Being Dead (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Jim Crace
- First Published: 2000
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: Contemporary
- Setting: Beach community and university town, though exact locale is indeterminate
- Principal Characters: Joseph, Celice, Syl, Festa, Mondazy
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Mothers, Parents and children, Murder or homicide, Twentieth century, Marriage, Fathers, Death or dying, Beaches or seashores, Zoology
Joseph, fifty-three, and his wife, Celice, fifty-five, are doctors of zoology living quiet, successful academic lives. The couple met as graduate students and spent a summer at a beach retreat with four other students doing research. The novel opens with their return to the seaside location of their first tryst, where their plans for romance are cut short by a predator who beats them to death and steals their car and a few belongings.
The novel then forks off onto three narrative threads, the first of which concerns the six days during which their bodies remain undiscovered on...
[The entire page is 2125 words long]
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