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A review by kirstiecat
Being Dead by Jim Crace
4.0
I want to say this novel is morbid but that's not entirely true. Instead, peculiar would be a more fitting word. First, it contains the longest description of decomposing bodies and the organisms that profit from it that I've ever read. It recalled the detailed and forever memorable rotting of Miss Havisham's neglected wedding feast only, you know, with human corpses.
Second, we start out with this married couple in midlife being dead and go backwards. We learn enough about these two zoologists-what they were like when they were young, how they met and became closer and everything inbetween. By the end of the book, we know infinitely more than we'd ever thought to want to know about the two that were killed off beginning on page 1. And yet, these are the main protagonists of the book and the more that you read, the more that you wish you could escape the inevitable fact that these two are not going to have any moments together anymore. It's as if being dead redeems them as characters because you grow attached and you even love them a little. All the while, the tragedy is accentuated. And in these 200 pages that escape, you find yourself slowly realizing ad you grow to love them that it might, in fact, be because they are no more. If they were alive, surely they would not be as interesting or as (ironically) vivid as they are now. They are preserved in a sense of tragedy that makes them intriguing.
Third, it's much less predictable than most fiction on this topic. Our two protagonists are dead from the start because of a rather brutal murder but instead of focusing on who did it and why, Crace instead tells us their story. In a way, that makes them less like victims and more like modern British tragic heroes. It's also what makes the story more interesting than a whodunnit or a why did it happen sort of novel. There's enough already written like that and not as many with this sort of angle.
Second, we start out with this married couple in midlife being dead and go backwards. We learn enough about these two zoologists-what they were like when they were young, how they met and became closer and everything inbetween. By the end of the book, we know infinitely more than we'd ever thought to want to know about the two that were killed off beginning on page 1. And yet, these are the main protagonists of the book and the more that you read, the more that you wish you could escape the inevitable fact that these two are not going to have any moments together anymore. It's as if being dead redeems them as characters because you grow attached and you even love them a little. All the while, the tragedy is accentuated. And in these 200 pages that escape, you find yourself slowly realizing ad you grow to love them that it might, in fact, be because they are no more. If they were alive, surely they would not be as interesting or as (ironically) vivid as they are now. They are preserved in a sense of tragedy that makes them intriguing.
Third, it's much less predictable than most fiction on this topic. Our two protagonists are dead from the start because of a rather brutal murder but instead of focusing on who did it and why, Crace instead tells us their story. In a way, that makes them less like victims and more like modern British tragic heroes. It's also what makes the story more interesting than a whodunnit or a why did it happen sort of novel. There's enough already written like that and not as many with this sort of angle.