It is up to him to somehow get beyond childhood, beyond family and school, to a new life where he will not need to pretend any more.A young John Coetzee struggles to exert his autonomy in this perceptive evocation of his early years in the deeply divided South Africa of the 1940s. Coetzee reflects on his formative experiences with brutal insight and clarity, laying bare the intermingled joys and tragedies of childhood against a backdrop of incongruous cruelty. Boyhood is the first of J. M. Coetzee’s masterly trio of autobiographical novels, Scenes from Provincial Life.