Jim Crace Criticism
Jim Crace is a distinguished English novelist renowned for his imaginative storytelling and exploration of themes surrounding community and change. Born in 1946 in Herefordshire, England, Crace began his literary career after working in journalism and television, quickly establishing himself as a prominent figure in contemporary British literature. His debut collection, Continent (1986), is often considered a novel due to its seven interconnected stories set on a fictional third-world continent, where the clash between tradition and modernity unfolds. This work received accolades such as the Whitbread Award for First Novel and the Guardian Fiction Prize, with critics like Colin Greenland and a Publishers Weekly review recognizing its imaginative narrative.
Crace's novels often delve into societal shifts, focusing on cultural and technological transformations. His works are characterized by poetic narrative styles and complex structures, drawing inspiration from magic realism and eschewing traditional British literary realism. In The Gift of Stones, he explores Stone Age Britain, while Quarantine is set in biblical Jerusalem. Critics such as John Blades and Brian Stonehill have noted the innovative portrayal of these settings. Quarantine in particular focuses on themes of personal transformation, as discussed by Joseph Olshan.
Crace's second collection, The Devil's Larder (2000), consists of 64 short pieces unified by themes of food and sensuality, set in a fictional coastal village. Despite mixed reviews, with some critics like Dale Peck arguing that the stories lack substance, the work is praised for its inventive nature. Reviews from Barbara Hoffert and Frank Caso highlight the complex interplay between humans and food.
Crace's work often features omniscient narrators and iambic prose, which have generated divided critical opinions. While celebrated for his inventive prose and thematic depth, some critics, like Robert M. Adams and Edward T. Wheeler, suggest that his stylistic choices can overshadow the gravity of his subjects. Nevertheless, Crace's vivid imagination and clear, lyrical writing draw comparisons to literary figures like Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, maintaining his influence and respect in contemporary English literature, as affirmed by Paul Maliszewski.
Contents
- Principal Works
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Crace, Jim (Contemporary Literary Criticism)
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Blurbists Credited with Discovery of Continent
(summary)
In the following review, Blades offers a positive assessment of Continent.
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Review of Continent
(summary)
In the following review, Stonehill offers a positive assessment of Continent. Here are seven related short stories that arrive on our shores already wreathed in praise. Jim Crace's Continent won England's Whitbread Prize for the best first “novel” of 1986, and the David Higham Prize for the year's best first work of fiction. Continent seems more strangely native to our New World, though, than to the Old.
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Post-Colonial Fiction: Our Custom is Different
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Kearns offers a positive assessment of Continent, though objects to its dubious classification as a novel.
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The Prehistoric Future
(summary)
In the following review, Deveson offers a generally positive assessment of The Gift of Stones, comparing the novel to William Golding's The Inheritors.
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A Prehistoric Tale
(summary)
In the following review, Kamine offers a positive assessment of The Gift of Stones. Jim Crace has written a short novel about growing up in a prehistoric village—a Stone Age Bildungsroman. This is less odd than it sounds given the settings of the stories in his first book, an award-winner in his native England, entitled Continent. Equal parts mock anthropology, V. S. Naipaul and Jorge Luis Borges, it pitted primitive societies against modern ones with good ironic effect.
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A Stone Age Storyteller Speaks from the Dawn of Narrative Art
(summary)
In the following review, Glasser offers a positive assessment of The Gift of Stones. If you share Jim Crace's concerns for language and ideas, The Gift of Stones will seem rich broth. This novel is wonderfully lucid, often musical and always thought-provoking.
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Review of The Gift of Stones
(summary)
In the following review, Pei offers a negative assessment of The Gift of Stones. Jim Crace's first book, Continent, was a group of stories taking place in the present on a fictitious continent at the world's margin; his present book, The Gift of Stones, takes place on a nameless coast on the outskirts of time—at the juncture between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. The subject of Continent was the Third World, oppression, colonialism—extreme situations, tragic and comic turns; the subject of The Gift of Stones is bleakness and storytelling, and its tone never varies.
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Serendipity
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Krist offers a positive assessment of The Gift of Stones.
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Hurrying Back to Nature
(summary)
In the following review, Mars-Jones offers a positive assessment of Arcadia.
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Word Salad
(summary)
In the following review of Arcadia, Dyer cites shortcomings in the novel's linguistic excesses and corresponding lack of character development.
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Nostalgia for the Mud
(summary)
In the following review, King offers a positive assessment of Arcadia.
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The Phantom of the Market
(summary)
In the following review, Eder offers a positive assessment of Arcadia.
