The story of Jesus's 40 days in the wilderness is surely among the most celebrated and widely diffused narratives in Western culture. Why, then, would Jim Crace choose to retell it in strictly naturalistic, non-miraculous terms? The obvious answer would be that the godless novelist is trying to debunk divinity--to take the entire New Testament down a notch. And at first, this does seem to be the case. Crace's Jesus first got religion as an adolescent, and "was transformed by god like other boys his age were changed by girls." His peers view his spiritual fervour as a youthful eccentricity. Even now, as the thirtysomething Jesus heads out to the Judaean desert for his 40-day retreat, he's perceived by his fellow anchorites as a flighty and impractical Galilean. They even call him "Gally" for short--and what sort of deity answers to a nickname?

Yet Crace is hardly the jeering materialist we might expect. As Jesus takes to his cliff-top cave, the author renders his religious transports without a hint of irony, and with a linguistic elegance that can hardly be called disrespectful: "The prayers were in command of him. He shouted out across the valley, happy with the noise he made. The common words lost hold of sound. The consonants collapsed. He called on god to join him in the cave with all the noises that his lips could make. He called with all the voices in his throat." And while most of the temptations of Christ are visited upon him by humans--by the motley crew of his cave-dwelling neighbours-- he resists them with what we can only call superhuman will. Quarantine does, of course, operate on a fairly realistic plane. Jesus dies of starvation long before his 40-day fast is complete, and his fellow retreatants, who take centre stage throughout much of the novel, are much too confused and brutal ever to figure in any Sunday school pageant. Still, Crace leaves at least the possibility of resurrection intact at the end, which should ensure that his brilliant book will rattle both believers and non-believers alike.

Gripping and rich, yet also with weak characterisations, 27 Sep 2008
Strangely gripping and very hard to put down. There is a great richness to the main character particularly. There are wonderful, tantalising hints of impending cruel or mystical acts. The style is highly poetic, giving life and meaning to everyone and everything, thus reflecting an age that would be ripe to believe in people like Jesus. However, by the end I was left dissatisfied by the ambiguity of the final meaning of the Jesus figure - was he just a deluded young man, or did he become something much more? It would have been more consistent - and more courageous - to leave Jesus as a man only. The biggest flaw, though, was how weakly drawn the characters of Aphas and Shim were; they barely surpassed stereotypes.

Forty riveting days, 26 Aug 2008
A novelist takes a bold step when they include Jesus in their list of characters. A writer chooses words and places them into their characters' minds and mouths, which gives them a certain control over the people they paint (although plenty of writers will testify to the fact that often their characters take on a life of their own.) Yet how can anyone claim to have control over the Lord of Creation? This seems presumptuous in the extreme. The problem comes when you try to attribute fresh thoughts to Him. Are they authentic? You will probably get as many different answers to this as you have fellow Christians. So include Jesus in your Dramatis Personae at your peril.

Jim Crace embraces this difficulty so completely in his novel 'Quarantine' that he takes your breath away. He devotes page after page to his depiction of Jesus, reinterpreting His childhood, outlining His fears and joys, and deconstructing His relationships with the handful of people who occupy the novel with him. I have no idea whether or not Mr Crace is a Christian, but those of us who think we are owe him a debt of thanks for his bravery.

Crace chooses a wonderfully interesting point in Jesus's life to set the book, as he heads out into the wilderness for forty days of fasting prior to the start of his ministry. He raises the question; when did Jesus first fully realize who He was? Surely that moment comes here. He has just been recognized and baptized by His cousin John the Baptist, and He has heard His Father's voice bestowing His approval upon Him. All those intuitions His parents had picked up down the years would be crystallizing into certainties in His mind at exactly this moment. His time in the wilderness is to slowly digest these truths in silence, and to take on the enormity of the mission ahead of Him.

A further question; when does Jesus first realize His status as a miracle-worker? There must have been a first time that He surprised Himself with his own powers. I hope it does not give too much away to say that Crace draws a picture here of what might be Jesus's first healing, one that Jesus Himself seems unaware of bringing about.

I have always pictured Jesus as alone in the desert with only the Devil for company, but Crace adds several fellow-fasters and others to the picture, including the hideous Musa, a devil of a con-man and worse who longs to learn what trickery the healer Jesus possesses in His fingers. The way in which Jesus rebuffs the temptations of Musa seems somehow more earthly and grounded than the rather ethereal accounts of Jesus and the Devil in our Gospels.

Finally, this book describes the process of fasting brilliantly. In a world where obesity is increasingly held up as a medical disaster, here is a book that will address the spiritual roots of the problem. A Christian may justifiably say, "I don't believe in dieting," but can he say, "I don't believe in fasting?" As Jesus told us, there are some things that can only be cast out by prayer and fasting, and no one who reads this book will ever see the latter in the same way again. Thank you, Mr Crace, for a superb (and profoundly spiritual) read.



A different take on Jesus' 40 days and 40 nights quarantine, 15 Aug 2007
A more realistic story on how an eccentric, deeply religious man, with strong will and intelligence, was mistaken to have committed a miracle and then gathered a following of people. Jesus in this story is not a flawless son of God, but very human, with his own human weaknesses and temptations. Crace set himself a difficult task of going in and out of the minds of his 7 characters, but just about pulls it off. Jesus and the greedy, evil Musa, who represents the devil with his market goods as temptations, are the most fully rounded characters. The others are a bit more superficial but the story is more on how Jesus fights off Satan's temptations, so it is rightfully so that they are more developed. The writing is high class, but the story does not always have the narrative progressive hold, making it sometimes difficult to keep going with it. Definitely worth a read and will leave you haunted and reflective a long time after you finish the book.

utterly pointless drivel!, 03 Mar 2005
Not quite an everyday story in the lives of ordinary first century AD Jewish folk - but, as we are led to believe that quarantine is not unusual for the times - not far off! With only slightly more characters than you can count on the fingers of one hand and 250 or so pages in which to do it you'd think that it would be reasonable to expect rounded portraits instead of the two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs presented before us. In the few pages devoted to Him, even Christ is personified as little more than a confused and, possibly, deluded youth with nothing more ambitious on his mind than impressing his parents and the village elders! The whole thing is just Albert Square in loincloths and sandals with a hint of Thelma and Louise - but with far less character development and much less interesting! The fact that this book was the Whitbread Novel of the Year says more about, either the scandalously narrow-minded judges or the shocking paucity of truly worthy writing than anything about the quality of this tawdry and mean-spirited little affair.

Amazingly-written and thought-provoking, 05 Jan 2005
This is the second of Crace's novels that I have read, and he impresses first and foremost as an incredibly gifted writer. Quarantine, loosely based on the biblical story of Jesus spending forty days and nights in the wilderness, contains wonderfully evocative descriptions of the Judaen desertscape.

The central character of Quarantine is Musa, a diabolically revolting character who tyrannises his wife Miri, and a small group of 'quarantiners' seeking enlightenment in the wilderness. Cleverly, Crace places Jesus literally on the periphery of both the setting and novel. Although Jesus is portrayed with some decidedly human traits, he nevertheless exerts a strong, special influence on the others, including Musa who Jesus seemingly brings back from the brink of death. Furthermore, Jesus undergoes a particularly strict form of quarantine, removed from all other human contact, and denying himself food or water for forty days and nights.

Personally, I feel that Crace deliberately leaves the ending fairly vague and open to interpretation by the reader - probably a sensible move on theological issues!? The novel's ending differs to the biblical story, offering a non-literal interpretation of it. Alternatively, perhaps Crace is illustrating how a special, but nevertheless human, figure can develop a cult following from people with whom he comes into contact.

My only real criticism of this novel is that characters other than Musa and Jesus are only superficially developed. Nevertheless, this novel is strongly recommended for the extraordinary descriptive writing, and for giving food for thought long after the last page is read.

Gripping and rich, yet also with weak characterisations, 27 Sep 2008
Strangely gripping and very hard to put down. There is a great richness to the main character particularly. There are wonderful, tantalising hints of impending cruel or mystical acts. The style is highly poetic, giving life and meaning to everyone and everything, thus reflecting an age that would be ripe to believe in people like Jesus. However, by the end I was left dissatisfied by the ambiguity of the final meaning of the Jesus figure - was he just a deluded young man, or did he become something much more? It would have been more consistent - and more courageous - to leave Jesus as a man only. The biggest flaw, though, was how weakly drawn the characters of Aphas and Shim were; they barely surpassed stereotypes.

Forty riveting days, 26 Aug 2008
A novelist takes a bold step when they include Jesus in their list of characters. A writer chooses words and places them into their characters' minds and mouths, which gives them a certain control over the people they paint (although plenty of writers will testify to the fact that often their characters take on a life of their own.) Yet how can anyone claim to have control over the Lord of Creation? This seems presumptuous in the extreme. The problem comes when you try to attribute fresh thoughts to Him. Are they authentic? You will probably get as many different answers to this as you have fellow Christians. So include Jesus in your Dramatis Personae at your peril.

Jim Crace embraces this difficulty so completely in his novel 'Quarantine' that he takes your breath away. He devotes page after page to his depiction of Jesus, reinterpreting His childhood, outlining His fears and joys, and deconstructing His relationships with the handful of people who occupy the novel with him. I have no idea whether or not Mr Crace is a Christian, but those of us who think we are owe him a debt of thanks for his bravery.

