Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful, Moving Meditation On Death (And Life)
Review: Having read through the reviews already posted, it is interesting to note the variety of responses readers have had to this book. Certainly, disregarding a few notable exceptions, the majority of readers seem in agreement as to the broad thematic outlines binding this narrative, but when it comes to the specifics, understanding and response diverge. It is perhaps a significant measure and reflection, both upon the writer's narrative skills and the novel's subtle, complex and multifaceted message, that so many readers have found such a wide divergence of individual---and, I would suggest, personal---responses to this beautifully written and constructed novel.As is clear from many of the reviews written previously, this is a meditation upon death as it coexists beside and defines life, the latter an "everending" progress toward its own inexorable dissolution. Centered around the murder and subsequent decomposition along the sea of a middle-aged couple whose marriage itself bears evidence of decay, in outline this novel would appear to offer a story one could expect to be unremittingly grim, macabre and likely depressing in nature. And there is a underlying sadness of tone, as well as spectral elements, both regarding the circumstances of the characters' end as well as the accompanying recounting of their past. Yet, encapsulating their story and woven throughout, revealed through both the events and circumstances surrounding their descriptive setting, as well as the humanity with which their lives, aspirations and defeats are retold, resides a compassionate if ultimately indifferent beauty, expressed through a rich yet economical observation of nature, setting and demise, poetic even at its most clinical moments. There is no judgement within the author's characterizations, either of protagonists or events. Nonetheless one glimpses a deep and abiding empathy verging on love that defines all the novel's narrative world and characters, from the most insignificant sprayhopper to the senseless and unexpected tragedy that overwhelms the main protagonists. Throughout, the natural world of this novel observes and abides, in existence defining all that takes place, detached from narrative event and interpretation, yet nonetheless through reflection and extension providing a shared and thus felt identity of common if indifferent experience. Through this shared experience, the characters in death are somehow ignominiously ennobled, the novel offering an unspoken hope. Crace breathes life into his bleak and barren setting with the words and close and detailed observance of a scientist, rendering the clinical with a beauty totally unexpected and entirely appropriate to both his characters and his setting. Promise is somehow revealed within a desolation of both place and circumstance, spirituality through its concrete absence. The author has achieved no small feat in effacing himself of all trace of the usual or expected viewpoint, letting instead his description carry and communicate its own message with words that speak in echoes and insinuate themselves through imagery and lingering, dispassionate detail. Though it may appear so, dispassion here does not preclude emotion. There is a spiritual and emotional cleansing taking place similar to the eradicating purity of a fire, though with a force more analogous to a whisper. Destruction and creation twined, beauty glimpsed through the putrescence of decay, birth synonymous and synchronous with death. The only criticism I had with this book was with the secondary story line surrounding Syl. While I recognize its importance as an alternate and informative element to the main plot line, it never felt as fully integrated as it should be into the story surrounding her parents. And I remained unconvinced that its addition contributed significantly enough to justify its intrusive lack of integration into the main story. I suspect that the events and history surrounding Celice and Joseph could have stood sufficiently and completely on their own, though I am sure many will disagree. For me, Syl's story intruded a minor discordant note, both in tone and expression. Nonetheless, this is a marvelous and beautifully rendered story, rich and complex in its rewards, and subtle and moving in its delivery. I cannot recommend it more highly.
Rating: 
Summary: Original exploration of the reality of death
Review: Jim Crace is an enormously talented writer as "Being Dead" loudly attests. Crace masterfully interweaves multiple time-lines in the lives of Joseph and Celice, including the tale of their decaying bodies after they are murdered on a beach. Joseph and Celice were married middle-aged zoologists. They were essentially unremarkable people, and their mundane lives are easily overwhelmed by their shared death. Crace's prose is often lyrical and always beautifully crafted - a stunning juxtaposition to the gruelling and gruesome scenes he is describing. Many people will be put off by his frank and vivid descriptions of dead bodies, but in many ways it is a fitting epitath for these pragmatic scientists. Altogether a challenging and impressive read.
