The Pole

When Beatriz is asked to play hostess to a visiting Polish pianist, her initial reaction is annoyance. The older man is eccentric, more like a clown than an artist. Little does Beatriz know that their meeting has ignited an infatuation for the pianist, and she soon receives gifts and emails entreating her to begin an affair. Their encounters often leave her feeling pity for his devotion, but when, upon his death, she doggedly seeks to decipher a collection of poems he left her, it becomes clear that the obsession was shared. Coetzee (The Death of Jesus) presents intense, unsettling literary fiction. Chapters are broken into smaller sections, some only single sentence fragments, that read like a scattered inner monologue. Narrator Colin Mace has an aristocratic air that invokes the aloof Beatriz and her admirer. His performance of the haunting narrative yields a compelling listening experience.