Crace chooses a wonderfully interesting point in Jesus's life to set the book, as he heads out into the wilderness for forty days of fasting prior to the start of his ministry. He raises the question; when did Jesus first fully realize who He was? Surely that moment comes here. He has just been recognized and baptized by His cousin John the Baptist, and He has heard His Father's voice bestowing His approval upon Him. All those intuitions His parents had picked up down the years would be crystallizing into certainties in His mind at exactly this moment. His time in the wilderness is to slowly digest these truths in silence, and to take on the enormity of the mission ahead of Him.

A further question; when does Jesus first realize His status as a miracle-worker? There must have been a first time that He surprised Himself with his own powers. I hope it does not give too much away to say that Crace draws a picture here of what might be Jesus's first healing, one that Jesus Himself seems unaware of bringing about.

I have always pictured Jesus as alone in the desert with only the Devil for company, but Crace adds several fellow-fasters and others to the picture, including the hideous Musa, a devil of a con-man and worse who longs to learn what trickery the healer Jesus possesses in His fingers. The way in which Jesus rebuffs the temptations of Musa seems somehow more earthly and grounded than the rather ethereal accounts of Jesus and the Devil in our Gospels.

Finally, this book describes the process of fasting brilliantly. In a world where obesity is increasingly held up as a medical disaster, here is a book that will address the spiritual roots of the problem. A Christian may justifiably say, "I don't believe in dieting," but can he say, "I don't believe in fasting?" As Jesus told us, there are some things that can only be cast out by prayer and fasting, and no one who reads this book will ever see the latter in the same way again. Thank you, Mr Crace, for a superb (and profoundly spiritual) read.



A different take on Jesus' 40 days and 40 nights quarantine, 15 Aug 2007
A more realistic story on how an eccentric, deeply religious man, with strong will and intelligence, was mistaken to have committed a miracle and then gathered a following of people. Jesus in this story is not a flawless son of God, but very human, with his own human weaknesses and temptations. Crace set himself a difficult task of going in and out of the minds of his 7 characters, but just about pulls it off. Jesus and the greedy, evil Musa, who represents the devil with his market goods as temptations, are the most fully rounded characters. The others are a bit more superficial but the story is more on how Jesus fights off Satan's temptations, so it is rightfully so that they are more developed. The writing is high class, but the story does not always have the narrative progressive hold, making it sometimes difficult to keep going with it. Definitely worth a read and will leave you haunted and reflective a long time after you finish the book.

utterly pointless drivel!, 03 Mar 2005
Not quite an everyday story in the lives of ordinary first century AD Jewish folk - but, as we are led to believe that quarantine is not unusual for the times - not far off! With only slightly more characters than you can count on the fingers of one hand and 250 or so pages in which to do it you'd think that it would be reasonable to expect rounded portraits instead of the two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs presented before us. In the few pages devoted to Him, even Christ is personified as little more than a confused and, possibly, deluded youth with nothing more ambitious on his mind than impressing his parents and the village elders! The whole thing is just Albert Square in loincloths and sandals with a hint of Thelma and Louise - but with far less character development and much less interesting! The fact that this book was the Whitbread Novel of the Year says more about, either the scandalously narrow-minded judges or the shocking paucity of truly worthy writing than anything about the quality of this tawdry and mean-spirited little affair.

Amazingly-written and thought-provoking, 05 Jan 2005
This is the second of Crace's novels that I have read, and he impresses first and foremost as an incredibly gifted writer. Quarantine, loosely based on the biblical story of Jesus spending forty days and nights in the wilderness, contains wonderfully evocative descriptions of the Judaen desertscape.

The central character of Quarantine is Musa, a diabolically revolting character who tyrannises his wife Miri, and a small group of 'quarantiners' seeking enlightenment in the wilderness. Cleverly, Crace places Jesus literally on the periphery of both the setting and novel. Although Jesus is portrayed with some decidedly human traits, he nevertheless exerts a strong, special influence on the others, including Musa who Jesus seemingly brings back from the brink of death. Furthermore, Jesus undergoes a particularly strict form of quarantine, removed from all other human contact, and denying himself food or water for forty days and nights.

Personally, I feel that Crace deliberately leaves the ending fairly vague and open to interpretation by the reader - probably a sensible move on theological issues!? The novel's ending differs to the biblical story, offering a non-literal interpretation of it. Alternatively, perhaps Crace is illustrating how a special, but nevertheless human, figure can develop a cult following from people with whom he comes into contact.

My only real criticism of this novel is that characters other than Musa and Jesus are only superficially developed. Nevertheless, this novel is strongly recommended for the extraordinary descriptive writing, and for giving food for thought long after the last page is read.

Change, 23 Nov 2002
"The Gift Of Stones", is the second novel written by Jim Crace. He tells this story through a storyteller he created from the notes of Sir Henry Penn Butler in, "Memoirs of an Excavationist circa 1927". Evidently while pursuing old stone implements they came upon the bones from a lower arm of a child. Mr. Crace has done as they did the evening of their find when they sat around their fire and spun tales of why the bones were there, and where the balance of the bones were to be found. Mr. Crace took the same bit of information and created a remarkable work that is about change. The change is this book is not unlike the changes faced today. A fundamental shift in knowledge can have dramatic and even catastrophic effects on a people. And this is the tale of, The Gift Of Stones".

At some point most have read about the implements of The Stone Age, and also the dramatic changes that were brought about by the advent of bronze. Many have perhaps learned of this change through textbooks and classes in history. Jim Crace has told the same story of change as it might have been seen through the eyes of those who were dependent upon stone for their way of life. From the mention of the bones from a child's lower arm, he recreates history as he creates a wonderful novel.

The community of stoneworkers is recreated with marvelous detail about the methods used in creating stone implements. The descriptions go far beyond the crude instruments hacked from the blows of another stone. The author illustrates the artisans these people were with a stoneworker nicknamed, "the Leaf". Here was an artisan who would keep on his workbench a leaf as produced by nature, and use it both as inspiration and an item of beauty he would seek to emulate in his work. The craftsmen in this book are treated more like skilled sculptors/artists, than the makers of crude tools.

The author creates a circle with the flight of an arrow creating the basis for his story, and yet another arrow that brings everything to an end. The second arrow is of course fashioned from bronze, and it is an arrow that can kill much more than an animal or a man. It brings complete destruction to a way of life, to what is also referred to as an age. As he has done before Jim Crace is able to take a subject that is not unfamiliar, and recast the ideas to create a read that is new and unique.

Thought provoking, 15 Feb 2002
This the story of people of the stone age. They are primitive people who live to find stone and fashion it into tools and weapons. There are of course as in every society the skilled craftsmen and the merchants who trade the flint for other needs and get rich doing it. This is really the tale of one young man, a man who can't work the stone because he lost an arm when he was a boy. He has a great imagination and becomes the story teller of the village. He is also the only one in the village who travels abroad and uses his material for his tales. He can tell of anything and none can dispute it.

A distant past anchored in real landscapes, 12 Aug 2001
Perhaps reminiscent of Golding's The Inheritors, this is still an original story of a time of change. Even if that time of change is now in the distant past. I remember this book well, as the author makes you feel that the landscapes are real. The narrator's viewpoint is also clealy imagined.

A very original read, 01 Jan 1999
I am hooked by this authors imagination and am reading my ways through his books after being introduced to his writing via finding Quarantine.

The Gift of Stones was the second book of his that I read - very unusual setting - in the Stone Age at its cusp with the Bronze Age. You've probably seen all those TV documentaries on history - Timewatch etc -- well good as they are they are nothing compared to this novel. It tells the story of life in a Stone Age village with its traders and stone workers. A snug village, smug in its relative prosperity, which only has its isolation from the rest of the world broken by occasional raids and trades. It tells how the narrator's father becomes the village storyteller.

Crace's writing is very perceptive - " Why tell the truth when lies are more amusing, when lies can make the listener shake her head and laugh - and cough- and roll her eyes? People are like stones. You strike them right, they open up like shells".

I would love to know how Jim Crace does his research ( is he listening online?) - do the techniques of today's stone mason give any indication of how the ancients worked in this medium? Do archeological studies prove illuminating? I do not know. What I do know is that his writing is riveting. This, in the unusual settings he chooses to write about, makes his books quite unique. If you are after originality you must read this one. I am reading more.

A marvellous novel by a gifted storyteller, 12 Oct 1998
This is a virtuoso performance by a gifted storyteller. Crace tells a moving tale of a deformed stone-age misfit through the eyes of a girl with a neolithic vocabulary. A wonderful read!

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

Gripping and rich, yet also with weak characterisations, 27 Sep 2008
Strangely gripping and very hard to put down. There is a great richness to the main character particularly. There are wonderful, tantalising hints of impending cruel or mystical acts. The style is highly poetic, giving life and meaning to everyone and everything, thus reflecting an age that would be ripe to believe in people like Jesus. However, by the end I was left dissatisfied by the ambiguity of the final meaning of the Jesus figure - was he just a deluded young man, or did he become something much more? It would have been more consistent - and more courageous - to leave Jesus as a man only. The biggest flaw, though, was how weakly drawn the characters of Aphas and Shim were; they barely surpassed stereotypes.

