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Rating: 
Summary: Love, Lust & Lumpy Gravy
Review: Crace's "Genesis" novel almost works. It's a great premise. The book is constructed with 6 children, 6 conceptions; and you know from the beginning that you'll hear about each one. Some of the characters are entertaining such as the fiery revolutionary feminist Freda who insists on being on top. Her Cousin Mouetta also shows some personality and spunk. And Crace authors one of my favorite single sentences I've read in a novel on page 127, "She wanted the drama of the streets relocated in between the sheets." Doesn't that sound like it ought to be a line in a popular song? Thematically, the main character, Lix, seems at a loss about how to father. That is perhaps the great paradox of the novel, that a man who excels at fertility is so completely lacking in fatherly commitment, love and understanding. In fact, we encounter just about everything from love, lust and lumpy gravy, except for that most exceptional consequence of romantic love, the family. Whereas real life family life is one of the most character-building experiences, in Lix we find a man who lives inside his stage personas, much as some men live most fully within their heads. Thus, "Genesis" for me was a titillating modern tragedy. That said, the book meanders to a conclusion. By the time of Lix's 6th conception, we're about as bored with his sex life as he is. Therefore, I wound up asking myself, "Do I really care?" In the end, this was an enjoyable enough reading experience, hardly riveting or one that I could not have lived without. A definite maybe.
Rating: 
Summary: How big can an ego get?
Review: Genesis (or Six, as known in the UK) by Crace has his hero, Felix Dern (or Lix as he is shortened throughout) telling of your atypical male, overly fertile man who has just learned his wife of two years is pregnant. Her first, his sixth (all by different women). He is a stage actor, currently in Tartuffe (an irony intself as he plays a man who is his very antithesis) who is wandering through his local haunts, guilty over his feelings for his wife's cousin, Freda, his first love and second conquest. Rather than an night of intimacy he is instead roped by Freda into attempting to shelter a young activist (in an apologetic reminisence of his previous student activism dome twenty five years earlier).
As both Lix and Mouetta fail to navigate through this Orwellian vision of the City of Kisses they end up celebrating their anniversary in a car in a park culminating in her pregnancy. Flicking between the thoughts of both as each seeks in private isolation to understand the questions and true meanings of the other, the primitive drives of each is laid open. Lix's preoccupation is driven by sexually-orientated vision, Mouetta's by both a desire to understand her husband, to be a mother and garner a self-assurance in her physical attractivity.
As a result we float through a world given over to understanding the primal urges whilst consciously aware of the intruding, policed social world around us.
Crace then moves us back to Lix's youth, stepping onwards through the key fertile moments in his life, moving through the remaining five pregnancies he has caused, from one sexually motivated escapade after another. We follow a history of Lix's life, ascertain how his second child, created by activism, was spurred by his desires, from his innocent `stalking', his third through his farcial attempts to kidnap of a millionaire all to make himself more desirable in the eyes of Freda, his fourth and fifth with his wife Alicja, the first of these during a flooding, the second in an implied guilt after we learn of her repetitive infidelity, and lastly with An, his co-actor, the opening stirrings of which were witnessed in secret by his now eighteen year old son, George, born of Freda. So at the very end we have a quick rerun of his children, Bel, George, Lech, Karl, Rosa and the newly pregnant Mouetta - an explanation of Lix's life and lost loves.
