- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Viking; First Edition edition (2 Sep 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0670856983
- ISBN-13: 978-0670856985
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.8 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 885,211 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Lying in the sand dunes of Baritone Bay are the bodies of a middle-aged couple. Zoologists Joseph and Celice returned to the site of their first lovemaking to rekindle the flame thirty years into their marriage, only to be battered to death by a thief with a chunk of granite. Their bodies lie undiscovered and rotting for a week, prey to sand-crabs, flies and gulls, and yet there is something touching about this scene--it's in the way that Joseph's hand curves lightly around Celice's leg, "quietly resting; flesh on flesh; dead but not departed yet."
Being Dead is more about the leavings of death than it is about the state of death itself. Running crazy fate lines between the past and present of Joseph and Celice, Crace returns again and again to those mutilated bodies in the dunes with updates on the colour of their decaying skin, the seeping fluids and the creatures feeding off them. This is not a murder book-- the killer is perhaps the least important character. But Crace gives some wonderful glances at death- professionals, in particular a drugged-up lascivious mortuary clerk; "He'd find his own name on the list one day...Enfin, a name to make his heart stand still. Sincere at last."
Jim Crace is the author of Continent, The Gift of Stones, Arcadia, Signals of Distress and Quarantine, which won the 1997 Whitbread Novel Award and was shortlisted for the 1997 Booker Prize and IMPAC Literary Prize. Crace has won numerous other awards, including the EM Forster Award and the Guardian Fiction Award. -- Anna Davis
Product Description
The author ponders the redemptive power of secular love in this novel. Their bodies had expired, but anyone looking at them could see that Joseph and Celice were still devoted, the couple seemed to have achieved a peace the world denies, a period of grace, defying even murder. They were still man and wife, quietly resting, dead but not yet departed
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
At first glance, one would think this book is a mystery. Two bodies found dead in the dunes of Baritone Bay. That assumption could not be further from the truth. While there is a murder and there is a murderer, the killer will not be mentioned again once he has committed his crime. Because this book is not about their death and who did it -- it is more about death itself and all the diminutive details of the actual physical death of these two people and the ultimate decay of their bodies. Sound gruesome?? Crace makes it anything but.
The subject matter -- death in its crudest form or most beautiful form (however you choose to look at it) may not be for everyone but it is a book that has provoked me to think more on this topic than I would have before. The story follows the death and life (in that order) of two married zoologists who are found partially clothed and beaten in the dunes of Baritone Bay. They are middle aged and the thing that Crace notes here, and is bothered by, is that they were robbed of a "good death". A death where you age together, get sick and die a so-called "normal" death. By being in the wrong place at the wrong time, they were victims of a random act of violence. Because their death is out in the open and their bodies are not found for six days, the reader becomes privy to the eventual decomposition complete with all those insects and birds and sealife that aid in the process of returning these once lively forms to the origin of whence they came. It is not pretty but, in a sense, Crace somehow makes this beautiful.
There is so much more to this story as the author jumps back and forth between their life and their death. He explains how they met, introduces us to their grown daughter Syl and tells the events that led them to the dunes that day -- the scene where they first made love many, many years ago. It is more than ironic, in light of their profession as zoologists, that they would end up in a situation where each of them would have delighted in exploring the aftereffects of their own demise.
There is an incredible amount of food for thought in this book. The author explains that "at least their deaths coincided -- there can be nothing lonelier than to outlive someone you are used to loving." By returning to the dunes in an effort to recapture some of their youth, Joseph and Celice paid a heavy price for their nostalgia.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Although I would disagree with the 'Guardian' that this book was a 'joy' to read-it's content are far too disturbing and uncomfortable for that-it is one of the most unusual and haunting books I've read recently.A reader complained that the characters were far too ordinary to be interesting.I found the description of the couple's relationship after 30 years of marriage both realistic and touching and surely it is true of most murder victims that the way in which they met their deaths is all that differentiates them from us-isn't that one of the reasons such random deaths are so frightening?Death is said to be one of the great taboos of our time and the uncomfortable feelings this book provokes certainly confirm the idea.Personally,I found 'Being Dead' curiously life-affirming!Don't let the title put you off!
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Jim Crace is a master storyteller. I enjoyed Quarantine and was intrigued to see what he would do with his next book. I have to say I think it is even better. His writing style is sheer poetry - which sounds incredible when you think of the subject matter here, the bodies of two murder victims, but it is the touching way that he slowly reveals to us all about his very human characters. The structure of the book is fascinating, one half of it goes backwards from the point of the murder to tell the story of how Joseph and Celice first met. The other half of the book goes forwards in traditional linear fashion to tell you what happens to their bodies as they lie undiscovered on the seashore and how nature takes over. I think Jim Crace is one of the most inventive novel writers around at the moment and I was hooked from the first sentence.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
It's not about death!
I hate to seem grumpy but I'm going to write a brief antidote to the other reviews, as a warning to people who buy this book thinking that it will help them to think about the... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Winterwoman
Good
The item was sent very quickley and arrived in better condition than described in the product decsribtion.
Published 19 months ago by J. King
exploding out
I read this some time ago but still remember it as the narrative explodes outwards from a single point in time. Being dead and being alive - it is nearly the same. Read more
Published on 6 April 2010 by Ellie
A Gleamingly honest and original vantage of life and death
"Being Dead" somehow illuminates Being Alive. Jim Crace has given us a thoroughly engrossing, touching, spirit-expanding eulogy on the presence of death as a part of life. Read more
Published on 3 Mar 2010 by Grady Harp
Amazing
Celice and Joseph are two middle aged biologists who go for a walk on Bantone Bay, the place where they first made love thirty years ago. Read more
Published on 28 Dec 2009 by Moonlit
Decomposition
This is a lyrical, meditative novel describing the violent death of a middle-aged couple. Joseph and Celice set out one warm day to re-invoke their first moment of love-making on a... Read more
Published on 11 Sep 2009 by Eileen Shaw
A murder, death and the unwritten beauty of it.
A couple are murdered on a beach and their bodies begin the harrowing task of decomposing. Although this death is disturbing among many things, Jim Crace takes an unusual take on... Read more
Published on 20 Jan 2009 by Lesley-anne Murray
A modern classic
Wanting to try something new, I bought this book at random without even reading the cover note. I am so glad I did. Read more
Published on 16 July 2008 by Jamsie
slow
The character of Syl provided an interest factor which I thought would be the kingpin of the plot{?}. Read more
Published on 28 Jun 2008 by palace pier
Very entertaining
About death again. A superbly constructed and very non-linear narrative. The book is, much as its title suggests, about the death of the central husband and wife characters (Joseph... Read more
Published on 28 Mar 2008 by Flibertigibbit
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