Volume 51, Number 6 · April 8, 2004
Homo Erectus
By Ruth Scurr
Genesis
by Jim Crace
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 246 pp., $23.00
Human life is framed by two great mysteries. In Being Dead (1999), the British novelist Jim Crace gives a wholly secular answer to the question 'What happens when we die?' Tightly organized, the novel centers on the elaborate conceit of a middle-aged married couple, brutally murdered on a beach, and lying there decomposing for the duration of the novel that is their only afterlife. Bleak as it is, it is not the book of a disenchanter; and in writing it Crace was not simply proclaiming his adherence to a scientifically informed world view or crudely demolishing the concept of an afterlife. In his fiction the rationalist's delight in disabusing is always tempered by something more charming and imaginative. His dominant artistic intention is to preserve or restore to a godless universe as much wonderment at life's mysteries as it will bear.
Review, 3141 words
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