Friendships through the life course Book

I read this for my book club; I'm the one who suggested this book. I'd wanted to read it for many years. I had thought that it was a novel whose main character is an animal rights advocate. It's not and for me that was a disappointment.

It's mostly essays by other authors than the main author, referring back to Coetzee"s pieces: Amy Gutmann, Marjorie Garber, Peter Singer, Wendy Doniger, and Barbara Smuts. Except for Singer's, which is a fiction piece, they're basically non-fiction pieces.

The author's portions are two fiction chapters/essays that make up one story. Short story? Novella? But not novel. They were written to be lectures. I'd say perhaps they'd be more interesting to listen to as lectures but I don't think for me they would be any better than reading them as I did.

I found most of the book dry and even boring at times, and definitely not what I'd expected. Philosophizing via a fiction piece could be interesting. Maybe I'd have found it interesting in the 1970s or 1980s when I was starting to think about animal rights issues. Now, I mostly found most of it irritating. I like thinking about these issues, and discussing them, but how they were presented in this book is not my style, and usually not my current way of thinking either.

The writing is fine, and my amusement at the Singer piece and enjoyment of the Smuts piece, particularly when she is talking about her dog, make this book okay. So 2 stars it is.

Now I'll have to read other reviews (and hope that my book club members like it better than I did) because I swear this book had high average ratings. Once again, could it be me, in this space and time?? Perhaps. If I'd known what it was before I started it, I might have enjoyed it more. Luckily, it's short, and while the print is small, the contents are not as dense as I'd feared. It's a quick read, just not a particularly fun one for me. Someone who read my library copy at some point (the book is old enough that it still has the attached slip where they used to stamp due dates) must have read it for school because there is a lot of underlining throughout the book. Kind of annoying, kind of interesting to see what someone else found important.