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All That Follows
Leonard Lessing is a jazzman taking a break. His glory days seem to be behind him, so he relives old gigs and feeds his media addiction during solitary days at home. Then comes the news bulletin that threatens to change everything, and Leonard suddenly finds he has a choice to make.
276 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
9 people are currently reading
224 people want to read
About the author
Jim Crace
22 books412 followersJames "Jim" Crace is an award-winning English writer. His novel Quarantine, won the Whitbread Novel award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Harvest won the International Impac Dublin Literary Award, James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
Crace grew up in Forty Hill, an area at the far northern point of Greater London, close to Enfield where Crace attended Enfield Grammar School. He studied for a degree at the Birmingham College of Commerce (now part of Birmingham City University), where he was enrolled as an external student of the University of London. After securing a BA (Hons) in English Literature in 1968, he travelled overseas with the UK organization Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), working in Sudan. Two years later he returned to the UK, and worked with the BBC, writing educational programmes. From 1976 to 1987 he worked as a freelance journalist for The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers.
In 1986 Crace published Continent. Continent won the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award, the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Guardian Fiction Prize. This work was followed by The Gift of Stones, Arcadia, Signals of Distress, Quarantine, Being Dead and Six. His most recent novel, The Pesthouse, was published in the UK in March 2007.
Despite living in Britain, Crace is more successful in the United States, as evidenced by the award of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999.
Crace grew up in Forty Hill, an area at the far northern point of Greater London, close to Enfield where Crace attended Enfield Grammar School. He studied for a degree at the Birmingham College of Commerce (now part of Birmingham City University), where he was enrolled as an external student of the University of London. After securing a BA (Hons) in English Literature in 1968, he travelled overseas with the UK organization Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), working in Sudan. Two years later he returned to the UK, and worked with the BBC, writing educational programmes. From 1976 to 1987 he worked as a freelance journalist for The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers.
In 1986 Crace published Continent. Continent won the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award, the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Guardian Fiction Prize. This work was followed by The Gift of Stones, Arcadia, Signals of Distress, Quarantine, Being Dead and Six. His most recent novel, The Pesthouse, was published in the UK in March 2007.
Despite living in Britain, Crace is more successful in the United States, as evidenced by the award of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
June 16, 2013
...a man breathes into a saxophone,
And through the walls we hear the city moan
[...]
Outside it's America...
—U2, "Bullet the Blue Sky"
Leonard Lessing is a jazz saxophone player, a good one, with a solid career and artistic integrity to boot. He's currently residing in England, with his wife Francine. As All That Follows opens, Lennie is almost fifty years old, and while his life could be (and has been) a whole lot better, it could be worse, too. Sure, that shoulder pain won't go away; he hasn't had his instrument case open in a month or two; Francine keeps waking up in the middle of the night thinking there's a phone call from their absent daughter Celandine... but on the plus side, he and Francine have their own home, they're financially secure, and above all their existence is devoid of any poisonous... drama.
At least, to start with.
That happy situation doesn't last very long, though. Leon is trolling the web, as he is all too often wont to do these days, when he catches sight of someone he knows on the news... Maxie Lermontov, an old acquaintance from his time in Austin, Texas. Hasn't heard from Maxie in years. But now Maxie's just down the road and he's involved in... a hostage situation?
Uh-oh. Drama...
All That Follows is actually science fiction, of a sort—it's set in the future, anyway, by a decade or two—but it doesn't seem to need to be. Nothing happens in the novel that couldn't have happened now, or even earlier, and the central themes—of love and husbandry, how one treats one's wife and daughter, how one reacts to a challenge to an existence that's been too comfortable for too long—are timeless.
Jim Crace absolutely nails it where it counts, though. I'm at the half-century mark myself, like Leonard Lessing, with my own aches and pains both physical and metaphysical, and there are many uncomfortable similarities between Leon and me. For example: when Lennie wants to give himself a treat, he heads for a bookshop—now, how could I not see a lot of myself in someone like that?
Which makes it all the more discomforting to discover that Leonard's so... hapless, when drama finally does intrude on his bourgeois existence.
All That Follows is an enormously satisfying book, all in all. Crace manages to develop Leonard's character smoothly and realistically, while still surprising the reader at almost every turn with what happens to him—and how, eventually, Lennie exercises some agency of his own. Leon's steady life gets shaken up, no doubt about it... but doesn't it make sense that this could be a good thing?
Even if things don't work out for Leonard, though, this novel is definitely a good thing.