Forty riveting days, 26 Aug 2008
A novelist takes a bold step when they include Jesus in their list of characters. A writer chooses words and places them into their characters' minds and mouths, which gives them a certain control over the people they paint (although plenty of writers will testify to the fact that often their characters take on a life of their own.) Yet how can anyone claim to have control over the Lord of Creation? This seems presumptuous in the extreme. The problem comes when you try to attribute fresh thoughts to Him. Are they authentic? You will probably get as many different answers to this as you have fellow Christians. So include Jesus in your Dramatis Personae at your peril.

Jim Crace embraces this difficulty so completely in his novel 'Quarantine' that he takes your breath away. He devotes page after page to his depiction of Jesus, reinterpreting His childhood, outlining His fears and joys, and deconstructing His relationships with the handful of people who occupy the novel with him. I have no idea whether or not Mr Crace is a Christian, but those of us who think we are owe him a debt of thanks for his bravery.

Crace chooses a wonderfully interesting point in Jesus's life to set the book, as he heads out into the wilderness for forty days of fasting prior to the start of his ministry. He raises the question; when did Jesus first fully realize who He was? Surely that moment comes here. He has just been recognized and baptized by His cousin John the Baptist, and He has heard His Father's voice bestowing His approval upon Him. All those intuitions His parents had picked up down the years would be crystallizing into certainties in His mind at exactly this moment. His time in the wilderness is to slowly digest these truths in silence, and to take on the enormity of the mission ahead of Him.

A further question; when does Jesus first realize His status as a miracle-worker? There must have been a first time that He surprised Himself with his own powers. I hope it does not give too much away to say that Crace draws a picture here of what might be Jesus's first healing, one that Jesus Himself seems unaware of bringing about.

I have always pictured Jesus as alone in the desert with only the Devil for company, but Crace adds several fellow-fasters and others to the picture, including the hideous Musa, a devil of a con-man and worse who longs to learn what trickery the healer Jesus possesses in His fingers. The way in which Jesus rebuffs the temptations of Musa seems somehow more earthly and grounded than the rather ethereal accounts of Jesus and the Devil in our Gospels.

Finally, this book describes the process of fasting brilliantly. In a world where obesity is increasingly held up as a medical disaster, here is a book that will address the spiritual roots of the problem. A Christian may justifiably say, "I don't believe in dieting," but can he say, "I don't believe in fasting?" As Jesus told us, there are some things that can only be cast out by prayer and fasting, and no one who reads this book will ever see the latter in the same way again. Thank you, Mr Crace, for a superb (and profoundly spiritual) read.



A different take on Jesus' 40 days and 40 nights quarantine, 15 Aug 2007
A more realistic story on how an eccentric, deeply religious man, with strong will and intelligence, was mistaken to have committed a miracle and then gathered a following of people. Jesus in this story is not a flawless son of God, but very human, with his own human weaknesses and temptations. Crace set himself a difficult task of going in and out of the minds of his 7 characters, but just about pulls it off. Jesus and the greedy, evil Musa, who represents the devil with his market goods as temptations, are the most fully rounded characters. The others are a bit more superficial but the story is more on how Jesus fights off Satan's temptations, so it is rightfully so that they are more developed. The writing is high class, but the story does not always have the narrative progressive hold, making it sometimes difficult to keep going with it. Definitely worth a read and will leave you haunted and reflective a long time after you finish the book.

utterly pointless drivel!, 03 Mar 2005
Not quite an everyday story in the lives of ordinary first century AD Jewish folk - but, as we are led to believe that quarantine is not unusual for the times - not far off! With only slightly more characters than you can count on the fingers of one hand and 250 or so pages in which to do it you'd think that it would be reasonable to expect rounded portraits instead of the two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs presented before us. In the few pages devoted to Him, even Christ is personified as little more than a confused and, possibly, deluded youth with nothing more ambitious on his mind than impressing his parents and the village elders! The whole thing is just Albert Square in loincloths and sandals with a hint of Thelma and Louise - but with far less character development and much less interesting! The fact that this book was the Whitbread Novel of the Year says more about, either the scandalously narrow-minded judges or the shocking paucity of truly worthy writing than anything about the quality of this tawdry and mean-spirited little affair.

Amazingly-written and thought-provoking, 05 Jan 2005
This is the second of Crace's novels that I have read, and he impresses first and foremost as an incredibly gifted writer. Quarantine, loosely based on the biblical story of Jesus spending forty days and nights in the wilderness, contains wonderfully evocative descriptions of the Judaen desertscape.

The central character of Quarantine is Musa, a diabolically revolting character who tyrannises his wife Miri, and a small group of 'quarantiners' seeking enlightenment in the wilderness. Cleverly, Crace places Jesus literally on the periphery of both the setting and novel. Although Jesus is portrayed with some decidedly human traits, he nevertheless exerts a strong, special influence on the others, including Musa who Jesus seemingly brings back from the brink of death. Furthermore, Jesus undergoes a particularly strict form of quarantine, removed from all other human contact, and denying himself food or water for forty days and nights.

Personally, I feel that Crace deliberately leaves the ending fairly vague and open to interpretation by the reader - probably a sensible move on theological issues!? The novel's ending differs to the biblical story, offering a non-literal interpretation of it. Alternatively, perhaps Crace is illustrating how a special, but nevertheless human, figure can develop a cult following from people with whom he comes into contact.

My only real criticism of this novel is that characters other than Musa and Jesus are only superficially developed. Nevertheless, this novel is strongly recommended for the extraordinary descriptive writing, and for giving food for thought long after the last page is read.

Change, 23 Nov 2002
"The Gift Of Stones", is the second novel written by Jim Crace. He tells this story through a storyteller he created from the notes of Sir Henry Penn Butler in, "Memoirs of an Excavationist circa 1927". Evidently while pursuing old stone implements they came upon the bones from a lower arm of a child. Mr. Crace has done as they did the evening of their find when they sat around their fire and spun tales of why the bones were there, and where the balance of the bones were to be found. Mr. Crace took the same bit of information and created a remarkable work that is about change. The change is this book is not unlike the changes faced today. A fundamental shift in knowledge can have dramatic and even catastrophic effects on a people. And this is the tale of, The Gift Of Stones".

At some point most have read about the implements of The Stone Age, and also the dramatic changes that were brought about by the advent of bronze. Many have perhaps learned of this change through textbooks and classes in history. Jim Crace has told the same story of change as it might have been seen through the eyes of those who were dependent upon stone for their way of life. From the mention of the bones from a child's lower arm, he recreates history as he creates a wonderful novel.

The community of stoneworkers is recreated with marvelous detail about the methods used in creating stone implements. The descriptions go far beyond the crude instruments hacked from the blows of another stone. The author illustrates the artisans these people were with a stoneworker nicknamed, "the Leaf". Here was an artisan who would keep on his workbench a leaf as produced by nature, and use it both as inspiration and an item of beauty he would seek to emulate in his work. The craftsmen in this book are treated more like skilled sculptors/artists, than the makers of crude tools.

The author creates a circle with the flight of an arrow creating the basis for his story, and yet another arrow that brings everything to an end. The second arrow is of course fashioned from bronze, and it is an arrow that can kill much more than an animal or a man. It brings complete destruction to a way of life, to what is also referred to as an age. As he has done before Jim Crace is able to take a subject that is not unfamiliar, and recast the ideas to create a read that is new and unique.

Thought provoking, 15 Feb 2002
This the story of people of the stone age. They are primitive people who live to find stone and fashion it into tools and weapons. There are of course as in every society the skilled craftsmen and the merchants who trade the flint for other needs and get rich doing it. This is really the tale of one young man, a man who can't work the stone because he lost an arm when he was a boy. He has a great imagination and becomes the story teller of the village. He is also the only one in the village who travels abroad and uses his material for his tales. He can tell of anything and none can dispute it.

A distant past anchored in real landscapes, 12 Aug 2001
Perhaps reminiscent of Golding's The Inheritors, this is still an original story of a time of change. Even if that time of change is now in the distant past. I remember this book well, as the author makes you feel that the landscapes are real. The narrator's viewpoint is also clealy imagined.

A very original read, 01 Jan 1999
I am hooked by this authors imagination and am reading my ways through his books after being introduced to his writing via finding Quarantine.

The Gift of Stones was the second book of his that I read - very unusual setting - in the Stone Age at its cusp with the Bronze Age. You've probably seen all those TV documentaries on history - Timewatch etc -- well good as they are they are nothing compared to this novel. It tells the story of life in a Stone Age village with its traders and stone workers. A snug village, smug in its relative prosperity, which only has its isolation from the rest of the world broken by occasional raids and trades. It tells how the narrator's father becomes the village storyteller.

Crace's writing is very perceptive - " Why tell the truth when lies are more amusing, when lies can make the listener shake her head and laugh - and cough- and roll her eyes? People are like stones. You strike them right, they open up like shells".

I would love to know how Jim Crace does his research ( is he listening online?) - do the techniques of today's stone mason give any indication of how the ancients worked in this medium? Do archeological studies prove illuminating? I do not know. What I do know is that his writing is riveting. This, in the unusual settings he chooses to write about, makes his books quite unique. If you are after originality you must read this one. I am reading more.

A marvellous novel by a gifted storyteller, 12 Oct 1998
This is a virtuoso performance by a gifted storyteller. Crace tells a moving tale of a deformed stone-age misfit through the eyes of a girl with a neolithic vocabulary. A wonderful read!

