Genesis (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: Jim Crace
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The early twenty-first century
- Setting: An unnamed city, possibly in Eastern Europe
- Principal Characters: Felix “Lix” Dern, Alicja Lesniak, Freda, Anita “An” Julius, Mouetta
- Genres: Long fiction, Novel
- Subjects: Children, Wives, Acting or actors, Parents and children, Sex or sexuality, Marriage, Twenty-first century, Betrayal, Fathers, Theater, Eastern Europe or eastern Europeans
- Locales: Europe
Genesis opens with the provocative claim, “Every woman he dares sleep with bears his child.” Felix “Lix” Dern, a popular actor, age about forty-seven, is fixated on the idea of his fertility. He calls it a curse. The reality is less interesting: He does have five children with a sixth on the way, but they have been born over a period of twenty-six years. During that time he has had affairs with five women, two of whom he married.
Lix, in fact, is not particularly sexually active, except in his nearly continuous fantasies. Two seven-year periods of celibacy seem to...
[The entire page is 1847 words long]
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