Elizabeth Costello

Elizabeth Costello is a divorced old Australian woman that has lived a life of writing. She is famous, though this fame has come at a price: Two marriages, neglecting her kids when they were young, not enjoying life. This story is written as a series of ‘lessons,’ each one taking a look at an episode in her life as of late: Winning a price and being invited to accept the price in an American college, going to the honorary degree award ceremony of her sister in South Africa, being on a cruise ship to entertain and educate the passengers, going to a seminar in Amsterdam. There is usually a speech or lecture to be given, either by her or her associates in each lesson. It is a look at her own sort of soul searching on the life of a writer that she has led.

The next to last lesson curiously has her somewhere in the after-life, attempting to pass through some gate to which she was barred. She is asked by the gate-keeper to make a statement about her beliefs in writing before she could be admitted. But she feels as a writer she can not hold on to beliefs, her profession demands that she simply pass on whatever messages come to her.

A rather interesting fact gleaned from the book is that while the French eat frogs, the Chinese eat almost anything. A man with a Nigerian name was in the same cruise ship with Elizabeth and it turned out they’d been lovers ages before. The Nigerian Amos Totuola’s novel The Palmwine Drunkard was referred to in this lesson.

March 29, 2015. Review initially written in 2007. Novel first published in 2003, this edition by Secker & Warbug, ISBN 0-436-20616-1. Picture source: Yahoo (Images).