A modern classic, 16 Jul 2008
Wanting to try something new, I bought this book at random without even reading the cover note. I am so glad I did. Crace weaves together a maginificent story through time and space. This book often made me stop reading to consider a passage or indeed just to allow the emotional wave raised by the author to roll over me before continuing. It is now some years since I read this book and I still think of it often. Perhaps it's time to dust it off again...

Buy it and enjoy story telling at it's best

slow, 28 Jun 2008
The character of Syl provided an interest factor which I thought would be the kingpin of the plot{?}. However at the end I felt she was not involved enough and was left with an empty feeling as though I was waiting for chapters which had not yet been written,on a story only half told. Disappointing.

Very entertaining , 28 Mar 2008
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 and Celice) and their being dead. The circumstances of their death are that they are brutally and casually murdered by a vagrant when returning to the sand dunes at baritone bay where they had their first romantic encounter during a science fieldtrip 30 years before as postgraduate students. About the murderer, we in fact learn very little. He is a passing, utterly unfeeling and selfish vagrant, purely concerned with his animal needs. He slips in to the story merely to dispatch Joseph and Celice. The rather cursory treatment he is given is somewhat unsatisfying and I thought the entire story might have benefited from more internal monologue from this character or the viewing of the pivotal incident of the murder from his perspective. However, Crace must have very consciously decided not to do this and that probably ought to be respected. The narrative is split in to the events of 30 years before and the present day at the time Joseph and Celice are murdered. The events of 30 years ago are recounted chronologically forward in every other chapter. In the alternating chapters, we are presented with the moment of Joseph and Celice's death and we work backwards, as that narrative is picked up in every other chapter, to the beginning of the fateful day when they first awake. If that sounds complex, it is actually very easy to follow in the book itself. Much of the enjoyment in this book derives from this skilful narrative construction. It works excellently. The book is very much concerned - about half of it really - with the process of death and decomposition told to us in microscopic and scientific detail which works neatly with the fact that the victims themselves are scientists, obsessed with such grisly details and far from repulsed by them. In that sense it's almost a scientific requiem to their now dead bodies the detail of which is lovingly worked. Crace's gifts with language are evident throughout and this is a very entertaining and rewarding experience.



Unique writing style, 09 Sep 2006

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! But Crace has such an amazing way with words and an eye for detail that this is a great book.

His style mixes poetry with prose - managing to find wonderful ways to describe the slowly decomposing corpses as the hunt for the murderer continues somewhere in the distance.

The writing style, and unusual subject matter will make you very glad you bought this book

Wow, 04 Jun 2006
This book was distrubing, harrowing and bewildering, but I could not put it down, finished it two days. A fascinating angle on life and death just don't expect it to be a pleasant ride.

Gripping and rich, yet also with weak characterisations, 27 Sep 2008
Strangely gripping and very hard to put down. There is a great richness to the main character particularly. There are wonderful, tantalising hints of impending cruel or mystical acts. The style is highly poetic, giving life and meaning to everyone and everything, thus reflecting an age that would be ripe to believe in people like Jesus. However, by the end I was left dissatisfied by the ambiguity of the final meaning of the Jesus figure - was he just a deluded young man, or did he become something much more? It would have been more consistent - and more courageous - to leave Jesus as a man only. The biggest flaw, though, was how weakly drawn the characters of Aphas and Shim were; they barely surpassed stereotypes.

Forty riveting days, 26 Aug 2008
A novelist takes a bold step when they include Jesus in their list of characters. A writer chooses words and places them into their characters' minds and mouths, which gives them a certain control over the people they paint (although plenty of writers will testify to the fact that often their characters take on a life of their own.) Yet how can anyone claim to have control over the Lord of Creation? This seems presumptuous in the extreme. The problem comes when you try to attribute fresh thoughts to Him. Are they authentic? You will probably get as many different answers to this as you have fellow Christians. So include Jesus in your Dramatis Personae at your peril.

Jim Crace embraces this difficulty so completely in his novel 'Quarantine' that he takes your breath away. He devotes page after page to his depiction of Jesus, reinterpreting His childhood, outlining His fears and joys, and deconstructing His relationships with the handful of people who occupy the novel with him. I have no idea whether or not Mr Crace is a Christian, but those of us who think we are owe him a debt of thanks for his bravery.

Crace chooses a wonderfully interesting point in Jesus's life to set the book, as he heads out into the wilderness for forty days of fasting prior to the start of his ministry. He raises the question; when did Jesus first fully realize who He was? Surely that moment comes here. He has just been recognized and baptized by His cousin John the Baptist, and He has heard His Father's voice bestowing His approval upon Him. All those intuitions His parents had picked up down the years would be crystallizing into certainties in His mind at exactly this moment. His time in the wilderness is to slowly digest these truths in silence, and to take on the enormity of the mission ahead of Him.

A further question; when does Jesus first realize His status as a miracle-worker? There must have been a first time that He surprised Himself with his own powers. I hope it does not give too much away to say that Crace draws a picture here of what might be Jesus's first healing, one that Jesus Himself seems unaware of bringing about.

I have always pictured Jesus as alone in the desert with only the Devil for company, but Crace adds several fellow-fasters and others to the picture, including the hideous Musa, a devil of a con-man and worse who longs to learn what trickery the healer Jesus possesses in His fingers. The way in which Jesus rebuffs the temptations of Musa seems somehow more earthly and grounded than the rather ethereal accounts of Jesus and the Devil in our Gospels.

Finally, this book describes the process of fasting brilliantly. In a world where obesity is increasingly held up as a medical disaster, here is a book that will address the spiritual roots of the problem. A Christian may justifiably say, "I don't believe in dieting," but can he say, "I don't believe in fasting?" As Jesus told us, there are some things that can only be cast out by prayer and fasting, and no one who reads this book will ever see the latter in the same way again. Thank you, Mr Crace, for a superb (and profoundly spiritual) read.



A different take on Jesus' 40 days and 40 nights quarantine, 15 Aug 2007
A more realistic story on how an eccentric, deeply religious man, with strong will and intelligence, was mistaken to have committed a miracle and then gathered a following of people. Jesus in this story is not a flawless son of God, but very human, with his own human weaknesses and temptations. Crace set himself a difficult task of going in and out of the minds of his 7 characters, but just about pulls it off. Jesus and the greedy, evil Musa, who represents the devil with his market goods as temptations, are the most fully rounded characters. The others are a bit more superficial but the story is more on how Jesus fights off Satan's temptations, so it is rightfully so that they are more developed. The writing is high class, but the story does not always have the narrative progressive hold, making it sometimes difficult to keep going with it. Definitely worth a read and will leave you haunted and reflective a long time after you finish the book.

utterly pointless drivel!, 03 Mar 2005
Not quite an everyday story in the lives of ordinary first century AD Jewish folk - but, as we are led to believe that quarantine is not unusual for the times - not far off! With only slightly more characters than you can count on the fingers of one hand and 250 or so pages in which to do it you'd think that it would be reasonable to expect rounded portraits instead of the two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs presented before us. In the few pages devoted to Him, even Christ is personified as little more than a confused and, possibly, deluded youth with nothing more ambitious on his mind than impressing his parents and the village elders! The whole thing is just Albert Square in loincloths and sandals with a hint of Thelma and Louise - but with far less character development and much less interesting! The fact that this book was the Whitbread Novel of the Year says more about, either the scandalously narrow-minded judges or the shocking paucity of truly worthy writing than anything about the quality of this tawdry and mean-spirited little affair.

Amazingly-written and thought-provoking, 05 Jan 2005
This is the second of Crace's novels that I have read, and he impresses first and foremost as an incredibly gifted writer. Quarantine, loosely based on the biblical story of Jesus spending forty days and nights in the wilderness, contains wonderfully evocative descriptions of the Judaen desertscape.

The central character of Quarantine is Musa, a diabolically revolting character who tyrannises his wife Miri, and a small group of 'quarantiners' seeking enlightenment in the wilderness. Cleverly, Crace places Jesus literally on the periphery of both the setting and novel. Although Jesus is portrayed with some decidedly human traits, he nevertheless exerts a strong, special influence on the others, including Musa who Jesus seemingly brings back from the brink of death. Furthermore, Jesus undergoes a particularly strict form of quarantine, removed from all other human contact, and denying himself food or water for forty days and nights.

Personally, I feel that Crace deliberately leaves the ending fairly vague and open to interpretation by the reader - probably a sensible move on theological issues!? The novel's ending differs to the biblical story, offering a non-literal interpretation of it. Alternatively, perhaps Crace is illustrating how a special, but nevertheless human, figure can develop a cult following from people with whom he comes into contact.

My only real criticism of this novel is that characters other than Musa and Jesus are only superficially developed. Nevertheless, this novel is strongly recommended for the extraordinary descriptive writing, and for giving food for thought long after the last page is read.

Change, 23 Nov 2002
"The Gift Of Stones", is the second novel written by Jim Crace. He tells this story through a storyteller he created from the notes of Sir Henry Penn Butler in, "Memoirs of an Excavationist circa 1927". Evidently while pursuing old stone implements they came upon the bones from a lower arm of a child. Mr. Crace has done as they did the evening of their find when they sat around their fire and spun tales of why the bones were there, and where the balance of the bones were to be found. Mr. Crace took the same bit of information and created a remarkable work that is about change. The change is this book is not unlike the changes faced today. A fundamental shift in knowledge can have dramatic and even catastrophic effects on a people. And this is the tale of, The Gift Of Stones".

