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A review by jayshay
Quarantine by Jim Crace
3.0
Giving things up, making a sacrifice to better oneself -- the idea that the spirit benefits from the renunciation of the merely physical. Five characters go into the wilderness - each one seeking something. But a warning, one of them is named Jesus.
(I should insert here that I picked this up cold at the book store and didn't realize that Jesus was going to be a character in the book. Historical personages as main characters in novels usually give me a pain, but I enjoyed Crace's language so I continued on.)
Yup, the big J himself makes his presence felt in this novel and by the second half pretty much takes over, which is a shame because I thought the rest of the characters and their own small scale struggles were pretty interesting. Crace tries to batten down Jesus, make him a confused, idealistic, romantic young man -- but Jesus Christ! he's Jesus and all the accumulated tradition of Christendom pretty much swamps what happens with the young Galilean. At a certain point I was shaking my head because the novel reminded me of the latest Star Trek reboot -- will Crace mess with the traditional time-line and let J die in his cave or will he let J live to complete what happens in the original series (you know those books in the bible). Well, he does a little of both, but really all this wiggling spoiled what would have been a stronger book about the lost souls in the other caves, nasty the Merchant who exploits them and his abused wife Miri.
(I should insert here that I picked this up cold at the book store and didn't realize that Jesus was going to be a character in the book. Historical personages as main characters in novels usually give me a pain, but I enjoyed Crace's language so I continued on.)
Yup, the big J himself makes his presence felt in this novel and by the second half pretty much takes over, which is a shame because I thought the rest of the characters and their own small scale struggles were pretty interesting. Crace tries to batten down Jesus, make him a confused, idealistic, romantic young man -- but Jesus Christ! he's Jesus and all the accumulated tradition of Christendom pretty much swamps what happens with the young Galilean. At a certain point I was shaking my head because the novel reminded me of the latest Star Trek reboot -- will Crace mess with the traditional time-line and let J die in his cave or will he let J live to complete what happens in the original series (you know those books in the bible). Well, he does a little of both, but really all this wiggling spoiled what would have been a stronger book about the lost souls in the other caves, nasty the Merchant who exploits them and his abused wife Miri.