Crace has created a dreamy world, shown in a fantastical light, where extreme opinions are somehow portrayed as `ultra-cool', but are ultimately safe from reality, a cocoon where intellectual posturing and touchings on the real world are merely pranks. Ultimately we see the facades that Lix presents are a facet of his chameleon-like unconscious stratgies to adapt his male desires to achieve his sexual goals and the results of those actions. We follow as he struggles to achieve and fails to explain his desires and suffers misperception as a result. We watch the women who have found him fascinating but ultimately seen through the unconscious façade and recognised his failings to materialise as a long term partner. A thought-provoking novel
Rating: 
Summary: And after all the quashing there remains a tale
Review: GENESIS may not live up to Jim Crace's monumental peak of writing he reached with BEING DEAD, but I think it deserves much more examination than those who dismiss it as a work of Ego onanism. The very nature of the story of an Actor who struts the stage and movie screen but is shackled in his personal life by his inability to connect to the women with whom he finds himself is perhaps too obvious a metaphor for men today, but it is a well developed metaphorical journey none the less. The majority of the action takes place in a 'magical realism' atmosphere - The City of Kisses - which is besieged by bizarre police activities, odd floods, and bohemian eateries and bars that bounce us back and forth in time as well as place. Our Actor (Lix, to give him his name) is cursed with being hyperfertile, so much so that every women with whom he copulates becomes pregnant immediately. How Lix manages these various (six in number) affairs and marriages and the offspring that result from his curse is the line of story we follow - or try to. Were it not for the glorious word working such as 'Love is enacted by small things. Love is what you do with what you've got.' and 'No one's to blame, but passion is not intended to endure. The overture is short or else it's not the overture. Nor is marriage meant to be perfect. It has to toughen on its blemishes. It has to morph and change its shape and turn its insides out and move beyond the passion that is the architect. Falling in love is not being in love. Waiting for the perfect partner is self-sabotage.' then perhaps this book would not deserve our close attention. And I think it does. When passages such as these are used for a moment of meditation, then GENESIS has a lot to say about how we are functioning in this discombobulated world.. And if Jim Crace does only that - makes us stop for a moment and observe the Human Comedy - then reading this book has its rewards. Let's see where he goes next.
Rating:
Summary: And after all the quashing there remains a tale
Review: GENESIS may not live up to Jim Crace's monumental peak of writing he reached with BEING DEAD, but I think it deserves much more examination than those who dismiss it as a work of Ego onanism. The very nature of the story of an Actor who struts the stage and movie screen but is shackled in his personal life by his inability to connect to the women with whom he finds himself is perhaps too obvious a metaphor for men today, but it is a well developed metaphorical journey none the less. The majority of the action takes place in a 'magical realism' atmosphere - The City of Kisses - which is besieged by bizarre police activities, odd floods, and bohemian eateries and bars that bounce us back and forth in time as well as place. Our Actor (Lix, to give him his name) is cursed with being hyperfertile, so much so that every women with whom he copulates becomes pregnant immediately. How Lix manages these various (six in number) affairs and marriages and the offspring that result from his curse is the line of story we follow - or try to. Were it not for the glorious word working such as 'Love is enacted by small things. Love is what you do with what you've got.' and 'No one's to blame, but passion is not intended to endure. The overture is short or else it's not the overture. Nor is marriage meant to be perfect. It has to toughen on its blemishes. It has to morph and change its shape and turn its insides out and move beyond the passion that is the architect. Falling in love is not being in love. Waiting for the perfect partner is self-sabotage.' then perhaps this book would not deserve our close attention. And I think it does. When passages such as these are used for a moment of meditation, then GENESIS has a lot to say about how we are functioning in this discombobulated world.. And if Jim Crace does only that - makes us stop for a moment and observe the Human Comedy - then reading this book has its rewards. Let's see where he goes next.
Rating:
Summary: An Unfathomable Character
Review: I find Jim Crace's work to be up and down. Of his last three books, I think Being Dead and The Devil's Larder are both incredibly good books. On the other hand, I was rather disappointed with Quarantine. Here, I am sorry to say, is another disappointment. Genesis is the story of a man, Felix Dern, who has produced a child with every woman with whom he's ever had sex. That amounts to six children, if we include the one who is yet a fetus at the top of the novel. And yet, Lix, as he is called, is a timid man despite his fame as an actor. How does he manage this? It can't be because of his supposed fertility which appears a non-issue to me despite the fact that Crace keeps coming back to it. Lix doesn't cause a child every time he has sex (which would have been really interesting.) And he can't be afraid that every time he has a relationship with a woman he will have a child. He doesn't even know of his first child and his child with his first love-for-a-month, the fiery Freda, doesn't explain the years of abstinence that follows this break-up. Does his nature come from the repression of this unnamed city in which he lives his life? It's hard to tell but it seems unlikely since his fame allows him a lot of freedom and travel to America. If his home is so bad why didn't he just stay in Hollywood? When it comes right down to it, I couldn't fathom Lix at all and this ruined the book for me. Though Crace has an excellent prose style, the only place where this story really came alive for me was near the end where we got a glimpse at Lix through the eyes of his children. Perhaps that would have been a better book.
