Slow Man J M Coetzee Secker & Warburg, 265pp, £16.99 ISBN 0436206110

J M Coetzee's new novel, Slow Man, reads a little like a short story. You can see the idea behind it; or rather, the two ideas. A man enjoying the vigorous tail end of middle age is knocked off his bicycle and loses a leg. How will he endure a life that no longer gives him pleasure? A novelist finds herself stuck with a main character whose refusal to act has prevented her from finishing a book. How can she, without meddling, inspire him to resolve his situation? These two ideas, plainly enough, belong to different genres. Coetzee marries them without fuss, but you cannot help sensing something forced in the union. The effect on his characters is a kind of irritable decorum. They behave both stiffly and showily.

The better idea, to my taste, is the first; it also better suits Coetzee's useful prose. Paul Rayment is the bicyclist, a divorcee without family living by himself in Adelaide. Such details emerge after the accident. Friends from his old, unamputated life try to reclaim him before he pushes them away. His story is a kind of photographic negative of Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilyich. In Paul's case, a man who has not used his life well wonders why he must continue to live. Coetzee is very good at describing the way in which real misery not only comes across as, but has its roots in, peevishness. Paul refuses a prosthetic limb and dismisses a number of attendants. Then he falls hopelessly in love with the first nurse whose practical manner allows him to preserve his dignity.

Marijana Jokic is a stout, pretty Croatian with three children, who often accompany her on the job. Paul begins to regret his own childlessness. Humiliated by the loss of his leg, he hardly dares to declare his love. Instead, he tries to play the part of godfather to Marijana's family. Mr Jokic begins to resent his interference. Marijana wonders how far she can innocently make use of Paul's mixed intentions. They reach an impasse. Enter Elizabeth Costello, the writer from Coetzee's previous novel. She shows up at his door unannounced and moves in. It is not clear why Paul doesn't phone the police. Coetzee makes a few gestures towards explanation, which centre on Paul's fear that he has lost his grip on the world. Has he died? Is she his guide to the afterlife? No: she is only a novelist, who tries to push him, and the plot, towards some climax or resolution.

It's hard to justify such heavy-handedness, especially since such devices have long since lost the power to shock and their power to amuse is following hard behind. I can give it a try. Larkin once wrote that "none of the books have time/To say how being selfless feels": a wonderful observation, which applies more generally to the failures of fiction. Few books have time to say how being hopeless feels. Slow Man is no exception; but Elizabeth's interference is an attempt, at least, to make an issue of that failure. Novelists depend on plots; plots depend on actions. People, however, rarely act out their frustrations in linear progression. A realist will find it difficult to give narrative shape to misery: none of the books, after all, "have time", literally. It's the being stuck in time that is so hard for fiction to capture, and so important to the feeling of hopelessness. By introducing the novelist to the story, Coetzee can discuss the shortcomings in his account of a man trapped in a body and life that no longer give him pleasure.

Still, I'm not sure that Coetzee's experiment with Elizabeth is worth the obvious absurdities into which it forces him. Critics sometimes talk of the "risks" a novelist can take. These in practice often involve a kind of shirking. They spare the writer some hard work. Elizabeth's intervention is clearly a risk, but Coetzee has used her to replace the careful build-up of circumstance and effect that would otherwise be needed to explain Paul's feeling of helplessness. We learn, for example, next to nothing about his life before the accident. The wife of a friend visits him twice, hoping to seduce him; he turns her away without any regrets. No other friends visit. He used to be a photographer, but he seems to have retired; it isn't clear how he spent his time earlier. In fact, the real surprise about his previous, four-limbed existence is that he had anywhere to get to on a bicycle.

Coetzee, to be fair, makes an issue of his hero's blankness; the topic comes up repeatedly in Paul's conversations with Elizabeth. But blankness is one of the qualities it's easier to write into characters: it is what they begin with. The real trick is to write a blankness that is detailed, intricate, heavy with fact. Coetzee has failed at that, partly because the prose of Slow Man isn't up to the job. It is caught somewhere between simplicity and subtlety: neither stripped down nor richly layered. Coetzee has, to his credit, no fear of cliche; but the writing lacks the sharpness to make the old new again.

And yet, and yet . . . Coetzee's voice has undeniable power: the authority of a schoolmaster - strict, pedantic, careful with the dispensation of pleasure. He seems in perfect control of his abilities: a writer capable of bowling the same line and the same length with every sentence. And though he rarely dazzles you with brilliance, the repetition can have just as powerful an effect. Which makes this latest novel all the more puzzling - if he knew what he was doing, why did he do it?

Benjamin Markovits's second novel, Either Side of Winter, is published by Faber & Faber

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