December 5, 2010
i wanted this to be better, and then the flashback to 2006 austin tx helped a lot, then things started looking up in 2026 for lennie/leon/leornard and his timidness actually was filmed and broadcast and it SEEMED like he wasn't a timorous nambypamby asshole but a real tough dude. i learned two things: life isn't what it appears on film, and i am possibly a sofa socialist too :(
April 27, 2025
I was first made aware of Jim Crace many years back while reading November of the Soul: The Enigma of Suicide by George Howe Colt. A passing citation to Crace’s novel Being Dead profoundly resonated with me. The reference was so beautifully striking in its lyricism and emotional resonance that it inspired me to at once purchase and read it. Afterwards, I bought nearly all of his novels. Crace possesses a rare mastery of language; his writing elevates the mundane to the sublime, so much so, that even a depiction of something as uneventful as paint drying becomes a mesmerizing, poetic experience.
All That Follows is just another testament to the quiet, cumulative power of Crace’s exquisite prose. What’s most remarkable is how Crace manages to elevate the ordinary into something contemplative and elegant. Interior thoughts, suburban scenes, and subtle gestures are all rendered with a painterly sensitivity, imbuing the novel with a gentle, melancholic dignity. Crace has an uncanny ability to make language breathe, to coax beauty from restraint. There’s a sense that no word is wasted, and yet nothing feels forced or artificial. His language is so quietly immersive that I very nearly felt swept along not by plot, but by the sheer pleasure of the writing itself.
Written in 2010, and set in the near future of 2024, All That Follows is a quietly suspenseful and introspective novel that takes place in an imminent authoritarian England. The story follows Leonard Lessing, a middle-aged jazz musician whose quiet life is disrupted when he sees a former political radical, Maxie Lermontov, involved in a hostage situation on the news. Once a fellow activist, Leonard chose a path of safety and compromise, while Maxie pursued risk and rebellion. As Leonard becomes entangled in the crisis, he is forced to confront his past choices, his regrets, and the person he has become.
Although set in the future, the backdrop is only slightly different from our present; it has an air of unease and subtle authoritarianism. However, it’s not just a commentary on politics but a reflection of Leonard’s psychological state: controlled, limited, and resigned. It functions more as a mood than a prediction; a psychological landscape more than a political one. It’s meant to portray the passage of time; the slow, persistent reminders of aging that reinforces his sense of being trapped in a life that no longer excites or challenges him.
Music becomes a stand-in for how Leonard has negotiated life; not through bold, dissonant solos but through carefully controlled notes. His choice to stop playing in public is a kind of self-erasure and withdrawal. His saxophone is more than just his profession, it’s a symbol for his voice, emotions and lost passion. While the hostage situation is an echo for his past; the standoff dramatizes the internal conflict Leonard has been avoiding for years, between passivity and action, between youthful ideals and middle-aged compromise.
This is a quietly powerful writing about regret, about aging, and the complexity of moral compromise. While some might find the pace and understated tone frustrating, expecting the urgency promised by its premise, Crace avoids melodrama and instead uses the premise of a hostage situation to explore more introspective terrain on memory, identity, and the slow erosion of youthful ideals. I appreciated the philosophical undercurrent and inner monologue. This novel offers rich rewards and lingering resonance, quickly making Jim Crace one of my favorite authors.
All That Follows is just another testament to the quiet, cumulative power of Crace’s exquisite prose. What’s most remarkable is how Crace manages to elevate the ordinary into something contemplative and elegant. Interior thoughts, suburban scenes, and subtle gestures are all rendered with a painterly sensitivity, imbuing the novel with a gentle, melancholic dignity. Crace has an uncanny ability to make language breathe, to coax beauty from restraint. There’s a sense that no word is wasted, and yet nothing feels forced or artificial. His language is so quietly immersive that I very nearly felt swept along not by plot, but by the sheer pleasure of the writing itself.
There is static on the set. The radio will only cough and clear its throat. He chooses another level of preselects, but these are no less bronchial. A couple more. With no success. And Retune failed to find any traction in the traffic of signals. The scanner shuffles through every single station and all the frequencies, chasing any signal strong enough to hold good. The numbers pelt across the screen; the stations briefly name themselves with their IDs, too fast to read, but nothing takes purchase. Then the names and numbers roll round again and again with little to delay them, not a note of music, not a human sound, not a word of news, just the woof and tweet of distant frequencies that sound like animals in an undergrowth. -page 65-66
Written in 2010, and set in the near future of 2024, All That Follows is a quietly suspenseful and introspective novel that takes place in an imminent authoritarian England. The story follows Leonard Lessing, a middle-aged jazz musician whose quiet life is disrupted when he sees a former political radical, Maxie Lermontov, involved in a hostage situation on the news. Once a fellow activist, Leonard chose a path of safety and compromise, while Maxie pursued risk and rebellion. As Leonard becomes entangled in the crisis, he is forced to confront his past choices, his regrets, and the person he has become.
