THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS, by J.M. Coetzee. Harvill Secker, 2013, 288 pp., ￡16.99 (hardcover)
It's a relief after reading a lot of contemporary fiction to come across the sober prose of J.M. Coetzee. He doesn't shout at you. He doesn't try to force on you any kind of facial expression. He knows what he's doing, but he's not going to tell you what that is, and I spent much of "The Childhood of Jesus" trying to figure it out.
I can't say I have figured it out. In the first place, it isn't really about Jesus, except at some hard-to-pin-down allegorical level. The plot is simple enough. A middle-aged man and a 5-year-old boy, Simon and David, arrive by boat in a new country, having escaped from their homeland for reasons that aren't made clear. Simon is not the boy's father; they met on the boat. David carried a letter with him, which explained who his mother is, but the letter was lost before they arrived, and the man has decided to look after David and help him find his mother.