Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
|
Loading... Y amanece la muerte (original 1999; edition 2001)by Jim Crace
Work InformationBeing Dead by Jim Crace (1999)
   No current Talk conversations about this book.  jhowell | Jan 14, 2022 |    ) Ma_Washigeri | Jan 23, 2021 |  ) 3CatMom | Dec 28, 2020 | ) kazzer2u | Jul 21, 2020 |  ) gakgakg | May 28, 2020 |
 Yet for all the "experimental" feel that he imparts to his work, the fact is that, to say it again, Crace is working firmly within the mainstream of English fiction, and a good thing that is, for English fiction, at least. A solid yet always adventurous writer, he has done much to revitalize a tradition in danger of becoming moribund.  Some Buddhist monks practise the contemplation of decaying corpses, breathing in the smell and minutely observing every change. It is considered an advanced form of meditation. Jim Crace's Being Dead is a kind of literary equivalent of this. Disturbed in the act of love and murdered by a deranged stranger with a rock, Joseph and Celice, a married couple in their 50s, lie naked in a remote spot amongst the singing sand dunes of Baritone Bay. Undiscovered they decompose for six days in the changeable coastal weather. This book, we are told, will be a "quivering," the old practice of waking the dead by shaking the house with grief before recalling the lives of those departed. The difference is that this is now, there is no god and "there's nothing after death for Joseph and Celice but 'death and nothing after'." ... From bloody violence to the morgue, we are spared nothing of these deaths and thereby see our own. The book is a modern memento mori. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
The author ponders the redemptive power of secular love in this novel. Their bodies had expired, but anyone looking at them could see that Joseph and Celice were still devoted, the couple seemed to have achieved a peace the world denies, a period of grace, defying even murder. They were still man and wife, quietly resting, dead but not yet departed No library descriptions found. 
|
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.78)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English (1)
1
This is a powerful book. It vacillates between the day they first met, which ironically includes the death of their classmate; their present day condition on the dunes; and their taciturn rebellious young adult daughter's dawning discovery of her parents death. Crace fills the novel with details that are specific to Joseph and Celice but surely must be real in some way. Patterns of hair, moles, body smells and indignities that one usually just tosses around in one's subconscious. It is almost terrifying as it speaks the unvarnished truth. But is there grace in there somewhere? I think so.
I wonder if I am underrating the novel at 4 stars. Parts were stunning, but parts were a bit boring. I found some parts such as the end with the prolonged description of the lissom grasses, and some of the details of Syl's life to be overblown. And then there were some things that were left un-explored like the couple's relationship to parenting and their daughter. All in all, I am left moved and unsettled by this novel. I have never read anything quite like it, but it is surely not for everyone. (