Quarantine (Paperback)

Crace's descriptions of the natural world are breathtaking. Using vivid verbs, musical cadences, unique metaphors, and acutely perceived observations about man, nature, and the spirit, he brings the wilderness into sharp focus, often personifying nature and its creatures without a trace of romanticism. "The clouds came down to sniff the hills, to scratch their bellies on the thorns," "Clouds and lightning moved away, banging on their shields," and sounds of wind that "could be mistaken for the vast percussion of the storm-pressed, canvas billows of a ship" are among the hundreds of vibrant and unique images which bring nature to life and illustrate man's closeness to it. With a similar focus on men as humans within nature and the wilderness, he attempts to recreate the quarantine experience and man's desire to connect with a higher power. Jesus, like the other pilgrims, is human here, a man rooted in the real world of his day and subject to the same urges as other men. He is different from them, however, in his determination not to yield to privation as he seeks union with God through his visions and hallucinations.

This is not a book that will appeal to everyone. Though Crace's purpose is not to debunk, he does challenge our understanding of what happened between the forty days in the wilderness and the resurrection and its significance. The language is stunning, the characters are fascinating, the imagery is unique, and the power of nature is overwhelming--but one's enjoyment of the book ultimately depends on one's willingness to consider alternative interpretations of some of the basic tenets of Christianity. Mary Whipple

Words lose their meanings and I suppose it is a sad reflection on the times to note that for most people now the word 'quarantine' conjures up the image of six months of doggy hell; or, just possibly, the director of Pulp Fiction. The founding meaning is gone to most, but the book reminds us that quarantine originally meant a period of 40 days and nights alone, often fasting, done with the aim of achieving some personal or spiritual goal. (The duration alone is retained in the French 'quarante'.) The supporting characters in Crace's novel are four people pursuing such a quarantine in search of relief for their respective problems ("madness, madness, cancer, infertility"). The fifth is Jesus, a young man of zealous disposition. The other four will break their fast every night: a sign that they don't really believe that god will provide for them, let alone that he will cure their maladies. Jesus is different:

"His quarantine would be achieved without the comforts and temptations of clothing, food and water. He'd put his trust in god, as young men do. He would encounter god or die, that was the nose and tail of it. That's why he'd come. To talk directly to his god. To let his god provide the water and the food. Or let the devil do its work. It would be a test for all three of them."

In a lesser novel, this could become the central concern: "Does Jesus live or die?" (Forty days? No food or water? What do you think?) But Crace deals the story more skilfully, by making Jesus only a little more prominent than the other quarantiners. The true central characters are a travelling salesman, Musa, and his wife Miri. Musa is a tough man and a cruel husband, whose reputation precedes him as he lies dying of fever on the novel's first page. When Miri goes off, with rather too much haste, to dig a grave for Musa, Jesus encounters him and he mysteriously recovers.

Musa's subsequent faith in Jesus - he becomes obsessed with "the little Gally" - is matched only by his faith in himself. The scenery is littered with caves where the quarantiners stay, and Musa wastes no time in making them believe that he owns the land. He extracts rent from the afflicted four with no difficulty. Musa comes to resemble God. He fails to abide by the rules he himself sets. His vengeance is arbitrary. His power over the others rests mostly in reputation, unfulfillable threats and his forbidding appearance: at the same time he has a ridiculous unmanly voice, and his vast weight means that he cannot get up without help from someone else. He is a God, like all the others, who requires his believers for survival. But Musa is a second-rate deity, the Alan Partridge (if you will) of the first century AD: he is torn between abusing those weaker than himself and becoming obsessively worshipful of anyone in whom he detects power. Jesus becomes the object of his fascination, and it is not long into the novel when Musa (and so the others) start thinking of him as a 'healer'. The implication as the novel ends is that from the mouths of these half-dozen wanderers will be born the rudiments of Christianity. The crucial point Crace makes is that whatever Jesus actually does is not relevant... Religion, the novel seems to say, is based on belief not reason. As such it is beyond logical attack or defence.

But the underlying themes are not half the pleasures of "Quarantine". The surface is divertingly beautiful. As ever Crace makes the scene and land his own, and the cruel Judean desert becomes vivid and full of character:- "This was the wind on which to fly away. Its gusts and blusters came looking for him in the cave, bursting in like rowdy boys to shake him from unconsciousness." "The salty scrubland was a lazy and malicious host. Even lizards lifted their legs for fear of touching it too firmly." (This is the language which earlier reviews found "shallow and uninspiring.") Crace also is adept at firm characterisation, and when literary fiction suffers a dearth of really villainous characters it is a relief to have Musa, whose unremitting wrongdoing is perversely admirable.

So broad is Crace's skill, that the reader feels that the whole book could be driven by any one of the factors alone: setting, plot, characters, themes. That he manages to sustain them all at once is (not literally) miraculous. Crace may not think much of religion but he has the gift of the greatest creators of legends: he makes you believe.

In Quarantine, Christ seems to be more of an unlearned carpenter than someone divine; someone whose parents have reprimanded Him for His habit of piety and who has fled to the desert of Judea in a search for God and truth.

Christ is not alone in the Judean wilderness; there are other quarantiners, each with his own purpose and each on his own quest. Some are determined to be cured of blindness or barrenness, while others are simply searching. Jesus chooses one of the most uncomfortable caves in the area in which to spend His forty days, and He is determined to spend them without food or water. In contrast, the wealthy merchant Musa, though suffering from an apparently terminal illness, spends his day with his pregnant wife in a lavish tent.

Crace, a master at integrating his setting into the very fabric of his story, describes the desert in minute detail. This detail, which covers the flora and the fauna, the geography and the geology, is so minute, however, that many readers, (I was one) will need to keep a dictionary handy. If there are words you can't find, don't worry; this is Jim Crace writing and, just as in Being Dead, another five-star novel, words, and worlds, often exist only in the author's imagination. And ours.

The story continues along the lines of a classic fable, but we feel as though we are lost in a dreamworld, in a hallucination perhaps, as the characters of Musa, his wife Miri, and her contemplative friend, Marta become symbols for the Biblical story with which most of us are familiar.

Crace is a writer's writer, a true original, and this book, like his others, is never predictable. This is an author who is strange, creative and original, but always wonderful. Never a political writer, Crace is more concerned with giving us a world within a world, with detailing the landscape and the culture. In Quarantine, there is the almost obsessive description of the desert; in Arcadia, it was a produce market; in Signals of Distress, nautical matters and life in an early Victorian seaport; in Being Dead, it was, of course, death. Or rather, the process of death.

Crace eschews political and topical themes and instead focuses his attention on the beginnings and endings of lives and of worlds: the remnants of the stone people, the dispossessed greengrocers, the quarantined. He writes with what Iris Murdoch calls "crystalline" construction; a novel that is really more like a poem, introspective and artistic and thematic. He very much resembles William Golding and Signals of Distress is very reminiscent of Golding's novel, The Spire.

Crace is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. But for those looking for something a little different, something that will make them think, something that is quietly profound, Crace may be just perfect.