Slow Man: A Novel by J.M. Coetzee - Award-Winning Literary Fiction for Book Clubs & Contemporary Literature Lovers" （注：根据您提供的简短标题"Slow Man: A Novel"，我推断这可能是指J.M.库切的著名小说。优化后的标题补充了作者信息、奖项荣誉关键词，并添加了适合读书会和文学爱好者的使用场景。若商品并非此书，请提供更多原始信息以便精准优化。）

Paul Rayment at 60 is hit by a car while riding his bicycle and loses a leg. That's the proverbial train wreck necessary to make most good novels work. The rest of this ambiguous through beautifully written tale has to do with what happens to Paul thereafter. He falls in love with a married Croatian nurse and meets the mysterious writer Elizabeth Costello whom Coetzee wrote an entire earlier novel about. It is never made clear to the reader-- or if it is, this reader missed it-- just how Costello found Rayment. Suffering from a bad heart and loneliness herself, she attempts to draw Paul, the slow man-- now slow to ambulate because he refuses to be fitted with an artificial limb, but more importantly, slow to make life's critical decisions-- into talking hold of life. "'Remember, Paul, [she says] it is passion that makes the world go round.'" In fact, she calls him "the one-legged man who cannot make up his mind."This dark novel is chock-full of more questions than answers but plenty of observations about the way life is, particularly for the old and infirm. "Madeleine [a health professional] treats the old people consigned to her care as if they were children -- not very clever, somewhat morose, somewhat sluggish children in need of being bucked up." Old age often is filled with the knowledge of missed opportunities. Paul is saddened that he is alone without children. Had he had them, according to Costello, he would have learned to love and to serve. She opines as well about her early loss of faith and the inattentiveness of contemporary gods. Having been "smitten" with a young man in her youth, she promised God that she would be his forever if the beautiful youth bestowed just one smile on her. It didn't happen so she never became a child of God. "'I fear [she says] the gods no longer have time for us, whether to love us on the one hand or to punish us on the other. They have troubles enough in their own gated community.'" Finally in a brilliant passage (p. 229) Elizabeth exhorts Paul once again to a life of action: "'Be a main characer. Otherwise what is life for? Come on. Do something. Do anything. Surprise me. . . You have lost a leg. . . but after a certain age we have all lost a leg, more or less. Your missing leg is just a sign or symbol or symptom. . . of growing old, old and uninteresting.'"This, as someone in the New Testament I believe said, is a hard saying; but then the truth is not always found on angels' wings. Mr. Coetzee has proven again that he is one of the world's best contemporary writers.