At some point most have read about the implements of The Stone Age, and also the dramatic changes that were brought about by the advent of bronze. Many have perhaps learned of this change through textbooks and classes in history. Jim Crace has told the same story of change as it might have been seen through the eyes of those who were dependent upon stone for their way of life. From the mention of the bones from a child's lower arm, he recreates history as he creates a wonderful novel.

The community of stoneworkers is recreated with marvelous detail about the methods used in creating stone implements. The descriptions go far beyond the crude instruments hacked from the blows of another stone. The author illustrates the artisans these people were with a stoneworker nicknamed, "the Leaf". Here was an artisan who would keep on his workbench a leaf as produced by nature, and use it both as inspiration and an item of beauty he would seek to emulate in his work. The craftsmen in this book are treated more like skilled sculptors/artists, than the makers of crude tools.

The author creates a circle with the flight of an arrow creating the basis for his story, and yet another arrow that brings everything to an end. The second arrow is of course fashioned from bronze, and it is an arrow that can kill much more than an animal or a man. It brings complete destruction to a way of life, to what is also referred to as an age. As he has done before Jim Crace is able to take a subject that is not unfamiliar, and recast the ideas to create a read that is new and unique.

Thought provoking, 15 Feb 2002
This the story of people of the stone age. They are primitive people who live to find stone and fashion it into tools and weapons. There are of course as in every society the skilled craftsmen and the merchants who trade the flint for other needs and get rich doing it. This is really the tale of one young man, a man who can't work the stone because he lost an arm when he was a boy. He has a great imagination and becomes the story teller of the village. He is also the only one in the village who travels abroad and uses his material for his tales. He can tell of anything and none can dispute it.

A distant past anchored in real landscapes, 12 Aug 2001
Perhaps reminiscent of Golding's The Inheritors, this is still an original story of a time of change. Even if that time of change is now in the distant past. I remember this book well, as the author makes you feel that the landscapes are real. The narrator's viewpoint is also clealy imagined.

A very original read, 01 Jan 1999
I am hooked by this authors imagination and am reading my ways through his books after being introduced to his writing via finding Quarantine.

The Gift of Stones was the second book of his that I read - very unusual setting - in the Stone Age at its cusp with the Bronze Age. You've probably seen all those TV documentaries on history - Timewatch etc -- well good as they are they are nothing compared to this novel. It tells the story of life in a Stone Age village with its traders and stone workers. A snug village, smug in its relative prosperity, which only has its isolation from the rest of the world broken by occasional raids and trades. It tells how the narrator's father becomes the village storyteller.

Crace's writing is very perceptive - " Why tell the truth when lies are more amusing, when lies can make the listener shake her head and laugh - and cough- and roll her eyes? People are like stones. You strike them right, they open up like shells".

I would love to know how Jim Crace does his research ( is he listening online?) - do the techniques of today's stone mason give any indication of how the ancients worked in this medium? Do archeological studies prove illuminating? I do not know. What I do know is that his writing is riveting. This, in the unusual settings he chooses to write about, makes his books quite unique. If you are after originality you must read this one. I am reading more.

A marvellous novel by a gifted storyteller, 12 Oct 1998
This is a virtuoso performance by a gifted storyteller. Crace tells a moving tale of a deformed stone-age misfit through the eyes of a girl with a neolithic vocabulary. A wonderful read!

A modern classic, 16 Jul 2008
Wanting to try something new, I bought this book at random without even reading the cover note. I am so glad I did. Crace weaves together a maginificent story through time and space. This book often made me stop reading to consider a passage or indeed just to allow the emotional wave raised by the author to roll over me before continuing. It is now some years since I read this book and I still think of it often. Perhaps it's time to dust it off again...

Buy it and enjoy story telling at it's best

slow, 28 Jun 2008
The character of Syl provided an interest factor which I thought would be the kingpin of the plot{?}. However at the end I felt she was not involved enough and was left with an empty feeling as though I was waiting for chapters which had not yet been written,on a story only half told. Disappointing.

Very entertaining , 28 Mar 2008
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 and Celice) and their being dead. The circumstances of their death are that they are brutally and casually murdered by a vagrant when returning to the sand dunes at baritone bay where they had their first romantic encounter during a science fieldtrip 30 years before as postgraduate students. About the murderer, we in fact learn very little. He is a passing, utterly unfeeling and selfish vagrant, purely concerned with his animal needs. He slips in to the story merely to dispatch Joseph and Celice. The rather cursory treatment he is given is somewhat unsatisfying and I thought the entire story might have benefited from more internal monologue from this character or the viewing of the pivotal incident of the murder from his perspective. However, Crace must have very consciously decided not to do this and that probably ought to be respected. The narrative is split in to the events of 30 years before and the present day at the time Joseph and Celice are murdered. The events of 30 years ago are recounted chronologically forward in every other chapter. In the alternating chapters, we are presented with the moment of Joseph and Celice's death and we work backwards, as that narrative is picked up in every other chapter, to the beginning of the fateful day when they first awake. If that sounds complex, it is actually very easy to follow in the book itself. Much of the enjoyment in this book derives from this skilful narrative construction. It works excellently. The book is very much concerned - about half of it really - with the process of death and decomposition told to us in microscopic and scientific detail which works neatly with the fact that the victims themselves are scientists, obsessed with such grisly details and far from repulsed by them. In that sense it's almost a scientific requiem to their now dead bodies the detail of which is lovingly worked. Crace's gifts with language are evident throughout and this is a very entertaining and rewarding experience.



Unique writing style, 09 Sep 2006

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! But Crace has such an amazing way with words and an eye for detail that this is a great book.

His style mixes poetry with prose - managing to find wonderful ways to describe the slowly decomposing corpses as the hunt for the murderer continues somewhere in the distance.

The writing style, and unusual subject matter will make you very glad you bought this book

Wow, 04 Jun 2006
This book was distrubing, harrowing and bewildering, but I could not put it down, finished it two days. A fascinating angle on life and death just don't expect it to be a pleasant ride.

moving, 14 Nov 2008
This is a book that is lyrical and imaginative. It is an adventure and a story of interdependance. It has been compared to the Cormac McCarthy's "the Road"- somwhat unfairly. I have just finished the 'Road' and found it- as everyone has- deverstating and amazing. But this is a different world. Where McCarthy is dealing with after effects of Holocaust and the recent memories of 'civilised' world, here in Crace's world, is a hunderd, two hundred years later, when the American civialization is just a distant dream. I loved it, it had urgency and good adventure, carefully painted pictures and pace. Those who like post apocalyptic books can also find a sort of British version called "Untied Kingdom".

Not A Gratuitous Shot, 22 Apr 2008
What has always drawn me to the work of Mr. Crace is that whether the subject matter is new or very well trod upon this author supplies perspective that is unique. A given work of his does not predictably lead to his next, you can pick up anything he has published and continue through his work without feeling you have missed a step.

I think it is worth noting that this is not a clumsy opportunistic swipe at America at a time when our Nation is the target of criticism and ongoing examination both internal and external that no country would enjoy. I have read all of Mr. Crace's previous books and having just stated how unique his perspective has always been, such is unfortunately not the case with "The Pesthouse".

I may just be suffering from apocalyptic-themed reading burnout, but I really did not find this work engaging or as thought provoking as his previous work as been. This book is probably more notable for what the author leaves out, in terms of cause, circumstance, etc. What he does include is generally tweaked views of other novels showing the remains of society after Man has clearly made an irreparable mess.

If you have read this author's work before you need to read this as well, just don't have the same expectations that other works may have created for you. If you are new to his work this is a good place to start, for even though I don't believe this shows the author at anywhere near his best, he is still very good. And when you move on to the balance of his work it will be much more satisfying.

Poetic Writer, 09 Apr 2008
Crace is a poetic writer. He cares about words and crafts them into stories. The Pesthouse is imaginative, empathetic and lifting. He does not aim to produce reality but possibility and does it as always with such craft. Read this book, read all of his books !

Contractual obligation?, 17 Feb 2008
It's very hard to work out why Jim Crace would have allowed such a poor book to be published. The combination of weak characters, unbelievable settings and frankly awful plot devices makes it an unrewarding effort to read the book. One scene, in particular, is so ridiculously far-fetched (and badly written) that it would ruin any book in which it appeared. Several others are little better.

All in all, "The Pesthouse" makes me wary of buying any new work by Jim Crace. I very much prefer his earlier works ("The Gift of Stones", "Signals of Distress") over later ones ("The Devil's Larder", "Six" [for some reson showing up on Amazon under its American title of "Genesis"]). Perhaps the latest novel simply shows an acceleration of an already apparent steady decline.