Rating:
Summary: Quite Interesting
Review: I had not read the author before this volumn, but did find Genesis quite interesting, held my attention throughout. Whether it's good or bad I could relate in many ways with our hero as he reflected on his loves and relationships. Give this book a try.
Rating: 
Summary: Crace's book of Genesis.
Review: Jim Crace writes novels rich in imagination and ideas, and his GENESIS is no exception. QUARANTINE (1988), for instance, follows Jesus's forty days in the desert from the desert's perspective, and the award-winning novel, BEING DEAD (2000), involves two decomposing corpses. Not surprisingly, there are those of us who follow Crace's literary path through strange and imaginary territory rather compulsively. In a recent New York Times' interview, Crace described GENESIS as "a novel based on the Darwinist impulse," in which he examines the ease with which his protagonist can "hand on his gene packet" (12/03/03). Felix Dern (aka "Lix") is a celebrated, intellectual actor and singer living in a police state (p. 7), plagued with sudden floods and riots, and called the City of Kisses (formerly known by Rousseau's "truer title," the City of Balconies). Every woman Lix dares to sleep with bears his child (p. 3). Crace's novel follows Lix for roughly twenty-six years of his life, from his final year as a theater student and anarchist at an Arts Academy, to a night spent stranded in his car with his second wife, Mouetta, on their wedding anniversary. Along the way, Crace explores Lix's sexual encounters with five different women resulting in six children. For Lix, "to be so fertile was a curse" (p. 28). GENESIS is quintessential Crace. Equally elegant and intriguing, Crace's novel is a testament to the uncontrollable force of sex and love in a time of police barricades, surveillance, and cattle prods. Crace promises his next novel will "about America's medieval future," in which Americans board crowded ships back to Europe. Hopefully, Crace will never grow tired of spinning his imaginary yarns. G. Merritt
Rating:
Summary: Crace's book of Genesis.
Review: Jim Crace writes novels rich in imagination and ideas, and his GENESIS is no exception. QUARANTINE (1988), for instance, follows Jesus's forty days in the desert from the desert's perspective, and the award-winning novel, BEING DEAD (2000), involves two decomposing corpses. Not surprisingly, there are those of us who follow Crace's literary path through strange and imaginary territory rather compulsively. In a recent New York Times' interview, Crace described GENESIS as "a novel based on the Darwinist impulse," in which he examines the ease with which his protagonist can "hand on his gene packet" (12/03/03). Felix Dern (aka "Lix") is a celebrated, intellectual actor and singer living in a police state (p. 7), plagued with sudden floods and riots, and called the City of Kisses (formerly known by Rousseau's "truer title," the City of Balconies). Every woman Lix dares to sleep with bears his child (p. 3). Crace's novel follows Lix for roughly twenty-six years of his life, from his final year as a theater student and anarchist at an Arts Academy, to a night spent stranded in his car with his second wife, Mouetta, on their wedding anniversary. Along the way, Crace explores Lix's sexual encounters with five different women resulting in six children. For Lix, "to be so fertile was a curse" (p. 28). GENESIS is quintessential Crace. Equally elegant and intriguing, Crace's novel is a testament to the uncontrollable force of sex and love in a time of police barricades, surveillance, and cattle prods. Crace promises his next novel will "about America's medieval future," in which Americans board crowded ships back to Europe. Hopefully, Crace will never grow tired of spinning his imaginary yarns. G. Merritt
Rating:
Summary: a good read...
