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Summary: Being Dead?
Review: I was not excited about the way the book starts with the double murder. I was courious about how some one could write a book begining with main characters being killed. Jim Crace writes with such description that once I started I could not put it down. It gave me a new perspective on death and yet brought forth emotion and feeling. Yes a romance worth your time with a realist setting.
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Summary: Putrifying rot a metaphor for sickness among the living
Review: Jim Crace's "Being Dead" is one magnificent novel, among the best of contemporary fictional titles published in the past two years. Its subject is indeed unpleasant - quite revolting actually - but Crace's deeply lyrical and technicoloured prose is so incredibly sparkling and affecting you quickly cotton onto the fact that it isn't just the dead he's writing about. The putrifying rot from the decaying corpses of the murdered old couple among the sand dunes is a deadringer of a metaphor for the estrangement between Celice/Joseph and their daughter Syl, as much as the proverbial worm infecting their own conjugal relationship. To underscore the irony of their fate, Crace deftly ties in Celice's feelings of guilt and Joseph's indifference to a tragic event that marked the beginning and end of their lives together on Baritone Bay. Is it also not entirely fitting that as scientists, they should be surprised by the hand of a murderous thief out there in the dunes than by the predictable hand of nature ? In asking whether it is better to age, wither and decay or be cut off in full bloom, Crace juxtaposes the cruelty of the elements with that of man. Think of Syl. Her callousness may be unnerving and symtomatic of the times, yet paves the way for restoring life to its normal cycle. "Being Dead" makes a fabulous read. It is original, intriguing and intelligent, and has all the ingredients of a great novel. It made the shortlist of several book awards but didn't win any of them. A pity and an injustice, which the reader would do well to correct by going out and buying a copy. You won't regret it !
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Summary: Complex and disturbing
Review: From a deceptively simple plot line comes this deep and disturbing work. The story is simple. Two people are murdered and we go back and look at their lives. But the author tells four stories simultaneously, one line being the day the two people die, the three others a couple of days 30 years ago, the next the period between the death and the discovery, and finally the story of Syl, the daughter, during this same period between the death and the discovery. I agree wholeheartedly with the reviewer who found this last story line discordant . We know little about Syl and nothing about her relationship with her parents other than she felt they disapproved of her. Given what we see her do---especially her callous behavior toward the "driver" she picks up to chauffeur her around as she discovers what has happened to her parents---any rational person might disapprove of her as well. The death of her parents is a rebirth for Syl--but we don't know enough for this to seem really meaningful. This book is densely and beautifully written. I would love to SEE Baritone Bay after reading of the wind, the grass, the dunes, the sand. And you will never allow yourself to be fooled by what you see at the undertaker after reading this. (A great case for instant cremation!) Not for the fainthearted, but a great book.
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Summary: Begins great but plotting is weak
Review: I was enthralled with the first few chapters of this book -- the mysterious death of the two aging lovers, the vivid descriptions of decay, the vivid symbolism. Crace has an excellent grasp of language and conjurs up vivid images that nag at you for some time. His concise, scientific descriptions early in the novel are eerie and haunting. His heavy-handed approach from the outset of the novel, however, leaves him little to explore by the end. It seems the book gets overly bogged down in theme to detriment of plotting and storytelling. Oddly, I am reminded a bit of "Twin Peaks" where Laura Palmer is dead from the outset and the only thing that kept you interested was "Whodunnit", leaving the story to go downhill after this was revealed. The same happens here. Midway through the story, with the murderer revealed and the lives of the couple explored, the story begins it's denouement -- exploring the meaning of the couple's death and their lives. Here, Crace is overly sentimental and almost didactic, slamming obvious symbolism and theme into every sentence, leaving you little to discover and reflect upon. Had Crace taken a lighter hand and been more calculating in how the novel was plotted, it could have been immensely improved. That said, "Being Dead" is still one of the better novels to come out in the last few years and is worthy of attention. It is definitely not a formulaic, blockbuster page-turner -- but it is oddly a good read.
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Summary: Being Dead is enlivening
Review: I have been tauting this book to my friends and family. It is not the easiest read, but if you know Crace's work, you already know this. It is literary genius, and a ronde of chapters that explores death in a way that I've never seen before- he takes a scientist's probe and contrasts it against a backdrop of the quiet, disturbing nature of mankind and a beach and its creatures, as well as simultaneously exploring the subtle nuance of relationships, both familial, marital, and societal. It is circuitous in chapters back and forth from death to life, from wide telescope to microscope. It's utterly poetically chilling in its distance from passion and thus so totally embracing the passion of living life itself. I felt transformed by this book, never able to "view" death with the same sentimental eye again. For those seeking mystery, plot and excitement, this is not your novel. This is for lovers of language and idea, of literature and internal landscaping. It is stunning work.
