Reviews

Being Dead by Jim Crace

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“‘It’s not as if . . . ,’” she said. And then her scalp hung open like a fish’s mouth. The white roots of her crown were stoplight red.” A couple suffers a horrific fate at the hands of a granite-club-wielding murderer, while they enjoy each other on the beach of Baritone Bay, where they first met. This is the premise of Being Dead, from English novelist Jim Crace, author of Quarantine and Signals of Distress. “Crace is a writer of hallucinatory skill,” says John Updike.

The novel begins with the two bodies lying in the sand, his hand latched on to her shin, a symbol of their unbreakable love passing into eternity. From there the novel takes three directions. One is the incidents that lead up to their deaths; another is how they first met, then fell in love, married, and spent the following thirty years together; the last is the succeeding days of their corpses suffering the wear and teat of nature and the weather, as their bodies remain undiscovered.

Who would have thought it possible that a novel about the death of the main characters would be published? Being Dead cannot be locked into one specific genre, but seems to flitter over them all, one minute taking you to the horrors of their deaths and decay, the next dabbling in the moving love story that kept them together for so long. Crace has a writing style that is truly unlike any other.

Originally published on September 4th 2001 ©Alex C. Telander.

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lavina_l's review

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4.0

I absolutely loved this book, beginning to end, flaws and all, but if I wrote a review of it, it'd pretty much reiterate exactly what Dan wrote in his review on 5/25, with emphasis on his last paragraph, and an added note on how gorgeous the prose is when Crace isn't trying too hard.

mslaura's review

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4.0

I'm trying out something new since I haven't been very good about writing full reviews in a while.

Ratings (1 to 5)
Writing: 4.5
Plot: 4
Characters: 3
Emotional impact: 4
Overall rating: 4

Notes
Favorite character(s):
Favorite quotes:
Other notes: I found the technique of telling the sequence of events leading up to and including the murders in reverse order very interesting.

jeffreyp's review

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5.0

What a lovely little book, a bit of a treatise on (a few kinds of) love and (a few kinds of) death. This is a keeper, one to read every few years.

ericbutler555's review

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5.0

Truly stunning novel recounting the last days and tracing back to the beginnings of love for two middle-aged biologists who get murdered on a deserted beach and are left to decompose. It's the most poetic, delicate, lovely story about death I've ever read, and gives such life to death that you leave the story in love with the cycle. For sober readers, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

anjukris's review

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4.0

Intriguing, haunting yet tragic

One of the most unusual books I've read that had me mesmerised till the end. It may seem morbid at the outset, but in my opinion Death has been described beautifully by the author.

msjenne's review

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3.0

A strange and interesting little book. I don't think I'll get the image of the two dead people out of my head for a while, but not in a creepy way.
Reading in detail about the decomposition of someone's body is a weirdly intimate thing, kind of like getting stuck in an elevator with a stranger.

lalalenii's review

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3.0

Very interesting, though finishing it almsot felt like a chore - maybe because I was eying the next book i'm anticipating to read lying on my nighstand all the time...