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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/92555.The_Pesthouse?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Pesthouse" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171249173m/92555.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/92555.The_Pesthouse?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Pesthouse</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13843.Jim_Crace">Jim Crace</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/10251208?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 2 of 5 stars I thought Jim Crace's <a href="/search/search?q=+Being+Dead&t=title"> Being Dead</a> was a phenomenally weird read read, chock o' block with passages of eerie beauty and shivery meditations on mortality. I don't think I "liked it" per se, but I could not get it out of my head. I had never read anything quite like it at the time, and still haven't. So I was super excited when his next novel, The Pesthouse came out, dealing as it does with material I'm particularly fond of: post-apocalyptic wasteland America (maybe it's because of growing up watching "Rollerball" and "Logan's Run" and "Mad Max" and "Escape from New York" and "Night of the Comet" and wait it for it, wait for it all you seventies babies--THE DAY AFTER).
 
 The Pesthouse came out around the same time as <a href="/search/search?q=+The+Road&t=title"> The Road</a>, unfortunately for Mr. Crace, as the two books are somewhat similar, if not in tone, at least in subject. Both concern themselves with post-apocalyptic America, and both are road novels that center on two characters journeying across the charred remnants of our once great nation. Neither novel cares much for the conventions of speculative fiction, and neither indulges much, if at all, in the details of their brave new worlds. And both Crace and McCarthy are odd, highly cerebral stylists. 
 
 That's where the similarities end. The Road is a much darker novel, preoccupied with notions of survival and filial love, written in a language that, while often vertiginously bizarre, is overall fairly spare. The Pesthouse takes place in a somewhat gentler, agrarian America, several generations (at least) removed from the initial, unidentified disaster. The two main characters navigate a romantic-love relationship, and their journey isn't so much a matter of survival as it is a sort of reverse frontiering, an eastward migration to a whispered promised land. And Crace pulls out all the punches with his language, which true to <a href="/search/search?q=+Being+Dead&t=title"> Being Dead</a>, is highly lyrical and often loopy and embellished.
 
 But where Crace's strange distance and cold intellectualism really worked in <a href="/search/search?q=+Being+Dead&t=title"> Being Dead</a>--you needed a certain emotional separation from the characters and story at hand in order to spend 300 pages thinking in minutest detail about their decomposition--here it did not serve the material at all. The Pesthouse's narrative requires empathy from its readers to animate its pages, but the tone of the book is so neutral, so detached that it is difficult to muster much concern for the fates of its unfortunately dull protagonists. I never really felt in my bones that there was anything real to lose for these people, that there was anything at stake, or that the losses they had already suffered were in fact, losses. Finally, possibly most sadly, I never believed in their love or its necessity. The only moments that shimmered for a blink with a sense of urgency or power centered on the relationship between the lead and her adopted baby--a la The Road.
 
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/662102?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Libby's review
rating:
bookshelves: 2008-misses

I thought Jim Crace's Being Dead was a phenomenally weird read read, chock o' block with passages of eerie beauty and shivery meditations on mortality. I don't think I "liked it" per se, but I could not get it out of my head. I had never read anything quite like it at the time, and still haven't. So I was super excited when his next novel, The Pesthouse came out, dealing as it does with material I'm particularly fond of: post-apocalyptic wasteland America (maybe it's because of growing up watching "Rollerball" and "Logan's Run" and "Mad Max" and "Escape from New York" and "Night of the Comet" and wait it for it, wait for it all you seventies babies--THE DAY AFTER).

The Pesthouse came out around the same time as The Road, unfortunately for Mr. Crace, as the two books are somewhat similar, if not in tone...more I thought Jim Crace's Being Dead was a phenomenally weird read read, chock o' block with passages of eerie beauty and shivery meditations on mortality. I don't think I "liked it" per se, but I could not get it out of my head. I had never read anything quite like it at the time, and still haven't. So I was super excited when his next novel, The Pesthouse came out, dealing as it does with material I'm particularly fond of: post-apocalyptic wasteland America (maybe it's because of growing up watching "Rollerball" and "Logan's Run" and "Mad Max" and "Escape from New York" and "Night of the Comet" and wait it for it, wait for it all you seventies babies--THE DAY AFTER).

The Pesthouse came out around the same time as The Road, unfortunately for Mr. Crace, as the two books are somewhat similar, if not in tone, at least in subject. Both concern themselves with post-apocalyptic America, and both are road novels that center on two characters journeying across the charred remnants of our once great nation. Neither novel cares much for the conventions of speculative fiction, and neither indulges much, if at all, in the details of their brave new worlds. And both Crace and McCarthy are odd, highly cerebral stylists.

That's where the similarities end. The Road is a much darker novel, preoccupied with notions of survival and filial love, written in a language that, while often vertiginously bizarre, is overall fairly spare. The Pesthouse takes place in a somewhat gentler, agrarian America, several generations (at least) removed from the initial, unidentified disaster. The two main characters navigate a romantic-love relationship, and their journey isn't so much a matter of survival as it is a sort of reverse frontiering, an eastward migration to a whispered promised land. And Crace pulls out all the punches with his language, which true to Being Dead, is highly lyrical and often loopy and embellished.

But where Crace's strange distance and cold intellectualism really worked in Being Dead--you needed a certain emotional separation from the characters and story at hand in order to spend 300 pages thinking in minutest detail about their decomposition--here it did not serve the material at all. The Pesthouse's narrative requires empathy from its readers to animate its pages, but the tone of the book is so neutral, so detached that it is difficult to muster much concern for the fates of its unfortunately dull protagonists. I never really felt in my bones that there was anything real to lose for these people, that there was anything at stake, or that the losses they had already suffered were in fact, losses. Finally, possibly most sadly, I never believed in their love or its necessity. The only moments that shimmered for a blink with a sense of urgency or power centered on the relationship between the lead and her adopted baby--a la The Road.

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