What would the pre-accident Paul Rayment have brought to mind, listening to blues on the radio? He seems to have retired before the accident. There is no mention of inquiries from colleagues or winding up the business – no back story. We are told about the wrestler-like girl who fell in love with him, but we’re not really told how long ago that happened. He was still married, but nothing else. So, he sold up and made a tidy sum? Something like that. The apprenticeship in France, the weekend cycling tours. We have no real indication of what his life before the accident was like.

He’s like David Lurie and unlike him. Less frustration, less ambition, perhaps – less engagement? Older, less bitter – but the same coldness. He claims to be dog friendly as a lover, but we are told that this is likely a consequence of not really engaging with the individuality of the women he seduces.

SLOW MAN is the tale of an introverted man coping with the loss of a leg and the emotional journey back to some kind of equilibrium. The unsatisfactory nurses followed by the exceptional qualities of Marijana. Not a saint, but a sturdy, earthy woman who instinctively connects with him as a man rather than as a patient.

Equilibrium and the elements needed to produce it in a human life. The degree of individual variation – Peter Sellars and Keyser Sozay [I'm thinking of the scene where he kills his wife and children, rather than submit to the Hungarian gang who are out to get him].

Paul Rayment? He’s has become someone who is pretty self-contained and cat-like. More so than Elizabeth Costello, it turns out. One of the book’s saddest episodes is his considered rejection of a companionable domesticity with her. Nor will he pursue a connection with the blind Marianna; he’s truly smitten. He recognises that companionship is less than love and he won’t settle for less.

Love is the central theme – the hinterland between romantic love and the care and warmth offered by a nurse. That and what can be done with a life blighted by handicap. Rayment is not someone who has invested deeply in the lives of others. In his despair he fastens on the unsuitable Marijuana and, through her, the other Dokics.

Elizabeth Costello’s motivations are opaque, but one thing is clear: she pushes Rayment to see what he’s doing – its impact on him and its impact on all of them, not least Marijana’s husband, Mel.

Drago is the son Rayment never had – Marijana the nurturing mother he lacked as a child. Things don’t work out in the end, but there can be no doubting that Rayment has made progress. Just as Lurie must lose his looks and prestige before he can truly empathise and behave humanely, Rayment has to face up to his needs and desires for closeness and how this can change both his life and the lives of others. He comes to see that his real, imperfect connection with the Dokics is worth much more than any bequest to a museum could be. I suspect this is a lesson Coetzee feels he needs to keep relearning. From the reviews of his memoir of young adulthood, YOUTH, I gather that he sees himself as a cold fish – selfish and aloof. Maybe the recurring theme of dogginess is a kind of loathing for cat-like qualities he sees in himself?

One conjecture I feel confident in making: Coetzee sees himself as a slow man. Slow to learn the lessons he teaches his protagonists.