Rating:
Summary: Death treated as a literary event
Review: I have never read anything like Being Dead: haunting, grotesque, sadly beautiful and unforgettable. The novel is not a murder mystery as it attempts to disguise many readers. It is rather an inventive, daring poetic meditation of a middle-aged couple's re-discovery of love. Nostalgia had ineluctably brought them back to Baritone Bay where they had first plunged into intimacy some thirty years ago. But Joseph and Celice had paid too heavy a price for their nostalgia: their lives. The beginning is the end in Being Dead. The couple, hand in hand, and whose nakedness had subjected them to indignity, terminated their lives in each other's flesh in a manner marked by a placid love that only time can cultivate. The narration, like the love of Joseph and Celice, is utterly unsentimental and business-like, something that is preserved by habit and memory, not necessarily with flaming passion. The dreamy writing accentuates the serene mood of the novel while it de-emphasizes the dramatic deaths and the reckless physical aftermath. The tranquility of the crime scene, the intrepidness with which the lissom grass perked back up after removal of the corpses, the gradual disappearance of rectangle of time-paled grass, the absorption of blood into the soil and the equanimity of their daughter Syl downplay the horrible death but at the same time usurp the promptings of readers' hearts. Being Dead transcends other contemporary works on the subject of death with its meditative, poetic monologue that dwells on life, love, and death. It is a literary treatise on an event, and the event is the death of a renowned zoologist and his wife in the midst of sand dunes at a remote beach. Being Dead is a literary event made possible by the author's naked daring. 2004 (26) © MY
Rating:
Summary: Original
Review: The title alone intrigued me. The first page hooked me. Crace has a unique writing style that is both clinical and eloquent. If you have a morbid sense of humor (like me), then you will enjoy the chapter where Syl (the daughter of Joseph and Celice) goes to the morgue to find her missing parents.
Some of you might be grossed out by the descriptions of the bodies and how they decompose. This is where Crace gets clinical. He describes the decomposition process for what it is--nature. Fortunately, this isn't what Being Dead is all about. This book, I found, is about the lives of Joseph and Celice before they were killed. They fell in love, got married, had a daughter, and led successful careers. But there was an underlying tension between the couple that I couldn't quite grasp until I was near the end of the story. I won't spoil it for you. Death is entwined in this story, as in every other chapter or so, Crace depicts their bodies lying in the dunes, Joseph's hand touching Celice's leg. That haunted me.
I give this book a high recommendation for its originality and multi-faceted meaning.
Rating: 
Summary: What happened to Conrad?
Review: This book is about the ghost that just are not ready to leave this world. This is a creepy collection of 7 stories. One of the stories is titled "Dancing with Marjorie's Ghost." This is a story about a hard-working wife named Marjorie Sharpe. Her husband, Conrad Sharpe, has his wife working very hard. He has her working late into the night. Their neighbors do not like Conrad. They all say his a mean man-bully, a braggart, too -- lazy and too stingy to fix anything around the house. The neighbors notice what went on between them, but as they said, the longer she stayed married to Conrad, she seemed to age to. But it was no surprise when Marjorie passed away. Conrad had to be the best at everything. So at the funeral, he bought the most expensive suit, dress just so everyone could see what a good husband he was,and he also bought the most expensive casket. After the funeral, he invited everyone back to the house for some drinks. "Do you remember how she loved to dance?" The neighbors remember, they remember her dancing before she married him." Only,if Marjorie could come back for even one night, "Conrad cried out,"I swear I'd dance to heart's content." The candle blew out by Conrad's chair. Then Conrad repeated ,"If only Marjorie could come back for one night,i swear I'd dance to heart's content." Then the neghbor's dogs started barking. Then it got closer,closer,and closer. He went to open thr door, he saw nothing. So he closed the door. The door flew open, there Marjorie stood with her hsands, Conrad put his arms around her. She was cold as ice. Then Conrad said, "You come back for one night,and we danced all night." He tried pushing her off. Marjorie wounldn't let go. Hour after hours the dogs continued to howl. They danced more, the stared with fear. The clock struck midnight. Conrad tried to push her away. The door swung open. They danced down the street, with the dogs barking as they passed. The neighbors looked out the door, but no one dared to follow. A few minutes later the dogs stoped barking. As the sun hit the sky, the neghbors' followed the footprints in the snow. At Marjorie's grave,is where the foot prints stopped. The dirt was mounded neatly over her grave, as it was the day before. No one dared to see what laid beneth for the fear what they might see. The townspeople wondered what had happened to Conrad.
Rating:
Summary: "You're Dead. That's it. Adieu. Farewell."
