At school he asserts he is a Roman Catholic despite his family having no real religion, and finds himself left behind during religious assemblies with a few other boys. He is saved by a popular, handsome boy named Michael and decides that he survived because he is special. He almost drowns attempting to swim across a lake with the other boys. He goes camping with the scout troop despite his fears of being away from his mother for so long. At school there is much corporal punishment all the teachers have canes and use them liberally.Īt home he is uncertain as to the status of his father, though he knows in most homes that the father is at the head of the household. He strives to keep his experience at school a secret, and plans to ensure his mother will know nothing of it by getting nothing but good grades and excellent reports on his behavior. Eventually, she does indeed teach herself to ride, but her father’s mocking resistance continues, and when the bike disappears and she stops riding he knows he is at fault as much as his father, and he is conflicted about being on his father’s side. He joins his father in mocking her and feels guilty. She attempts to teach herself in their backyard. The bike is too large and heavy for him and his mother decides she will learn to ride it in order to be free, but she cannot find anyone to teach her, and his father mocks her efforts. The family has moved here from Cape Town, and everything is worse than it was the family deals with flies and fleas and ants, and the narrator wishes he had a horse in order to go into the veld. Narrated in the third person, the story begins with a description of the Coetzee family home in Worcester, South Africa when Coetzee was ten years old. All three books were later collected into the single volume Scenes from Provincial Life. Based on his own childhood experiences living in South Africa, it was followed by the sequels Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II and Summertime. Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life is an autobiographical novel by J.M.
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