A review by arirang
Being Dead by Jim Crace

4.0

Very original take on death and nature. Crace's books (at least those that I've read) are always different, thought provoking, and, a feature I particularly love, offer a wonderful anecdote to the over-researched Wikipedia-regurgitation that bedevils many novels. Crace's epigraph to the novel is a poem from Sherwen Steven, and within a few pages he has introduced us to the mourning practice of "quivering", to Mondazy's Fish, a traditional analogy for death, and to the sprayhopper, a distant beach-dwelling marine relative of the cricket, all key to the story. All very plausible - and all completely invented by Crace (even the poet), which is as it should be in fiction.