Beautifully Written but a Bit Predictable and Aimless, 24 Sep 2007
One thing that's key to understand going into this book is that it's all about tone and feeling, and not about details or logic. To a certain extent, the reader just has to accept the world that Crace has presented, and not try to figure it out. This was a big struggle for me as I started it, since most stories (be they books or films) set in a post-apocalyptic world either explain how the world got that way, or use the mystery of the "why/how" as a major plot device. Here, Crace simply posits a greatly depopulated America some two-hundred years in the future (according to an interview I read) which has been thrust back into a kind of early 19th-century existence, only with almost no technology and no written language. There are intimations of a widespread plague, and some kind of permanent crop failures, but just hints, nothing concrete. Elements of this make no sense at all -- especially the loss of technology and writing -- but you just have to go with it.

The book follows two people through this landscape where there is no government or rule of law beyond rudimentary local customs and practices. Franklin is a young man from somewhere out West, who has left the homestead to make his way to the East Coast, where there are apparently ships that take people to a better life in Europe. Margaret is a 30ish spinster whose family, according to custom, kicks her out of their fairly prosperous town when she manifests symptoms of the plague. The two are thrust together by fate, and embark on a perilous quest eastward for a better life. Their journey is filled with the expected trials and tribulations (bandits, betrayal, slavers, separation, physical hardship, etc.), but the story is told in such a way that it is clear the two will end up back together by the end. One flaw in the book is that Franklin is left far too underdeveloped to really engage the reader as a co-protagonist, especially in comparison with Margaret, who is fully realized.

In that sense, the story might be considered too gentle. Yes, bad things happen to Franklin and Margaret, but this version of America isn't quite menacing enough to invest the story with any real suspense over the outcome. Indeed, at times, it's hard to really understand why people want to leave and head for the ships. Large swathes of the country they pass through seem perfectly fine, with farming and animal husbandry. And indeed, this greatly undermines the story's conclusion, which I won't give away, but is not exactly surprising. Ultimately, Crace seems to have written this book as a way of expressing optimism. it's definitely worth reading for his beautiful command of language and unexpected turns of phrase, especially when it comes to physical description, just don't expect it to hold together as a dystopian vision of the future.

Jim Crace remains one of the most individual and elegant writers at work today. His books customarily defy category and the new one, The Devil's Larder, is no exception. The cover shows a sensuous female mouth crammed full of berries, with the juice running down her chin and the book's attitude to food is correspondingly erotic. The concept of a literary feast (i.e., a novel in which food is central to the structure) is not new but has never been handled with the sheer imagination and indulgence we find here.

This is a cumulative novel in 64 parts, in which the reader's cultural, culinary and sexual appetites are fully catered for in a discursive, episodic narrative. There is no plot as such, more a vividly realised series of anecdotes in which the briefly appearing characters come to life before our eyes through the indulgence of their various appetites. In these pages, a whole community and its varied inhabitants are vividly conjured by evocative fragments that coalesce into a rich tapestry. The reader may not always be sure about what is going on but the journey is highly pleasurable. We are invited to a restaurant that offers dishes going far beyond the borders of good taste; we can sample the delights of blind pie, a dish created for revenge; and we may try the fruit of the love-leaf tree that can do wonders for a relationship. The language has a Nabokov-like precision and resonance (although the refusal to deliver a straightforward narrative recalls Borges):

The atmosphere is sexual. We're in the brothel's waiting room. The menu's yet to be paraded. We do not speak. We simply wait and hike and climb. We are aroused...

--Barry Forshaw

Gripping and rich, yet also with weak characterisations, 27 Sep 2008
Strangely gripping and very hard to put down. There is a great richness to the main character particularly. There are wonderful, tantalising hints of impending cruel or mystical acts. The style is highly poetic, giving life and meaning to everyone and everything, thus reflecting an age that would be ripe to believe in people like Jesus. However, by the end I was left dissatisfied by the ambiguity of the final meaning of the Jesus figure - was he just a deluded young man, or did he become something much more? It would have been more consistent - and more courageous - to leave Jesus as a man only. The biggest flaw, though, was how weakly drawn the characters of Aphas and Shim were; they barely surpassed stereotypes.

Forty riveting days, 26 Aug 2008
A novelist takes a bold step when they include Jesus in their list of characters. A writer chooses words and places them into their characters' minds and mouths, which gives them a certain control over the people they paint (although plenty of writers will testify to the fact that often their characters take on a life of their own.) Yet how can anyone claim to have control over the Lord of Creation? This seems presumptuous in the extreme. The problem comes when you try to attribute fresh thoughts to Him. Are they authentic? You will probably get as many different answers to this as you have fellow Christians. So include Jesus in your Dramatis Personae at your peril.

Jim Crace embraces this difficulty so completely in his novel 'Quarantine' that he takes your breath away. He devotes page after page to his depiction of Jesus, reinterpreting His childhood, outlining His fears and joys, and deconstructing His relationships with the handful of people who occupy the novel with him. I have no idea whether or not Mr Crace is a Christian, but those of us who think we are owe him a debt of thanks for his bravery.

Crace chooses a wonderfully interesting point in Jesus's life to set the book, as he heads out into the wilderness for forty days of fasting prior to the start of his ministry. He raises the question; when did Jesus first fully realize who He was? Surely that moment comes here. He has just been recognized and baptized by His cousin John the Baptist, and He has heard His Father's voice bestowing His approval upon Him. All those intuitions His parents had picked up down the years would be crystallizing into certainties in His mind at exactly this moment. His time in the wilderness is to slowly digest these truths in silence, and to take on the enormity of the mission ahead of Him.

A further question; when does Jesus first realize His status as a miracle-worker? There must have been a first time that He surprised Himself with his own powers. I hope it does not give too much away to say that Crace draws a picture here of what might be Jesus's first healing, one that Jesus Himself seems unaware of bringing about.

I have always pictured Jesus as alone in the desert with only the Devil for company, but Crace adds several fellow-fasters and others to the picture, including the hideous Musa, a devil of a con-man and worse who longs to learn what trickery the healer Jesus possesses in His fingers. The way in which Jesus rebuffs the temptations of Musa seems somehow more earthly and grounded than the rather ethereal accounts of Jesus and the Devil in our Gospels.

Finally, this book describes the process of fasting brilliantly. In a world where obesity is increasingly held up as a medical disaster, here is a book that will address the spiritual roots of the problem. A Christian may justifiably say, "I don't believe in dieting," but can he say, "I don't believe in fasting?" As Jesus told us, there are some things that can only be cast out by prayer and fasting, and no one who reads this book will ever see the latter in the same way again. Thank you, Mr Crace, for a superb (and profoundly spiritual) read.



A different take on Jesus' 40 days and 40 nights quarantine, 15 Aug 2007
A more realistic story on how an eccentric, deeply religious man, with strong will and intelligence, was mistaken to have committed a miracle and then gathered a following of people. Jesus in this story is not a flawless son of God, but very human, with his own human weaknesses and temptations. Crace set himself a difficult task of going in and out of the minds of his 7 characters, but just about pulls it off. Jesus and the greedy, evil Musa, who represents the devil with his market goods as temptations, are the most fully rounded characters. The others are a bit more superficial but the story is more on how Jesus fights off Satan's temptations, so it is rightfully so that they are more developed. The writing is high class, but the story does not always have the narrative progressive hold, making it sometimes difficult to keep going with it. Definitely worth a read and will leave you haunted and reflective a long time after you finish the book.

utterly pointless drivel!, 03 Mar 2005
Not quite an everyday story in the lives of ordinary first century AD Jewish folk - but, as we are led to believe that quarantine is not unusual for the times - not far off! With only slightly more characters than you can count on the fingers of one hand and 250 or so pages in which to do it you'd think that it would be reasonable to expect rounded portraits instead of the two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs presented before us. In the few pages devoted to Him, even Christ is personified as little more than a confused and, possibly, deluded youth with nothing more ambitious on his mind than impressing his parents and the village elders! The whole thing is just Albert Square in loincloths and sandals with a hint of Thelma and Louise - but with far less character development and much less interesting! The fact that this book was the Whitbread Novel of the Year says more about, either the scandalously narrow-minded judges or the shocking paucity of truly worthy writing than anything about the quality of this tawdry and mean-spirited little affair.

Amazingly-written and thought-provoking, 05 Jan 2005
This is the second of Crace's novels that I have read, and he impresses first and foremost as an incredibly gifted writer. Quarantine, loosely based on the biblical story of Jesus spending forty days and nights in the wilderness, contains wonderfully evocative descriptions of the Judaen desertscape.

The central character of Quarantine is Musa, a diabolically revolting character who tyrannises his wife Miri, and a small group of 'quarantiners' seeking enlightenment in the wilderness. Cleverly, Crace places Jesus literally on the periphery of both the setting and novel. Although Jesus is portrayed with some decidedly human traits, he nevertheless exerts a strong, special influence on the others, including Musa who Jesus seemingly brings back from the brink of death. Furthermore, Jesus undergoes a particularly strict form of quarantine, removed from all other human contact, and denying himself food or water for forty days and nights.

Personally, I feel that Crace deliberately leaves the ending fairly vague and open to interpretation by the reader - probably a sensible move on theological issues!? The novel's ending differs to the biblical story, offering a non-literal interpretation of it. Alternatively, perhaps Crace is illustrating how a special, but nevertheless human, figure can develop a cult following from people with whom he comes into contact.

My only real criticism of this novel is that characters other than Musa and Jesus are only superficially developed. Nevertheless, this novel is strongly recommended for the extraordinary descriptive writing, and for giving food for thought long after the last page is read.