Review: Reviewed by Steven Hansen, Small Spiral Notebook
Two things in the novel Genesis that are transparently biblical in reference (if not in proportion) are a flood about halfway through, and the protagonist, Felix Dern's physiological mandate to 'Be fruitful and multiply,' with every female he has ever known. 'Known,' that is [insert wink and nudge here]... biblically speaking.
Humanity isn't drowned out, though, in this good book, and Felix Dern is not the progenitor of a nation. Though, owing to his almost perfect intercourse-to-conception percentage, he could be if he had sex more often. But he hasn't and, therefore, isn't. Good thing, too, because like most actors, psychologically speaking, he's a mess.
An actor ... [is] most confident when they are not
themselves ..., and no matter what they do, no matter
their curses, there'd be no price to pay when the
curtain falls, no child to bear and rear and feed
forevermore, amen.
Procreation -- personified by Felix, or Lix for short (a punny contraction because of all the female boots he licks) -- seems to be author Jim Crace's point. Felix, in particular, is a forgettable character; whereas Lix, the hyper-potent sperm donor, is the singularly ubiquitous Man.
For one so fertile and flamboyant, for one so
arrogant in costume, Felix Dern, the showman,
was--offstage--surprisingly shy and timid. That
was, in rising middle age, his major flaw, his
main regret--and also his saving grace.
Ironically (is the irony intentional?), the same flawed saving grace could be said to be working for the novel's plot, which consists of dinner and a movie, followed by an almost book-length Felix this-is-your-life flashback showing how, when and where and with whom each of his happy accidents (or curses?) have been conceived.
There is nothing in Genesis on an epic scale, no angel-heralded deus ex machina to turn certain doom into instant triumph. There is nothing turbo-charged or ostentatious, and in the hands of a lesser writer, the book could have easily turned out as entertaining as all the begats in Leviticus. Even when the narrative drags in spots, it is picked up and redeemed by Crace's consistently beautiful writing and the epigrammatic lines that periodically fall onto the page like manna from the sky:
Everything's exotic and amusing when the object
of your journey is a body and a bed.
We need to flirt and covet strangers for the
health and spirit of our marriages.
Juveniles had all the fun. The trick for adults,
then, was to act like juveniles.
These little darts of wisdom scattered throughout the narrative are like candy sparkles on a cake: they don't do much to the overall flavor, but the added color is nice. This is not to say that Genesis is a superficial confection, just one with enough visual pizzazz to appeal to those who like to stare in the bakery window at all the pretty dainties on display. And, if Crace ever stumbles across this review, he may be cringing once he gets to this point, wondering when and if this cake metaphor is ever going to end! Or maybe, owing to the sharp wit he seems to possess, based upon the subtlety of his writing, he's nodding his head knowingly, anticipating the inevitable denouement. Regardless of this whimsical and far too self indulgent speculation, here it is (the denouement that is): cake and birthdays go together like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. Or childbirth and existence, which seems to be at the core of what Crace's novel -- at its moist and chewy center -- is mostly all about.
Still, the streaks and pricks of light are
eloquent. They tell of people going home. They
tell of love and lovemaking, of children,
marriages, and lives. You think, But this could
happen anywhere. It does.
And the why and when of how people come together, fall in love and fall apart is really just so much Shakespearean sound and fury [No one's to blame, but passion is not intended to endure./Falling in love is not being in love. Waiting for the perfect partner is self-sabotage.]. What matters most between a man and a woman is the simple act of reproduction. Because, eventually, you will come to understand that sex is not love and it isn't love -- or that type of love -- in the end that really matters anyway.
Rating:
Summary: A filler
Review: What a disappointment! As a big fan of Jim Crace (particularly Being Dead), it pains me to say it, but large tracts of this book are an author on autopilot. Let's take only a couple of examples: 1) the descriptions of the physical aspects of the city Lix and co inhabit, and 2) the, at times, totalatarian behavior of the "authorities". Both were (over) employed in his earlier novel Arcadia, and, to see them re-appear here after a gap of some years suggests an author running out of ideas (or filling in space). As Crace has rightly been applauded in the past as one of the most inventive modern British authors, let's hope this is a once-off.
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