Being Dead - Jim Crace

Being Dead - Jim Crace: Now & Then (1529 words)
by Matt_Roberts - written on 06.02.04 (Very useful, 63 readings)
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Being Dead is a bookworms dream. Every bookworm loves to read an emotional and poignant novel. They’re gifted if they manage to find a book full of emotion. Usually this emotion is given to us through the words, or through the plot. Very rarely do both occur in one novel. Well, Jim Crace’s novel Being Dead is an exception because it contains both elements. Crace introduces us to two unknown characters. We know nothing about their beliefs, feelings, or anything. But, by the end of the novel it seems that they’re a lost Aunt and Uncle who we’ve never met but heard so much about. I’ve never read a novel concentrating on two characters so ...

May they rest in peace... (926 words)
by Lady_of_Leisure - written on 12.12.02 (Very useful, 145 readings)
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It is Joseph and Celice who are dead. They are lying on the beach with their heads caved in and they are only partially clad. Joseph is touching Celice, his hand curved around the arch of her shin - does it signify that he tried to help her in the last moments of her life? Is it a testament to his love for her? Or is it just another arbitrary and meaningless juxtaposition of flesh? Being dead involves rotting, it involves decay: and ultimately it involves a vast array of tiny and not-so-tiny animals gorging themselves. Joseph and Celice are hidden amongst the dunes so nine full days and nights elapse before they will be found and in the meantime Mr Crace ...

Being Dead - Jim Crace: been read (638 words)
by demosthenes - written on 18.09.01 (Very useful, 82 readings)
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I seem destined to read Jim Crace whilst travelling. I read Quarantine on the out and in legs of a car journey, and read Being Dead this past weekend, 28000 feet above the ground, flying to Vienna and back. Of the two, I think Quarantine is the better book (winner of the Whitbread award). Being Dead begins with the brutal murder of its two main characters, mid-fifties husband-and-wife Joseph and Celice, on the beach of Baritone Bay. Both of these dead people were/are zoologists, shoreline zoology being their area of expertise. They had been scouring the shore for sandhoppers, and then headed off into the dunes to make love. Why they were doing these two things, ...