Change, 23 Nov 2002
"The Gift Of Stones", is the second novel written by Jim Crace. He tells this story through a storyteller he created from the notes of Sir Henry Penn Butler in, "Memoirs of an Excavationist circa 1927". Evidently while pursuing old stone implements they came upon the bones from a lower arm of a child. Mr. Crace has done as they did the evening of their find when they sat around their fire and spun tales of why the bones were there, and where the balance of the bones were to be found. Mr. Crace took the same bit of information and created a remarkable work that is about change. The change is this book is not unlike the changes faced today. A fundamental shift in knowledge can have dramatic and even catastrophic effects on a people. And this is the tale of, The Gift Of Stones".

At some point most have read about the implements of The Stone Age, and also the dramatic changes that were brought about by the advent of bronze. Many have perhaps learned of this change through textbooks and classes in history. Jim Crace has told the same story of change as it might have been seen through the eyes of those who were dependent upon stone for their way of life. From the mention of the bones from a child's lower arm, he recreates history as he creates a wonderful novel.

The community of stoneworkers is recreated with marvelous detail about the methods used in creating stone implements. The descriptions go far beyond the crude instruments hacked from the blows of another stone. The author illustrates the artisans these people were with a stoneworker nicknamed, "the Leaf". Here was an artisan who would keep on his workbench a leaf as produced by nature, and use it both as inspiration and an item of beauty he would seek to emulate in his work. The craftsmen in this book are treated more like skilled sculptors/artists, than the makers of crude tools.

The author creates a circle with the flight of an arrow creating the basis for his story, and yet another arrow that brings everything to an end. The second arrow is of course fashioned from bronze, and it is an arrow that can kill much more than an animal or a man. It brings complete destruction to a way of life, to what is also referred to as an age. As he has done before Jim Crace is able to take a subject that is not unfamiliar, and recast the ideas to create a read that is new and unique.

Thought provoking, 15 Feb 2002
This the story of people of the stone age. They are primitive people who live to find stone and fashion it into tools and weapons. There are of course as in every society the skilled craftsmen and the merchants who trade the flint for other needs and get rich doing it. This is really the tale of one young man, a man who can't work the stone because he lost an arm when he was a boy. He has a great imagination and becomes the story teller of the village. He is also the only one in the village who travels abroad and uses his material for his tales. He can tell of anything and none can dispute it.

A distant past anchored in real landscapes, 12 Aug 2001
Perhaps reminiscent of Golding's The Inheritors, this is still an original story of a time of change. Even if that time of change is now in the distant past. I remember this book well, as the author makes you feel that the landscapes are real. The narrator's viewpoint is also clealy imagined.

A very original read, 01 Jan 1999
I am hooked by this authors imagination and am reading my ways through his books after being introduced to his writing via finding Quarantine.

The Gift of Stones was the second book of his that I read - very unusual setting - in the Stone Age at its cusp with the Bronze Age. You've probably seen all those TV documentaries on history - Timewatch etc -- well good as they are they are nothing compared to this novel. It tells the story of life in a Stone Age village with its traders and stone workers. A snug village, smug in its relative prosperity, which only has its isolation from the rest of the world broken by occasional raids and trades. It tells how the narrator's father becomes the village storyteller.

Crace's writing is very perceptive - " Why tell the truth when lies are more amusing, when lies can make the listener shake her head and laugh - and cough- and roll her eyes? People are like stones. You strike them right, they open up like shells".

I would love to know how Jim Crace does his research ( is he listening online?) - do the techniques of today's stone mason give any indication of how the ancients worked in this medium? Do archeological studies prove illuminating? I do not know. What I do know is that his writing is riveting. This, in the unusual settings he chooses to write about, makes his books quite unique. If you are after originality you must read this one. I am reading more.

A marvellous novel by a gifted storyteller, 12 Oct 1998
This is a virtuoso performance by a gifted storyteller. Crace tells a moving tale of a deformed stone-age misfit through the eyes of a girl with a neolithic vocabulary. A wonderful read!

A modern classic, 16 Jul 2008
Wanting to try something new, I bought this book at random without even reading the cover note. I am so glad I did. Crace weaves together a maginificent story through time and space. This book often made me stop reading to consider a passage or indeed just to allow the emotional wave raised by the author to roll over me before continuing. It is now some years since I read this book and I still think of it often. Perhaps it's time to dust it off again...

Buy it and enjoy story telling at it's best

slow, 28 Jun 2008
The character of Syl provided an interest factor which I thought would be the kingpin of the plot{?}. However at the end I felt she was not involved enough and was left with an empty feeling as though I was waiting for chapters which had not yet been written,on a story only half told. Disappointing.

Very entertaining , 28 Mar 2008
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 and Celice) and their being dead. The circumstances of their death are that they are brutally and casually murdered by a vagrant when returning to the sand dunes at baritone bay where they had their first romantic encounter during a science fieldtrip 30 years before as postgraduate students. About the murderer, we in fact learn very little. He is a passing, utterly unfeeling and selfish vagrant, purely concerned with his animal needs. He slips in to the story merely to dispatch Joseph and Celice. The rather cursory treatment he is given is somewhat unsatisfying and I thought the entire story might have benefited from more internal monologue from this character or the viewing of the pivotal incident of the murder from his perspective. However, Crace must have very consciously decided not to do this and that probably ought to be respected. The narrative is split in to the events of 30 years before and the present day at the time Joseph and Celice are murdered. The events of 30 years ago are recounted chronologically forward in every other chapter. In the alternating chapters, we are presented with the moment of Joseph and Celice's death and we work backwards, as that narrative is picked up in every other chapter, to the beginning of the fateful day when they first awake. If that sounds complex, it is actually very easy to follow in the book itself. Much of the enjoyment in this book derives from this skilful narrative construction. It works excellently. The book is very much concerned - about half of it really - with the process of death and decomposition told to us in microscopic and scientific detail which works neatly with the fact that the victims themselves are scientists, obsessed with such grisly details and far from repulsed by them. In that sense it's almost a scientific requiem to their now dead bodies the detail of which is lovingly worked. Crace's gifts with language are evident throughout and this is a very entertaining and rewarding experience.



Unique writing style, 09 Sep 2006

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! But Crace has such an amazing way with words and an eye for detail that this is a great book.

His style mixes poetry with prose - managing to find wonderful ways to describe the slowly decomposing corpses as the hunt for the murderer continues somewhere in the distance.

The writing style, and unusual subject matter will make you very glad you bought this book

Wow, 04 Jun 2006
This book was distrubing, harrowing and bewildering, but I could not put it down, finished it two days. A fascinating angle on life and death just don't expect it to be a pleasant ride.

moving, 14 Nov 2008
This is a book that is lyrical and imaginative. It is an adventure and a story of interdependance. It has been compared to the Cormac McCarthy's "the Road"- somwhat unfairly. I have just finished the 'Road' and found it- as everyone has- deverstating and amazing. But this is a different world. Where McCarthy is dealing with after effects of Holocaust and the recent memories of 'civilised' world, here in Crace's world, is a hunderd, two hundred years later, when the American civialization is just a distant dream. I loved it, it had urgency and good adventure, carefully painted pictures and pace. Those who like post apocalyptic books can also find a sort of British version called "Untied Kingdom".

Not A Gratuitous Shot, 22 Apr 2008
What has always drawn me to the work of Mr. Crace is that whether the subject matter is new or very well trod upon this author supplies perspective that is unique. A given work of his does not predictably lead to his next, you can pick up anything he has published and continue through his work without feeling you have missed a step.

I think it is worth noting that this is not a clumsy opportunistic swipe at America at a time when our Nation is the target of criticism and ongoing examination both internal and external that no country would enjoy. I have read all of Mr. Crace's previous books and having just stated how unique his perspective has always been, such is unfortunately not the case with "The Pesthouse".

I may just be suffering from apocalyptic-themed reading burnout, but I really did not find this work engaging or as thought provoking as his previous work as been. This book is probably more notable for what the author leaves out, in terms of cause, circumstance, etc. What he does include is generally tweaked views of other novels showing the remains of society after Man has clearly made an irreparable mess.

If you have read this author's work before you need to read this as well, just don't have the same expectations that other works may have created for you. If you are new to his work this is a good place to start, for even though I don't believe this shows the author at anywhere near his best, he is still very good. And when you move on to the balance of his work it will be much more satisfying.

Poetic Writer, 09 Apr 2008
Crace is a poetic writer. He cares about words and crafts them into stories. The Pesthouse is imaginative, empathetic and lifting. He does not aim to produce reality but possibility and does it as always with such craft. Read this book, read all of his books !

Contractual obligation?, 17 Feb 2008
It's very hard to work out why Jim Crace would have allowed such a poor book to be published. The combination of weak characters, unbelievable settings and frankly awful plot devices makes it an unrewarding effort to read the book. One scene, in particular, is so ridiculously far-fetched (and badly written) that it would ruin any book in which it appeared. Several others are little better.

All in all, "The Pesthouse" makes me wary of buying any new work by Jim Crace. I very much prefer his earlier works ("The Gift of Stones", "Signals of Distress") over later ones ("The Devil's Larder", "Six" [for some reson showing up on Amazon under its American title of "Genesis"]). Perhaps the latest novel simply shows an acceleration of an already apparent steady decline.