Although set in the future, the backdrop is only slightly different from our present; it has an air of unease and subtle authoritarianism. However, it’s not just a commentary on politics but a reflection of Leonard’s psychological state: controlled, limited, and resigned. It functions more as a mood than a prediction; a psychological landscape more than a political one. It’s meant to portray the passage of time; the slow, persistent reminders of aging that reinforces his sense of being trapped in a life that no longer excites or challenges him.
It’s always a comfort to lift his instrument free from its nesting case, to check and finger its glinting, complex engineering, the key stacks mounted on their axle rods, the pillars, needle springs, hinges, and leverages, the tooling and the soldering, which against all seeming logic unite and conspire to make this “singing tube” the most harmonic of the reeds, and the one most like a human voice, capable of everything from murmuring to oratory. -page 112
Music becomes a stand-in for how Leonard has negotiated life; not through bold, dissonant solos but through carefully controlled notes. His choice to stop playing in public is a kind of self-erasure and withdrawal. His saxophone is more than just his profession, it’s a symbol for his voice, emotions and lost passion. While the hostage situation is an echo for his past; the standoff dramatizes the internal conflict Leonard has been avoiding for years, between passivity and action, between youthful ideals and middle-aged compromise.
This is a quietly powerful writing about regret, about aging, and the complexity of moral compromise. While some might find the pace and understated tone frustrating, expecting the urgency promised by its premise, Crace avoids melodrama and instead uses the premise of a hostage situation to explore more introspective terrain on memory, identity, and the slow erosion of youthful ideals. I appreciated the philosophical undercurrent and inner monologue. This novel offers rich rewards and lingering resonance, quickly making Jim Crace one of my favorite authors.
January 21, 2023
Jim Crace is a master at creating tension in unusual places and omitting it where it would appear in less original stories. Unlike some other reviewers, the opening chapters had me riveted. Chapter 4 in particular captured so brilliantly the thoughts that fill your head when you are returning home after floating too freely through a period of time and crossing some lines you wish you hadn’t.
This author also brings his theme of social change to bear. In this case, it is carried by his reluctant protagonist, whose arc through the novel is crafted with some serious wit. Perhaps this should have been titled The Accidental Terrorist.
And it was a blast to have part of the novel take place on my old home turf.
Now excuse me while I go think up more possible meanings for SOFA.
This author also brings his theme of social change to bear. In this case, it is carried by his reluctant protagonist, whose arc through the novel is crafted with some serious wit. Perhaps this should have been titled The Accidental Terrorist.
And it was a blast to have part of the novel take place on my old home turf.
Now excuse me while I go think up more possible meanings for SOFA.
May 24, 2010
This probably deserves 3.5 stars, as Jim Crace is clearly a more compelling writer than many others. Nonetheless, I think I preferred "Pesthouse" to this novel, although it's like comparing apples to oranges. They are very different books...a sign of Crace's skill as a writer. What I did find particularly intriguing about this book was Crace's ability to write about present events (what's happening now in our lives) as past events. The book is set in some future time, eerily similar to our own, yet also strangely different. At the novel's centre is the jazz saxophonist Leonard Lessing...in his descriptions of music, Crace is particularly compelling. The plot itself unfolds slowly, but it is once again a hallmark of Crace's genius that he can convey a mother's grief at the loss of her child so exquisitely that even those of us without children can feel her anguish.
January 14, 2017
Leonard Lessing, a jazz saxophonist, is something of a Walter Mitty character. He's not a man of courage but he likes to imagine that he could be. The story is set in England in the not too distant future (2024) where the surveillance state has progressed - not quite to Orwell's vision of 1984 - to the point when it is hard to fly under the radar. Lessing's past draws him back in inexorably when he recognizes an all too familiar figure on the nightly news. He keeps dipping his toe in the murky waters of a hostage situation until, finally, it draws him in. Ironically, he comes out on top.
Jim Crace must be a saxophone player since he goes into great detail about the instrument and the emotion of playing it.
Jim Crace must be a saxophone player since he goes into great detail about the instrument and the emotion of playing it.
February 3, 2017
This was a disappointing work by an author I admire. Set in the U.K. In a future ten years distant but not radically different from our own time, we meet a 50 year old saxophone player who is brave only when in possession of his horn. Otherwise, he is a would be radical who hasn't any courage.