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Meet a Despotic Octogenarian and His Utopian Marketplace
(summary)
In the following review, Olshan offers a positive assessment of Arcadia. Joining the literature of Utopia is this new entry from novelist Jim Crace, author of The Gift of Stones. Arcadia is a book that conjures up a marketplace so perfect that it dares to offer the experience of shopping as spiritual alternative.
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Cornering the Market
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Adams provides an overview of Continent and The Gift of Stones and offers a favorable review of Arcadia.
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Modern Gardening
(summary)
In the following review of Arcadia, Wheeler praises Crace's prose style and powers of imagination, but finds technical flaws in the novel's omniscient narrator and inadequate conclusion.
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All Hands on Deck
(summary)
In the following review, Binyon offers a positive assessment of Signals of Distress.
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Ocean Views
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Burnett offers a negative assessment of Signals of Distress.
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On the Rocks
(summary)
In the following review, Parks offers a negative assessment of Signals of Distress.
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Jim Crace: Moral Activist, Conservative Romantic
(summary)
In the following essay, Field provides an overview of Crace's literary career and publishing history, and reports Crace's comments on his life, editorial associations, and writings.
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Voyages Out
(summary)
In the following review, Hamilton-Peterson provides a generally favorable assessment of Signals of Distress, citing shortcomings in the novel's flat characters and lack of emotional energy.
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The Galilean
(summary)
In the following review, Korn offers a positive assessment of Quarantine.
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A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
(summary)
In the following review, Jones offers a positive assessment of Quarantine, highlighting its thick symbolism and deific narration, while also addressing the potential offense it may cause to both atheists and Christians.
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Hiveward-Winging
(summary)
In the following review of Quarantine, Irwin commends Crace's literary skill and ingenuous imagination, but finds faults in the novel's self-contained and enigmatic significance.
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Cavedweller
(summary)
In the following review, Eder offers a positive assessment of Quarantine.
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Temptation in the Wilderness
(summary)
In the following review, Bawer offers a positive assessment of Quarantine. Though the biblical account of Jesus's 40 days in the desert and his temptation there by the devil takes up only a few lines in the gospels, the story—which follows his baptism and precedes his public ministry—has always been seen as pivotal. Now, in the novel Quarantine, the English writer Jim Crace asks the question: If Jesus did in fact go into the desert after his baptism, what might really have happened there?
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Jesus in the Desert
(summary)
In the following review, Johnson offers a positive assessment of Quarantine, highlighting Jim Crace's imaginative rendering of Jesus that is both compelling and original, making Jesus seem human while retaining the essence of the Gospels.
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Jesus Lives
(summary)
In the following review, Allen offers a positive assessment of Quarantine.
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Review of Quarantine
(summary)
In the following review, the critic offers a positive assessment of Quarantine, a novel about Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness and the six people who spend more than a month in close proximity to him. The review highlights Crace's wonderful writing, the ambivalence of his portrait of Jesus, and the complex characters surrounding him.
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The Emptiness Is All
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Arnold offers a positive assessment of Quarantine.
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Going Gracefully
(summary)
In the following review of Being Dead, Baker commends Crace's ambitious project, but concludes that the novel's macabre anti-humanism and “playful fabulation” fail to match the book's solemn subject.
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The Absolute End
(summary)
In the following review, Whitaker offers a positive assessment of Being Dead. Jim Crace's sixth novel begins with the two central characters lying murdered on an isolated beach. Joseph and Celice, both zoologists, had met as postgraduates on a field trip to Baritone Bay, their relationship being consummated among its dunes. When, after three decades of marriage, they discover that the area is about to be bulldozed to build luxury houses and a marina, the idea of a nostalgic return takes hold. Without informing anyone of their destination, they set off. It is to be their last journey—their presence on the beach provokes an act of random violence that leaves them mutilated and dying on a bed of lissom grass.
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Supping Full on Horrors
(summary)
In the following review, France offers a positive assessment of Being Dead, but notes that the novel's virtuosity and intellectual challenge lacks emotional intensity.
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A Rare Species
(summary)
In the following review, Banville praises Crace's literary talent and experimentation, but criticizes the “dulling” prose style of Being Dead.
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The Origin of Species
(summary)
In the following review, Levi offers a positive assessment of Being Dead.
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Meditations, Good and Bad
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Allen offers a positive assessment of Being Dead.
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Approaching the Unknowable
(summary)
In the following essay, González-Crussi offers a positive assessment of Jim Crace's novel Being Dead, highlighting its captivating exploration of death's unknowable essence through powerful imagery and a unique narrative style that enhances the reader's understanding of life while acknowledging the futility of comprehending death itself.