Beautifully Written but a Bit Predictable and Aimless, 24 Sep 2007
One thing that's key to understand going into this book is that it's all about tone and feeling, and not about details or logic. To a certain extent, the reader just has to accept the world that Crace has presented, and not try to figure it out. This was a big struggle for me as I started it, since most stories (be they books or films) set in a post-apocalyptic world either explain how the world got that way, or use the mystery of the "why/how" as a major plot device. Here, Crace simply posits a greatly depopulated America some two-hundred years in the future (according to an interview I read) which has been thrust back into a kind of early 19th-century existence, only with almost no technology and no written language. There are intimations of a widespread plague, and some kind of permanent crop failures, but just hints, nothing concrete. Elements of this make no sense at all -- especially the loss of technology and writing -- but you just have to go with it.

The book follows two people through this landscape where there is no government or rule of law beyond rudimentary local customs and practices. Franklin is a young man from somewhere out West, who has left the homestead to make his way to the East Coast, where there are apparently ships that take people to a better life in Europe. Margaret is a 30ish spinster whose family, according to custom, kicks her out of their fairly prosperous town when she manifests symptoms of the plague. The two are thrust together by fate, and embark on a perilous quest eastward for a better life. Their journey is filled with the expected trials and tribulations (bandits, betrayal, slavers, separation, physical hardship, etc.), but the story is told in such a way that it is clear the two will end up back together by the end. One flaw in the book is that Franklin is left far too underdeveloped to really engage the reader as a co-protagonist, especially in comparison with Margaret, who is fully realized.

In that sense, the story might be considered too gentle. Yes, bad things happen to Franklin and Margaret, but this version of America isn't quite menacing enough to invest the story with any real suspense over the outcome. Indeed, at times, it's hard to really understand why people want to leave and head for the ships. Large swathes of the country they pass through seem perfectly fine, with farming and animal husbandry. And indeed, this greatly undermines the story's conclusion, which I won't give away, but is not exactly surprising. Ultimately, Crace seems to have written this book as a way of expressing optimism. it's definitely worth reading for his beautiful command of language and unexpected turns of phrase, especially when it comes to physical description, just don't expect it to hold together as a dystopian vision of the future.

Not enough meat!, 25 Mar 2008
I didn't like this book. The stories were all a bit strange and far too short for you to get into. The last story being only 2 words long!. The stories were all written in a poetic way and i just didnt feel i enjoyed any of them. Not my cup of tea.

Ingenious, 15 Mar 2008
Sometimes you don't need a traditional narrative of beginning, middle and end. Sometimes an insightful commentary on a character's actions in two paragraphs will do.

Jim Crace's ingenious collection of situations, characters and stories are neat, potted commentaries and descriptions which use the theme of food to illustrate bigger ideas. He often doesn't complicate the issue by building up a story and character when this is not required, but he will drop us right in the middle of a situation, with no loss of atmosphere and detail, and draw out a brief and effective allegory.

Crace plays with the format of the short story in a way which matches the way we deal with things everyday, drawing inference, moral and conclusion in the things that we see and experience. That is why it is so effective.




If music be the food of love - let's eat it, 16 Sep 2001
My thoughts when only a brief way through The Devil's Larder were that it would be easy pickings. Short bursts of prose, 64 "chapters" in 190 pages meaning that none outstays its welcome. And as always Crace's legends had the tang of truth to them, which displayed considerable talent as they are two removes from truth - myths which aren't even real myths. Very moreish.

Or so I thought. Picking it up again after an unnatural hiatus brought on by the World Trade Center attack - when books were put down, and TV became *the thing* - I'm afraid The Devil's Larder finally turned to ashes in my mouth. I could say, accurately, that reading gluttonous, lustful, avaricious prose seemed somehow fraudulent in the immediate aftermath, but I admit that even on its own undoubted merits, my enthusiasm for it was beginning to wane. Despite Crace's pre-emptive protests that The Devil's Larder is a novel because it has "unity of theme, unity of style, unity of setting - everything except unity of character," I know a glorified (albeit glorious) book of stories when I see it. And I'm looking at one right now.

However hard you try, it's hard to make people want to read 64 "chapters" in a row - ranging from two words to 10 pages - without either a plot to follow or at least one character to root for, frown upon or squirm with. The problem with The Devil's Larder is that, although some of the stories do contain interesting twists or developments, they're all narrated effectively in parenthesis, the kind of thing that would usually be one character's aside or prehistory, swagged in subquotation marks. There is, to appropriate a crashingly obvious food metaphor (but at least applaud me for keeping them to a minimum), nothing to get your teeth into. At least it's only waffer-theen and won't detain you long.

The Devil's Larder then is fine in small doses, is (what the hell) an aperitif, an appetizer of bite-size chunks for the main courses of Arcadia, Quarantine, Signals of Distress and Being Dead. Chow down on those instead.

Hungry? Dare you eat from the Devil's Larder?, 10 Sep 2001
In Crace's bizarre gastronomic collection, we meet an astonishing array of misfits trapped within their memories, obsessions and forbidden desires. Food rules the lives of these people in often alarming ways. From the boy who equates his mother's disappointment in him with a pie made of stones, to the adventurous diners who truly do 'eat what they are given'! Crace's sparse style is reminiscent of Saki, and just as tasty. Like a big box of chocolates, there's something here for everyone

Gripping and rich, yet also with weak characterisations, 27 Sep 2008
Strangely gripping and very hard to put down. There is a great richness to the main character particularly. There are wonderful, tantalising hints of impending cruel or mystical acts. The style is highly poetic, giving life and meaning to everyone and everything, thus reflecting an age that would be ripe to believe in people like Jesus. However, by the end I was left dissatisfied by the ambiguity of the final meaning of the Jesus figure - was he just a deluded young man, or did he become something much more? It would have been more consistent - and more courageous - to leave Jesus as a man only. The biggest flaw, though, was how weakly drawn the characters of Aphas and Shim were; they barely surpassed stereotypes.

Forty riveting days, 26 Aug 2008
A novelist takes a bold step when they include Jesus in their list of characters. A writer chooses words and places them into their characters' minds and mouths, which gives them a certain control over the people they paint (although plenty of writers will testify to the fact that often their characters take on a life of their own.) Yet how can anyone claim to have control over the Lord of Creation? This seems presumptuous in the extreme. The problem comes when you try to attribute fresh thoughts to Him. Are they authentic? You will probably get as many different answers to this as you have fellow Christians. So include Jesus in your Dramatis Personae at your peril.

Jim Crace embraces this difficulty so completely in his novel 'Quarantine' that he takes your breath away. He devotes page after page to his depiction of Jesus, reinterpreting His childhood, outlining His fears and joys, and deconstructing His relationships with the handful of people who occupy the novel with him. I have no idea whether or not Mr Crace is a Christian, but those of us who think we are owe him a debt of thanks for his bravery.

Crace chooses a wonderfully interesting point in Jesus's life to set the book, as he heads out into the wilderness for forty days of fasting prior to the start of his ministry. He raises the question; when did Jesus first fully realize who He was? Surely that moment comes here. He has just been recognized and baptized by His cousin John the Baptist, and He has heard His Father's voice bestowing His approval upon Him. All those intuitions His parents had picked up down the years would be crystallizing into certainties in His mind at exactly this moment. His time in the wilderness is to slowly digest these truths in silence, and to take on the enormity of the mission ahead of Him.

A further question; when does Jesus first realize His status as a miracle-worker? There must have been a first time that He surprised Himself with his own powers. I hope it does not give too much away to say that Crace draws a picture here of what might be Jesus's first healing, one that Jesus Himself seems unaware of bringing about.

I have always pictured Jesus as alone in the desert with only the Devil for company, but Crace adds several fellow-fasters and others to the picture, including the hideous Musa, a devil of a con-man and worse who longs to learn what trickery the healer Jesus possesses in His fingers. The way in which Jesus rebuffs the temptations of Musa seems somehow more earthly and grounded than the rather ethereal accounts of Jesus and the Devil in our Gospels.

Finally, this book describes the process of fasting brilliantly. In a world where obesity is increasingly held up as a medical disaster, here is a book that will address the spiritual roots of the problem. A Christian may justifiably say, "I don't believe in dieting," but can he say, "I don't believe in fasting?" As Jesus told us, there are some things that can only be cast out by prayer and fasting, and no one who reads this book will ever see the latter in the same way again. Thank you, Mr Crace, for a superb (and profoundly spiritual) read.



A different take on Jesus' 40 days and 40 nights quarantine, 15 Aug 2007
A more realistic story on how an eccentric, deeply religious man, with strong will and intelligence, was mistaken to have committed a miracle and then gathered a following of people. Jesus in this story is not a flawless son of God, but very human, with his own human weaknesses and temptations. Crace set himself a difficult task of going in and out of the minds of his 7 characters, but just about pulls it off. Jesus and the greedy, evil Musa, who represents the devil with his market goods as temptations, are the most fully rounded characters. The others are a bit more superficial but the story is more on how Jesus fights off Satan's temptations, so it is rightfully so that they are more developed. The writing is high class, but the story does not always have the narrative progressive hold, making it sometimes difficult to keep going with it. Definitely worth a read and will leave you haunted and reflective a long time after you finish the book.

utterly pointless drivel!, 03 Mar 2005
Not quite an everyday story in the lives of ordinary first century AD Jewis