![]() ![]() ![]() Dawn is “at the very moment that the owl became the cock ” seagulls are “stocky, busy, labouring, their bony wings weighted at the tips with black ” the ocean is “one great weeping eye. ![]() ![]() Anyone who has read Crace before will know what to expect: a rhythmic and mythic prose, full of off-kilter but just-so detail. There are some threats in his story, but few real moments of terror, and his world is more colourful, because his language is too. That’s what we have to do.”īut where McCarthy produced an immersive, devastating fable, Crace has set his sights wider: and lighter. Like McCarthy’s unnamed man and boy, the characters in The Pesthouse are heading for the coast, where they hope for… what? “We go. Both are set in a post-apocalyptic America, with straggling survivors battling against the collapse of civilisation and doing their best to evade marauding bandits. In fact, it had better be better than Cormac McCarthy’s recently lauded The Road, because superficially the two have a lot in common. Jim Crace is an orderly, methodical writer (his friend Will Self said: “I wouldn’t dream of saying that Jim’s study demonstrates anal retention, but his marker pens are colour-coded and the distance between his keyboard and chair is painstakingly measured out”), so it’s a surprise that the wait for his new novel, The Pesthouse, doubled the usual metronomic two-year gap between his books. ![]()
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