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  3. Being Dead

EBOOK

Being Dead

A Novel

Jim Crace
5
(1)
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Pages
192
Year
2000
Language
English
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About

A haunting new novel about love, death, and the afterlife, from the author of Quarantine

Baritone Bay, mid-afternoon. A couple, naked, married almost thirty years, are lying murdered in the dunes.

"Their bodies had expired, but anyone could tell--just look at them--that Joseph and Celice were still devoted. For while his hand was touching her, curved round her shin, the couple seemed to have achieved that peace the world denies, a period of grace, defying even murder. Anyone who found them there, so wickedly disfigured, would nevertheless be bound to see that something of their love had survived the death of cells. The corpses were surrendered to the weather and the earth, but they were still a man and wife, quietly resting; flesh on flesh; dead, but not departed yet."

Related Subjects

  • Literary
  • Adult Fiction

Reviews

"It's not clear to me why Jim Crace isn't world famous. Few novels are as unsparing as this one in presenting the ephemerality of love given the implacability of death, and few are as moving in depicting the undiminished achievement love nevertheless represents."
Jim Shepard, The New York Times Book Review
"Jim Crace's work grows more compelling and brilliant with each new novel . . . Being Dead will undoubtedly stand out as one of the literary masterpieces of the early 21st century."
Greg Burkman, The Seattle Times
"Crace archly explores life and death and the effect of chance upon the two . . . [He] pulls off a remarkable fusion of chaos theory and natural order in telling this story."
Frank Caso, Booklist

Artists

Jim CraceAuthor