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Summary: Death before Life
Review: Mr. Crace pulls off a lyrcial, wondrous and amazing feat: death and decomposition join life and love. A middle-aged couple are murdered during their return to the beach where they first made love over thirty years ago. The bodies are not discovered by humans for six days. Instead, we witness what time and other members of the animal kingdom will do to the dead. Meanwhile, the author deftly informs us how this couple got to be in this place at this time.
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Summary: Eulogy As Higher Education
Review: Most of us have been seated at a funeral, the ominous heaviness saturating the confines of the church or synagouge like the thick mist of a humid dawn. We peer out over the casket, containing the recently departed, and we listen to the speakers, as they attempt to sum up in death, what life could never reveal. This is the fundamental message of Being Dead. We are introduced to two characters, a couple, who are dead. Yet, as we learn through the pages, though the beating of their hearts has ceased, the essence of their beings rage on. The way the tale is told must be commented upon, if for nothing else, than to reveal its sheer orginality. The author alternates the storyline with a tale of discovery and heartbreak and at the same time, the basic physical chronological events of human death. What could amount to a book heavy on morbitity and intent on revealing the grotesque nature what happens when we die, instead takes the reader through an illuminating examination of the person behind the body. Throughout the story, we are exposed to the ssence of love, family and human relations, while ever remonded that the individuals we are coming increasingly familiar with have slipped from this world. It is as if you finally meet that special person who will make your life complete, only to find that she has just married, and your discovery proves nothing more than a piercing reminder of what could have been. Being Dead is not for everyone. For those looking for a scientific exploration of human physiology, I suggest you look elsewhere. For those in need of a searing page turning mystery, I suggest moving on. But for those who wish to read a fascinating account of the human life, revealed as only it could, through human death, you will not be dissapointed. Combine that with the unique manner in which the story is presented, and Being Dead is a revelation.
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Summary: Original but rather Dull
Review: Joseph and Celice are murdered, naked, at god-forsaken Baritone Bay in the midst of their rekindling of their flame. What's to become of them?The attractive theme of the book called out to me and I must admit that the story is rather unusual and strangely narrated. Highly descriptive of the environment in the tale being told, it will prove to be a bore to those not interested in botany/zoology/geography/etc as detailed landscape descriptions stretch through pages. A slow-paced tale which recounts the past lives of the characters, which makes one wonder why the history is even brought up, perhaps only to give the book its length. There is no plot, no definite end to the story and no murderer to be captured. Perhaps the book is here to tell us how life, death and love are all bond together in one life, how people prefer to die, how love lives on even after death. However, the contents within the covers are quickly forgotten, for even though I'd just completed the book 15 minutes ago, the most vivid thing that remains in my mind about the story was how crabs, gulls and flies had feasted on Celice and Joseph. Read only if you can tolerate long descriptive texts and consider yourself romantic; skip this if you're looking for something solid to hold you through to the end.
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Summary: Optimistic?
Review: On the surface this is a very dark novel. The two main characters are dead when the novel begins. Their physical decay is described unsparingly. In the background lurks man's destruction of the natural world. God, we are told, does not exist. Yet, there is something upbeat about the novel, a positive strain that holds it together, keeps it alive and maintains the reader's interest. That something, call it 'energy', call it 'love', is hard to pinpoint but it pervades the novel. The married couple have no passion after thirty years, they barely talk to each other, they sleep in separate rooms, but they are in love. Their heartless-seeming daughter is incredibly moved to see her dead father's hand touching her mother's leg. It is these small hints at deeper feeling that energize the novel. Crace moves the narrative back and forwards in time with incredible ease. Past, present and future become one whole - and not necessarily in that order! Apparently Crace does not do specific research before writing his novels. He relies on his imagination and command of vocabulary. He is startlingly successful at this when describing human decay and the wildlife of the dunes and beach where the story takes place. If you are looking for a linear plot, plenty of dialogue and a variety of characters this may not be the novel for you. On the other hand, if you want to be taken away into a different landscape, and encouraged to dwell on the broader scheme of things, I would highly recommend 'Being Dead'.
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Summary: Inspiration strikes, Spontenaity suffers
Review: This is a book that begins witha remarkably brilliant idea-- an idea of such a unique and startling nature that it is certainly enough to bolster the beginnings of a truly fabulous novel. Crace begins his novel with the brutal murder of his two main characters and then simultaneously travels backward to examine the life that they led together and forward to examine the soft rhythms of the organic life that continues even after the animated spirit of these two individuals has departed. The problem is that the novel is so mired in concept-- so involved and attached to the idea that begins it-- that it loses momentum and is at times quite chunky and stilted in its narrative. There are portions of the novel that come off as fascinatingly poetic meditations on the nature of life but other sections (especially those dealing with the two-dimensional dulldulldull stereotypical rebellious young daughter of the protagonists)that seem to lack direction and, rather ironically, life.
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Summary: Wow! A very beautifully written book
Review: This was the first Jim Crace novel I've read, and I must say that not only am I not disappointed, but I am extremely impressed! It is truly very beautifully written with a captivating storyline and mystery that shrouds over it. The nature of "being dead" is profoundly explored in a non-obtrusive and genuine way. I highly recommend this novel!
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Summary: Deeply moved
Review: I have been a Jim Crace reader and fan for a long time and have always rated his novels amongst the most adventurous and beautiful. I thought his career must have peaked with Quarantine. How could any writer produce a more intellectually invasive and astounding work than that? But Being Dead has turned out to be his masterwork (so far) not because it is any better written than the others or more strartling in its imagery but because its emotional powers and its compassion are unequalled by any other story I have read. I could hardly bear to read it at times, but I certainly couldn't put it down
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Summary: Long live the Sprayhoppers...
Review: Somewhat morbid, but that is the perplexity of such great writing. I found that I was more enthralled with Crace's description of how the characters "felt" in a sense after their murder, more so than by the actual characters themselves. This book portrays a haunting love story, unfortunately, after death.
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Summary: Death breathes
Review: What was most amazing while I was reading "Being dead" is that the author breathed in the life in "Death". The idea how the author described the body still reacting to the nature and the environment after the death was so new and amazing that it made me feel "Death" is another beginning of a life.
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Summary: Life through death
Review: This is the first novel by Jim Crace that I read, and I mustadmit that I was gladly surprised by it. It's not only the limpidprose and subtle humor (I was often reminded of the Milan Kundera of 'The unbearable lightness of being' and 'Immortality') that Crace uses; it's, also, the magnificent structure of the novel, which goes hand in hand with the premises established in the first few chapters and the subject matter. I have seldom enjoyed a novel as much as I enjoyed 'Being dead', and now I just hope that Crace's other novels, particularly the celebrated 'Quarantine', are just as good. To be sure, 'Being dead' defies definition. It is, as the author says in the beginning, a 'quivering' to capture the meaning of the life of a senselessly murdered couple, both zoology professors, on a beach in a place called Baritone Bay. Thus, the novel is really a search for meanings at several levels to the many unanswerable questions of life. Death is the excuse to explain life, not the other way around. I could not help thinking about the important role contingency, sensu Stephen J. Gould, has in the novel. Things could certainly have been different, from the time the couple is murdered to the time they met. Crace expertly goes back in his narrative, showing us that if some things--some little, some big--had not happened, the couple could still be alive in many different ways. It's as if Crace was telling us that there is only one death, but many different ways to get there. Hence, the uniqueness of everybody's life. I thoroughly recommend this short, but great, novel. Perhaps those who haven't read Crace yet, as I haven't, would feel invited to explore the world of this gifted writer.
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