Being Dead: A Novel
Apr 2000 · Macmillan + ORM
4,2star
6 reviewsreport
eBook
210
Pages
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About this eBook
A National Book Critics Circle Awards Winner
From the author of Quarantine comes Being Dead, Jim Crace's haunting novel about love, death, and the afterlife.
Baritone Bay, mid-afternoon. A couple, naked, married almost thirty years, are lying murdered in the dunes.
"Their bodies had expired, but anyone could tell--just look at them--that Joseph and Celice were still devoted. For while his hand was touching her, curved round her shin, the couple seemed to have achieved that peace the world denies, a period of grace, defying even murder. Anyone who found them there, so wickedly disfigured, would nevertheless be bound to see that something of their love had survived the death of cells. The corpses were surrendered to the weather and the earth, but they were still a man and wife, quietly resting; flesh on flesh; dead, but not departed yet."
From the author of Quarantine comes Being Dead, Jim Crace's haunting novel about love, death, and the afterlife.
Baritone Bay, mid-afternoon. A couple, naked, married almost thirty years, are lying murdered in the dunes.
"Their bodies had expired, but anyone could tell--just look at them--that Joseph and Celice were still devoted. For while his hand was touching her, curved round her shin, the couple seemed to have achieved that peace the world denies, a period of grace, defying even murder. Anyone who found them there, so wickedly disfigured, would nevertheless be bound to see that something of their love had survived the death of cells. The corpses were surrendered to the weather and the earth, but they were still a man and wife, quietly resting; flesh on flesh; dead, but not departed yet."
Ratings and reviews
4,2
6 reviews
Heather Lam
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17 June 2023
Being Dead was exactly what I needed this week. I only wish it was longer but the story read more like an extended poem than a usual book of fiction. The effort of the author to place the reader in the dunes, with the grasses and the multitude of creatures that live there - was not wasted. I am a student of zoology and I studied on Prince Edward Island. Thanks for the interesting trip back East. I enjoyed your story.
About the author
Jim Crace is the author of six novels, including Quarantine (FSG, 1997), which won the 1997 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and was short-listed for the Booker Prize. He lives in England.
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