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Maximalist Fiction
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Balée offers a positive assessment of Being Dead.
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Review of Being Dead
(summary)
In the following review, Maliszewski offers a positive assessment of Being Dead. After Celice and Joseph, the married zoologists at the center of Jim Crace's novel, die in the first paragraph, their bodies spend the rest of the book concealed by the tall grass and sand dunes along Baritone Bay. Crace's novel investigates death with what-if premises and Socratic questions, discouraging easy eulogies and exploring the complexities of love and mortality.
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Beyond Postmodernism
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Williamson offers a positive assessment of Being Dead, though notes that Crace is somewhat “overinsistent” in presenting his “Darwinian” thesis.
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The Devil's Larder
(summary)
In the following review, Gilbert offers a positive assessment of The Devil's Larder, highlighting its experimental nature and the uncomfortable yet fascinating aspects of food depicted in the interlinked stories.
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Blurbists Credited with Discovery of Continent
(summary)
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Crace, Jim (Short Story Criticism)
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Change of Life
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Greenland offers a mixed review of Continent, discussing Jim Crace's collection of stories set in an imaginary seventh continent, focusing on conflicts between local traditions and invasive modernity.
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Review of Continent
(summary)
In the following review, the anonymous critic praises the imagination and “unfaltering authority” of the stories in Continent. Crace's continent is mainly dry and under-developed, peopled by bureaucrats and country folk whose conflicting values give these loosely connected chapters their essential tension. Crace's imagination is fabulous, conjuring landscapes—urban and rural—that are concrete, credible and mythic at once. Distinguished by unfaltering authority and range of voice, Crace's novel [Continent] has been awarded the Whitbread and the David Higham prizes in England. This is stunningly powerful, visionary writing.
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Review of Continent
(summary)
In the following favorable assessment of Continent, Stonehill lauds Crace's lively and graceful language.
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Review of Continent
(summary)
In the following review, Pei surveys the major themes of Continent. Jim Crace's Continent is an artful bulletin from a part of the world, and a state of human awareness, that we cannot afford to ignore. It is a thin book, originally published in England, that comes with enough praise written on its back to sink a larger one. The writers quoted on its dust jacket seem to have a hard time defining what they obviously admire; Crace is compared to no less than five different authors in an effort to capture the essence of his fiction.
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Review of The Devil's Larder
(summary)
In the following review, the anonymous critic deems the stories in The Devil's Larder as beguiling and worthwhile.
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Not in the Very Best of Taste
(summary)
In the following review, Wilson finds The Devil's Larder to be a clever, dark, and disturbing compilation of stories.
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Perfect Monday Soup
(summary)
In the following positive review of The Devil's Larder, Tayler considers the unique and imaginative nature of Crace's short fiction.
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Review of The Devil's Larder
(summary)
In the following review, the anonymous critic finds the stories in The Devil's Larder to be 'simple, enjoyable, but lacking in depth.'
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Review of The Devil's Larder
(summary)
In the following review, Hoffert provides a favorable assessment of The Devil's Larder, highlighting Crace's ability to create unexpected worlds and the relationship between people and food through quirky, unsettling, and sometimes slightly macabre little scenes.
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A Light Collation
(summary)
In the following mixed review, Taylor examines the role of food in The Devil's Larder.
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Review of The Devil's Larder
(summary)
In the following positive review, Caso comments on the role of food in The Devil's Larder. Crace explores the complexities of human nature in 64 short fiction pieces that cover the full gastronomic range, from soup to nuts. The stories are set in a fictional coastal town and the surrounding countryside, showcasing legends, myths, and the dual nature of food as both a taken-for-granted necessity and an exalted experience.
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Review of The Devil's Larder
(summary)
In the following review, Dirda finds the stories in The Devil's Larder to be over-refined and unsatisfying.
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Smorgasbits
(summary)
In the following review, Sansom considers the defining characteristics of Crace's fiction and describes The Devil's Larder as “a book of insights.”
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The Devil You Know
(summary)
In the following negative review of The Devil's Larder, Peck traces Crace's literary development and denigrates his short fiction as insipid, one-dimensional, and merely “imitations of stories.”
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The Devil's Larder
(summary)
In the following review, Maliszewski offers a favorable assessment of The Devil's Larder, a collection of sixty-four very short stories about cooking and eating, set in an unnamed village where conflicts arise between villagers and outsiders. Crace's language is precise yet relaxed, capturing the essence of oral legends while exploring themes of appetite and desire.
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Change of Life
(summary)
- Further Reading