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Being Dead (Hardcover)

by Jim Crace (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Viking (2 Sep 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0670856983
  • ISBN-13: 978-0670856985
  • Product Dimensions: 24.2 x 16 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 311,182 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #6 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > C > Crace, Jim

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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

26 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (26 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars JIM CRACE'S TAKE ON "BEING DEAD", 16 April 2003
By Nancy Martin (Pennsylvania (orig. NY)) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Being Dead (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.

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars disturbing,moving,compelling and thought-provoking, 16 Feb 2001
By hugueninf@bluewin.ch (Thun,Switzerland.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Being Dead (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!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars the poetry of decomposition, 30 Dec 1999
By A Customer
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

5.0 out of 5 stars 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... Read more
Published 1 month ago by E. Shaw

5.0 out of 5 stars 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 9 months ago by Lesley-anne Murray

5.0 out of 5 stars 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 16 months ago by Jamsie

3.0 out of 5 stars slow
The character of Syl provided an interest factor which I thought would be the kingpin of the plot{?}. Read more
Published 16 months ago by palace pier

3.0 out of 5 stars 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... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Flibertigibbit

4.0 out of 5 stars Unique writing style

Two old people go for a walk on the beach, have sex, are killed and then rot: it's not a run-of-the-mill plot for a novel! Read more
Published on 8 Sep 2006 by A. Ross

4.0 out of 5 stars Wow
This book was distrubing, harrowing and bewildering, but I could not put it down, finished it two days. Read more
Published on 4 Jun 2006 by Kittykat

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but why the fictitious beasties?
Being Dead is extremely well-written, and an interesting take on mortality. I agree that the characters aren't very involving, but I took the whole point of the book to be that... Read more
Published on 20 Nov 2003 by Durnovaria

5.0 out of 5 stars The Neverending Days of Being Dead
Jim Crace is an extravagantly gifted writer and Being Dead is a rare interweaving of writerly panache and common human emotion; an extravagantly beautiful book about a subject... Read more
Published on 19 Dec 2002

5.0 out of 5 stars A short title, a thin book and a huge achievement
This book creeps up on you, draws you in and then delivers the best last line of any book I have ever read. I thought Quarantine was excellent, but this is better. Read more
Published on 7 Feb 2001

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