Quarantine
   Jim Crace
  1998 Farrar, Straus & Giroux NY USA
   ISBN: 0374239622


It is Judea two millennia ago & out along a sandy desert road five pilgrims wander seeking solace, solitude & redemption. It is the annual time of fasting & prayer. A time to grapple with inner enemies.

David speaks:

The longer I thought about this strange tale, the more I realized that it was entirely Jim Crace's skill as a writer that held me to Quarantine.

If the author was going for the mystery of the Christ-in-the-Wilderness experience, a common enough retreat in those days, he was deflected by focusing on the triviality of his other characters' experiences.

While I'm sure the place setting is authentic & his characters seem fairly authentic, their connection is so venial as to detract from the strengths of any one individual.

If, as he states in his forward, Jim Crace was reaching for an explanation of the Christ survival of the wilderness experience, he missed a grand opportunity.

I got a sense from this book not of mystery or example but almost of horror with the banalities encountered. His characterizations of the temptations seemed trivialized out of existence. I asked that this book be put in the Literature-Fiction category simply because it offended me to list it under Religion & Spirituality.

The suppositions drawn by the author & his characters are in themselves, empty & do not grow well in the mind after planting. After I read Quarantine & let it set for a while, the whole being of this book just laid there, inert.

Overall a sad little tale with little redeeming value. It escapes being Instant Tea by virtue that I read it & about the only reason I did finished it was Jim Crace's compelling writing.

Maybe my entire reaction to this book is because I've been a biblical scholar & thus expect more from & know more about the event this author is imagining.

More from Jim Crace: Signals of Distress; Arcadia; The Gift of Stones & Continent.
(03/19/00)

Rebecca