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Summary: A gleamingly honest and original vantage of life and death
Review: "Being Dead" somehow illuminates Being Alive. Jim Crace has given us a thoroughly engrossing, touching, spirit-expanding eulogy on the presence of death as a part of life. Early in this extraordinary little book he states "It's only those who glimpse the awful, endless corridor of death, too gross to contemplate, that need to lose themselves in love or art." He then proceeds to light that corridor for our examination, cell by decomposing cell, of the thing we try the hardest to avoid: death. This is not a macabre book, a sensationalist view of things morbid: with great grace and love the author invites us to explore the transcience of our corporal time on earth and in doing so he encourages the celebration of all things that life could be. If his characters appear as ordinary beings (if ordinary means two people who have explored the highs and lows of love, of procreation, of guilt, of grief, of dissappointment, of intimacy with the earth as only a zoologist can understand), then he has managed to touch us all, allowing us to identify with the inevitable confrontation with dying. This is a brilliantly conceived and written book- one of the most uniquely satisfying I have read. This is a map of our lives, our mortality, our spiritual quest untended/aborted. Food for thought and for sharing and for treasuring.
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Summary: A creation story?
Review: Does anyone read this as a creation story? Six days of work, and (finally in the morgue) a seventh of rest. We're told repeatedly that death gives way to life. Is this the function ("meaning" wouldn't be right) of Celice's and Joseph's death? That fact that the creation occurs 4 billion years after life has begun is no matter; creation occurs continuously in repeating cycles, as does death. On the first day of their death, a beetle struggles to get out from under the darkness of Celine's sweater and into the light where it can safely eat. A reference to the separation of light and darkness on the first day of creation? Here is what leads me to search for an intrepretation that goes beyond those of the reviews: Cecile's and Joseph's death occurs as the retrace their steps of thirty years ago. Both times, death strikes just as they make love. How to explain such coincidence? This is just the kind of event that, to many people, would prove the existence of god. This is not Crace's message, of course, but what exactly is the message? Any interpretation that can't encompass the coincidence of the deaths hasn't quite captured it. The coincidence isn't necessary for the interpretation of most reviewers (death is the end, full stop), and in fact it undercuts a message of randomness and meaninglessness. So what are we to make of this?
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Summary: Decay of Life
Review: The first review I'd read about this book called it a clever idea, but poorly executed. I couldn't disagree more. It's easy to focus on the superficial-- a couple is dead, and the book is about what happens to them after they're dead. But it's much more than that-- it's an excavation of all the little histories that brought them to that point-- that being deadness with his hand on her leg. I would not call this an uplifting book. There is certainly room in Crace's universe for love and moments of joy, but these things are sandwiched between distance, disillusion, and (of course) the obvious decay. The book seems to say that we should take our moments of grace where we find them, even when they occur post-mortem. Thought-provoking, well written, and well worth reading.
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Summary: A terrific and moving novel
Review: I just finished this book this afternoon, and I have to say that it truly astonished me. It is a testament to Mr. Crace's abilities as a writer that in crystalline prose with a flawlessly controlled, impassive tone he can generate such an intense and involving humanity in the two central characters. Many novels have four times as many words, yet they cannot succeed in making a reader care one eighth as much. That he avoids even a trace of sentimentality further elevates the novel and saves it from being in any way maudlin. Through the use of three carefully constructed and effective narratives, Mr. Crace deals with the physical reality of death, the way that death exists in a continuum with life lived, and the impact on those left behind. In the end, the reader has a stunningly complete and rich picture of the main characters and how their doubts, loves, griefs, successes, losses, and uncertainties have shaped their lives and, in combination with something as simple as a beautiful day, led them to be where they are at the novel's beginning. Overall, a stunning piece of work, one of the most moving and thought provoking that I have read in quite some time. It offers proof of Kierkegaard's notion that life, while it must be lived forward, can only be understood in reverse.
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Summary: Thanks you NY Times For the Recommendation!
Review: Everyone is reading and reviewing this book, so I'll keep mine short. Being Dead is one of the most memorable books I've read. To say so is even more remarkable when one considers that the characters are ordinary and imperfect human beings going about the very ordinary human business of living, dying, and decomposing. What is absolutely stunning about this book is how Crace weaves together the powerful and fascinating story of the decaying bodies with the life stories of this couple in such a way that you don't feel as though you are descending into the ashes of their deaths, but are rising like a bird into their lives. There is no magical, spiritual ending, but don't be fooled - this book does not end without hope. As Crace takes us backwards into the lives of this man and this woman, the ending becomes a beautiful beginning. Truly, stunning.
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