The Lives of Animals

In The Lives of Animals, the idea of cruelty to animals consumes novelist Elizabeth Costello. She can no longer look another person in the eye. Humans, especially meat-eating ones, seem to her to be conspirators in a crime of stupefying magnitude. And it's taking place on farms and in slaughterhouses, factories, and laboratories across the world.

A fictional American university invites Costello to speak on the issue. An aging Australian writer, Costello's son also happens to teach physics there. Through her lectures, Costello challenges the audience to step outside their current involvement with animals–not just their pets. She prompts them to question the moral implications of human dominion over the animal kingdom.
Costello's son admires her literary achievements however he dreads his mother’s lectures on The Lives of Animals at the university. Costello's son's colleagues resist her argument. His wife (Costerllo's stepdaughter) denounces his mother’s vegetarianism as a form of moral superiority.

Coetzee intricately weaves together philosophical discussions, personal anecdotes, and fictional narratives. He wants to explore the moral and ethical dimensions of animal suffering. The Lives of Animals presents examples like the inherent cruelty of factory farming and the philosophical concept of speciesism.

The audience is skeptical of Costello's lectures on the ongoing debate surrounding animal rights in contemporary society. Is wearing leather okay if the cattle die naturally? Are eggs meat? I would have asked these questions regarding the lives of these animals of Costello. Are they frivolous questions, I wonder?