Review: BEING DEAD is, I think, my favorite novel by Jim Crace and I've read everything he's ever published. It's also, in my opinion, his very best book. Crace seems to love to use nature in his novels, at least most of them, and he does, I think, his most masterful job of weaving nature into the narrative in BEING DEAD. BEING DEAD is the story of a murder and the events that lead up to that murder, not from the point of view of the murderer, but from the point of view of the victims: mid-50s scientists, Joseph and Celice. Joseph, an oceanographer, and Celice, a zoologist, have taken time off from their teaching duties and decide to celebrate an anniversary by making love at the beach in the dunes...the place where they first made love more than thirty years before. Crace tells the story of Joseph and Celice and their murder quite masterfully by moving both backward and forward in time. Thus, we get to see Joseph and Celice as living human beings as well as murdered ones, and we come to know them intimately. Joseph was more introverted and more of the "pure" scientist; Celice was more outgoing and friendly and even a bit of a flirt, despite the fact that, even in her youth, she was certainly no beauty. Joseph was a worrier; Celice was a doer. Together, they complemented each other well and their bond was deep, although, like all the best couples, they had their moments of discord as well. While one strand of the book is moving backward in time, letting us get to know Joseph and Celice and how they moved inexorably toward their death, another strand is moving forward and we "witness," in detail, the decomposition of the bodies of this long married couple. (They are not found until six days after their murder.) While it's a little difficult to read about the physical decomposition of Joseph and Celice, what is more discomfiting is the fact that you realize that they are truly and irrevocably...dead. Neither will ever look through a microscope again. Neither will ever bicker with the other. Neither will ever suggest they kiss and make up. Crace really hammers home the finality of death in this book and it's death's finality that will stay with you long after you finish BEING DEAD. Crace creates complex and very believable characters in both Joseph and Celice and, even though I was wary of investing too much emotion in them (I knew they were dead, after all), I did find myself happy that nervous, anxious Joseph was granted his lifelong wish of not wanting to die alone and that Celice didn't have to suffer. During the backward storyline, I kept wanting to warn Joseph and Celice of the impending danger and this made me all the more aware of the power death holds over all of us, no matter how young and healthy we are. Youth and health don't prevent murder. To Crace's enormous credit, he never slips into sentimentality in BEING DEAD, something that, in my opinion, would have totally destroyed the book. Instead, he tells us the story of Joseph and Celice almost with detachment. I know some people seem to think that Crace was hammering home a lack of belief in an afterlife, but I don't think this was necessarily the case. I think he just wanted to portray the physical aspects of death, and he did...marvelously. In BEING DEAD, we learn that all lovers will eventually be parted, that all relationships will eventually end...if not through separation while still alive, then ultimately, through death. This is a book that tells its story in a detached tone, but it's also a tragic one and it's one that has the courage to look death squarely in the eye and portray it without romanticizing it. While BEING DEAD isn't an easy story to read, emotionally, it is a masterfully written book. I think any lover of really good literary fiction will love BEING DEAD, despite its tragedy. Lovers of genre fiction should take note, however: BEING DEAD is definitely not a murder mystery. It matters little who killed Joseph and Celice; it matters enormously that they are, and forever will be, dead.
Rating:
Summary: The anti-mystery.
Review: Jim Crace, Being Dead (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1999) Jim Crace's novel Being Dead is, for lack of a better term, an anti-murder mystery. Specifically, it is the antithesis of Heinrich Boll's novel The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum. Instead of getting a book where the murderer is known from the first sentence and working out the "why"s of the murder, we get a book where the murder is nothing more than a mechanism to reflect both on the past lives of the murdered couple and the mechanisms of death by the seaside. I said about halfway through reading this novel that I didn't know whether finding out who the killer is would make me like the novel more or dislike it; having finished the book days ago, I'm still not sure. The book ended up feeling as if there were a number of loose ends (many of which had to do with the dead couple's daughter), but this could be put down to the author mistakenly giving a little too much screen time at the end to what should have been minor details. In any case, quite a fine little read, quick and easy. *** ½
Rating:
Summary: Imaginitive Description!
Review: The author certainly puts thought into his words. I was amazed. This book was on a recommended list by Michael Cunningham (author of THE HOURS). I certainly see what Cunningham saw in this exquisitely original piece that did win the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. I'm only giving it three stars because the subject matter (a murder and the aftermath description of the decaying bodies) is disturbing. It made me think twice when the author wrote:
'Life is. It goes. It does not count. That was the hurtling truth that comes to rattle everyone as they grow up, grow old.'
I almost resented that line--because in my view...Life does matter and does count...by giving, sharing and touching...we pass on wonderful things to future lives. I did LOVE when the author wrote 'Love songs transcend, transport...' It's too bad a compilation CD didn't accompany the book. I'd love to hear the tunes that the author would select. Enjoy--if you so choose.
Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Book Ever Written
Review: This book is by far the most important piece of modern literature attainable today. The folks that have written poor reviews obviously need their art spoon-fed to them. Perhaps they should be reading and reviewing the latest Harry Potter installment, and leave the important books to intelligent readers. The Guru has spoken...wormtownreview dot com
Rating:
Summary: Mesmerizing
Review: I found this little read absolutely mesmerizing. As the bodies of a murdered husband and wife decay, we look back on a paralell progression of decay which had occured in their marrige and lives. Crace's stark portrayal decomposition, both mental and physical is fascinating.
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