Rating: 
Summary: "Six days of grace."
Review: During his recent book-tour visit to Boulder, Barry Lopez said that when he's not writing, he's reading Jim Crace. Lopez said about Crace, "watch this guy." Lopez's recommendation prompted me to read BEING DEAD. "These are the everending days of being dead," Crace writes in his haunting, National Book Award winning novel. Joseph and Celice "were scientists in love" (p. 171), but "what stagnant lives they led" (p. 149) before returning to the Baritone dunes, where they first made love thirty years earlier. "Let's go out to the bay," Joseph had suggested to his wife a thousand times, "for old times' sake. Before we die" (p. 165). In the novel's opening pages, we learn that they "paid a heavy price for their nostalgia" (p. 4). While attempting to rekindle sexual sparks in their marriage, "Death, armed with a piece of granite" (p. 3) stumbles upon their kisses. Crace's disturbing, yet profound novel is not so much about murder as the meaning of life, love, and death. "Everything was born to go," he writes. "The universe has learned to cope with death" (p. 194). While his characters' bodies lie decomposing in the sand for six days, which he describes in forensic detail, Crace simultaneously returns to the life Joseph and Celice shared together. And in the end, Crace's naked tale about death becomes a compelling lesson for us all: "No one transcends. There is no future and no past. There is no remedy for death--or birth--except to hug the spaces in between. Live loud. Live wide. Live tall" (p. 159). G. Merritt
Rating: 
Summary: Jim Crace makes you wish you were
Review: Jim Crace's BEING DEAD is at times lyrical, funny, and grotesque. Most of the time, however, it's quite boring. Crace is obviously a gifted writer, but in this tale of death and life his microscope is too finely tuned, giving us minute details of dull lives. I found neither of the protagonists, Celice and Joseph, engaging, and their daughter, Syl, I found unlikely -- unrepentant, pessimistic, yet ultimately frail and hopeless. I'll still read Mr. Crace's QUARANTINE without prejudice, however. Everyone deserves a second chance.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: This book just didn't have any tension or rhythm to it. The characters are unremarkable and hard to appreciate or feel any sympathy for. I was glad to finish it and move on to greener pastures.
Rating: 
Summary: Deserves 4.5 stars, actually
Review: Being Dead manages to talk about life, sex, bugs, death, decay, and feelings without indulging in the grotesque or the sentimental, and that alone makes it worth the read. It even manages to finish without falseness of tone or pat conclusions, something most contemporary novels seem to miss. The characters are both realistic and sympathetic nonetheless, though human relations are more ambiguous and chilly than fulfilling and affirming. Clarity and emotional impact often trade-off, though, and the only reason I dock the author a half-star is that a bit too much feeling was left out of this portrait.
Rating:
Summary: Another New Perspective
Review: Author Jim Crace has often taken familiar subjects and subjected them to his own unique manner of thought. Death is one of the certainties that is a universal fate we all share. When it may arrive, and the specific means may differ, however as a subject it is germane to all of us. "Being Dead", explores a method of death, detailed forensic decay of bodies, and the visual metaphor he portrays as the two victims are drawn back to the earth. The story is not gratuitously graphic. There was only one section I found rather intense, and it was due to the explicit description of the decay of human remains. It was not grisly, as you would find in a horror novel where death and violence are contrived and often obscene in their graphic portrayal of violence. This book contains violent death, however the murder is a means to explore his primary topic of death. Mr. Crace also brings another death that is not so much a parallel to the primary subjects, rather is more of a haunting and an exploration of misplaced guilt and uncertainty. I believe the interpretations of this work could be almost endless. The author places the dead near the site of both another human death decades earlier, and very near the spot that life for this couple began. The wilderness where they began their life is also being systematically destroyed from natural beauty, to track mansions for the wealthy. Transformed for affluent homeowners who will know nothing of events that might taint their unjustified impression of an idyllic beachfront home. Just as the property lines and access roads are laid with accuracy and regimentation, so too must the illusion of what these singing sand dunes offer must also be managed. This is a place that death is not welcome, intentional, accidental, or any other version. There are many other themes the author weaves amongst the primary story that is always present and suitably graphic. I believe most readers will take away differing views, and others may even move on to what they imagine comes after death. For death here is not continued to whatever comes next. There is no comforting version of what the next existence may be, whether there is one, or whether one is lacking. As he has done in many of his novels, he respects the inquisitiveness of his readers, and sets them on a road of his making, that is for readers to continue upon, or veer one way or another as continuing thought may lead them.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: Since you know the ending at the beginning there are no major surprises, just the story of how this couple lives led to their murder. Did not find characters appealing or interesting. If you like the idea of a story being told from ending to beginning, then rent "Momento".
