her and she somewhat inexplicably finds herself drawn to him.

This isn't your traditional story of love, or adultery, it vacillates between passion and intentional rationality, Beatriz is the rational one, while Walczykiewicz is the passionate one, they speak different languages and there is misunderstanding when they try to communicate. I am very sure that it all was some commentary on the way of love, the unknowability of it, the unreachable elements within ourselves in each other, a longing for love and beauty, but personally to me it felt just a little more complicated than it needed to be. Love doesn't need to be contemplated, we don't need to dissect every motivation and action, we can sometimes just exist and react. That is not who Walczykiewicz is, and so I assume it's not who Coetzee is either.

This is my first book by Coetzee, but as he has written much more famous works and won the nobel prize for literature I think it's safe to say that I will eventually give him another shot. Maybe his newest work, written at his oldest age, was not necessarily the best place to start. He is aging himself, it's only natural; that he would write about the intellectuality of getting older, getting OLD. I feel like I wanna give this 3 stars because he's such a famous writer, but for me it was barely a 2.

Many thanks to W.W. Norton and NetGalley for the eARC of this wonderful little novelette.

I have several of this author's books on my to-read list, but this is the first one I've actually tackled, and I'm now inspired to push his other works forward in my queue. This is a lovely, easy-reading study of the nature of love and desire between two people who are never quite on the same page with their feelings during their brief relationship: a 50-year-old Spanish society wife and a Polish pianist in his 70s ("The Pole" of the title). After a lukewarm initial meeting, he professes his love and devotion and doggedly pursues her over several years. At first she doesn't understand his fixation on her, but her affection for him grows all the way to the end of the story. Dante and Beatrice are invoked, but it's not a 1:1 analogy, which works perfectly. I suspect re-reading this (it's a very fast read) will be rewarding.

JM Coetzee writes about the life and perspectives of a single mind, using his literary talents to dive into character. The beauty is in the writing, and this book is ideal for readers who enjoy Coetzee and appreciate stories of the individual.

Thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton & Company for this advance readers copy, in exchange for an honest review. The Pole is the story of Witold, a Polish pianist, who meets Beatriz, a patron of the arts, when he performs at a local venue in her Spanish town. Shortly after meeting her, Witold declares his love for her and makes many proposals to her. Meanwhile, Beatriz, who is married, initially resists him but, ultimately finds herself getting entangled in this web.

This book was a breeze to read through and I finished it in a sitting because I had to know what would happen. I thought the premise of the story was interesting and I appreciated the craft/message but, ultimately I struggled to really enjoy this book. From my understanding, this book highlighted to the reader the sort of power struggle that existed between the two main characters, as one pushed for love and a relationship, and the other was caught in a struggle of whether to resist. There were many elements that kept Beatriz from fully succumbing to his proposals, including societal expectations, physical appearances, her own self doubt, etc, which I think is a great social commentary on love/connection in modern society. Beatriz also makes an interesting point that perhaps her love with Withold would’ve been more successful if they were kids (a time when they would’ve had less standing in their way), which is something they stuck with me after finishing the book.

Ultimately, I think the author was able to succinctly get his message across in this book but, I just don’t think it was for me. I found the characters a bit difficult to empathize with but, maybe that is part of the point. I did appreciate the short chapters, which I found helped move the book along at a good pace and kept the events of the story well connected.

I’d recommend this book to literary fiction fans and those who enjoy short novels that really pack a punch. There is a lot to think about with this book and a number of ideas that will probably stick with me. Thanks again for this advance reading opportunity!

The Pole explores the well-known theme of artists finding their muse, but does so in a new, heartbreaking way. Rather than someone young, whose love story (successful or not) inspires and launches their works to the upper echelons of success and notoriety, we see instead a man in his twilight years who grasps for the woman who inspires him, but finds obstacles at every turn. Where we expect to see either requited love or greatness born from rejection, we find neither. Instead, we are forced to face the multitude of limitations that keep us from understanding both one another and ourselves. There are so many barriers to overcome in trying to connect with those around us, from language to age and even to the way we interpret the same piece of music. On its face, this book sends a grim message, presenting all the challenges we face in our attempts to understand one another. But lurking beneath the surface, in every action the main character takes, there seems to be the reminder that we can always try. Deep down, we all wish to know others and be known, and are better for making the effort. However, we should all take heed from this story and do so before it is too late.

The Pole, if I’m understanding it correctly, is all about what’s lost in translation between people: from what’s lost by an author as he attempts to translate his nebulous ideas into words on the page, to what’s lost when two strangers are forced to resort to “global English'' in a necessarily superficial effort to understand one another. And as this comes from J. M. Coetzee — a native of South Africa who does not consider English to be his mother tongue, and who has released his last two novels first in Spanish after having them translated from his English originals — there are layers of meaning and irony beyond what might appear to be a simple girl meets boy story. This is about art, and the effort to use art to transcend what can be put into words, and about the basic impossibility of any two people understanding one another at all; if I’m understanding this correctly. I loved every bit of this short novel.