Rating:
Summary: No answers given
Review: What is death? It is a question that haunts every human, as natural to our being as breathing. Many, many thousands of books have been written on the subject, most aimed at determining an afterlife of some sort, or a purpose behind it all. However, author Jim Crace is not content to mirror such themes, whether they are phantasmagorical (Richard Matheson's WHAT DREAMS MAY COME), or contemplative (M. Scott Peck's IN HEAVEN AS ON EARTH). Crace wants to understand what death is, what it means, and what is lost and gained in the process. Crace achieves a remarkable mediation on the subject in BEING DEAD, a novel that is unnerving in its originality and tenderness. He centres on Joseph and Celice, an elderly married couple, brutally murdered on a quiet beach. Crace takes several offbeat tacts in portraying what these deaths mean, both biologically and emotionally. First, the bodies themselves. Crace goes into determinedly graphic detail in his characterization of decomposition. As the bodies slowly deteriorate, the small world that surrounds them begins to interact, to reclaim the material for nature. For most of us, the thought of what happens to our bodies physically after death is a repulsive one. Yet Crace never offends, and never becomes exploitative. The lyricism and sense of melancholy Crace brings to the biological breakdown of a body are truly haunting. Interwoven with biology is nostalgia, as Crace charts the map of Joseph and Celice's relationship. From the first awkward rush of passion, to the resignation that an elderly couple may face every day, Crace allows the reader a glimpse into their minds, a reminder that every person is unique, and what we see is only superficial. Joseph's small frame and majestic singing voice only hint at his unhappiness with his life's outcome; physical opposite Celice's apparent quiet love of her husband masks her increasing frustration with the lack of passion in her life. These small glimpses into the makeup of their lives are an abrupt change from the description of their deaths, but the contrast serves to heighten the senselessness of death, and the steadfast mysteries that life and death both contain. How can we ever believe we can comprehend death, when we cannot even begin to understand the true nature and purpose of one solitary individual? Thirdly, Crace follows their daughter, a sullen young woman who has never gotten along with either of her parents. As she reluctantly searches for her missing mother and father, we view the way our lives continue after death, in the thoughts and memories of those we knew, and in the biological framework of our progeny. While the daughter would never admit it, she is equal parts mother and father, displaying both the good and bad traits of her parents. In Joseph and Celice's death, she finds a measure of comfort and renewal, ultimately of purpose. I do not mean for this to sound like a spiritual odyssey. As in his previous novel QUARANTINE (a realist version of Christ's forty days in the desert), Crace is not ready to resort to comforting platitudes on what comes next. Death is death, and what is beyond remains, and should remain, a mystery. Death is both intensely personal, and a universal experience shared by all. By providing the reader no easy answers, by never revealing the answer to the question, Crace provides an altogether mesmerizing and satisfying experience.
Rating:
Summary: An in-your-face experience
Review: Joseph and Celice are dead, their corpses lying on an abandoned stretch of beach for six days. Their flesh is rotting off the bone, and we are treated to an up-close-and-personal look at the process of decomposition and decay. Sound depressing? Yes, to an extent. But between the scenes that detail this couple's death, we are given the scenes of their life -- how they met, how they fell in love. Everyone knows that life is fleeting, but this book's matter-of-fact description of Joseph and Celice's corpses, interspersed with the sweet (and not-so-sweet) moments of their life, illustrate the point better than anything I've ever read. Along the way we are also introduced to the couple's daughter, Syl, who, though her body is living, is dead on the inside, incapable of expressing any emotion other than anger. Her existence seems just as sad as that of her parents' corpses. Sadder, actually, since the couple's death is portrayed not as a tragedy, but as the natural, unavoidable end that we all must face. It's not an easy story to get through, I had to wade through it in small chunks. And if you believe in life after death, it's difficult to fully give yourself over to the story. But readers will certainly come away with a renewed conviction to live life to the fullest. It's a gift not to be wasted.
Rating:
Summary: A wool sweater of a book...
Review: Being Dead is not a snuggling-up on a rainy day with hot cocoa kind-of-book. It's not self-indulgent to sit down with this novel. Jim Crace isn't interested in making the reader comfortable, per se, but he is certainly determined to be honest and forthright about Being Dead. From the first page, our main characters are dead - so the grief or shock we may have felt for protagonists (are they?) isn't really present. By setting up his novel this way, Crace skillfully gives the reader the ability to be as objective as Death itself. The various viewpoints the reader is given throughout the novel help round out its title/theme. We are taken step-by-step through Joseph and Celice's last day, from each of their perspectives. We have an account from the murderer. The daughter's journey toward locating her missing parents is another snugly fitting piece of the puzzle. A creepy, pill-popping mortician adds some disgust and thereby injects sympathy for all who are dead. And then there is the geologic angle that adds a universal and educational voice. I must say, this book made me feel a little morbid at times, and quite reflective. I didn't necessarily feel it was a "gentle love story," as some reviewers have said. But it is a pithy and honest read that will stick with the reader for quite some time after the last page is read.
Rating:
Summary: Okay, but not devastating
Review: Well-wraught, fine descriptions of scenery and (physical attributes of) characters. However, characterization comes up short and the change/emotional evolution the characters make in their journey through life is that they die; no wonderous revelations about their lives (at least by the characters themselves), no lessons learned, no growth, etc.--basically, the characters are dead and that's about it. If you like books that are idea driven, you will like it. If you crave books that are character-drive, look elsewhere. -MQ
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