By chance, he identifies an American he once knew as the terrorist who has taken a family hostage in suburban England. Gradually, he gets himself tied up in the hostage drama and only proves that he is a fairly pathetic character on whom his women dote because they like the dangerousness of his jazz persona.
The character is well defined but the narrative manages to be at once silly and lacking drama.
By chance, he identifies an American he once knew as the terrorist who has taken a family hostage in suburban England. Gradually, he gets himself tied up in the hostage drama and only proves that he is a fairly pathetic character on whom his women dote because they like the dangerousness of his jazz persona.
The character is well defined but the narrative manages to be at once silly and lacking drama.
June 17, 2010
Reaction to All That Follows was decidedly mixed, with most critics agreeing that it is not Crace's best work. While several reviewers described his writing as "elegant," others found it overwritten and self-conscious: the Boston Globe cited too much "writerly riffing." While some enjoyed the in-depth passages on jazz music, others found them a bit tedious. Jim Crace is one of England's most beloved and award-winning contemporary novelists, but readers new to his work may want to seek out earlier titles. This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
June 1, 2010
As a writer, I found Crace's work to be awfully compelling. There doesn't seem to be a wasted word or a word out of place. The symbols he uses to exemplify his themes are well-chosen and repeated wisely. This man, this Jim Crace, is, without a doubt, a damn fine writer.
However, as a storyteller, Crace leaves a lot to be desired.
I enjoyed this book, but I didn't feel, when it was all over, that much had happened. The characters didn't seem to have learned much. The story didn't seem to have resolved itself. Everyone was pretty much right back where they started. Including me.
However, as a storyteller, Crace leaves a lot to be desired.
I enjoyed this book, but I didn't feel, when it was all over, that much had happened. The characters didn't seem to have learned much. The story didn't seem to have resolved itself. Everyone was pretty much right back where they started. Including me.
March 25, 2016
An at times bizarre look at the inner mind of a middle aged jazz musician, struggling with a mid-life crisis. The main character if a fumbling, second-guessing, insecure and misunderstood individual, floating along on the tides of his life with no intention or direction. He's hard to like, but easy to feel sorry for. I found myself not caring about his angst or his fears. The back story of failed political activism is unconvincing. Maybe I'm missing something, but this did not live up to expectations. (The Gift of Stones, for example, was a superb novel.)
July 11, 2013
What more can I say that hasn't already been said about this book?
The writing is elegant, detail extraordinary, but the plot drags and the main character is difficult to like.
As always, Crace's impeccable style pulls the reader flawlessly from start to finish, but the content is unnourishing. Chinese takeaway for readers. It goes down fine, and there are some really yummy bits, but it leaves you wanting something more... fulfilling.
The writing is elegant, detail extraordinary, but the plot drags and the main character is difficult to like.
As always, Crace's impeccable style pulls the reader flawlessly from start to finish, but the content is unnourishing. Chinese takeaway for readers. It goes down fine, and there are some really yummy bits, but it leaves you wanting something more... fulfilling.
April 26, 2017
An interesting book juxtaposing jazz with fringe politics and family life, and plenty of insight into modern society. The future setting seems there largely to give the right distance between the two halves of the story - Crace's future Britain doesn't require any great imaginative leaps. Like everything I've read by Jim Crace, it is beautifully written too.
May 3, 2018
Jim Crace, never ever disappoints.
September 23, 2013
Reviewed on www.whichbook.net
September 27, 2017
I will follow Jim,
follow Jim wherever he may go...
follow Jim wherever he may go...
September 19, 2024
This was a CNF. It’s not a long book and at first was determined to finish it but I got a little over 30% in and just didn’t care anymore. I usually love Jim Crace’s work but this was just off for me.
For starters, for some reason he chose to set the story in the future. There is no discernable reason for this and since it was published in 2010 and set in 2024, all the things he got wrong are jarring and take me right of a narrative I was only tenuously engaged with to begin with.
I had zero sympathy for whiny, childish Leonard and I found some of his decisions highly implausible. The saxaphone passages were well written but I didn’t care. There’s a whole early chapter devoted to describing an impromptu solo performance that just made me impatient and wanting to get on with the story. I’ll
leave it at that.
For starters, for some reason he chose to set the story in the future. There is no discernable reason for this and since it was published in 2010 and set in 2024, all the things he got wrong are jarring and take me right of a narrative I was only tenuously engaged with to begin with.
I had zero sympathy for whiny, childish Leonard and I found some of his decisions highly implausible. The saxaphone passages were well written but I didn’t care. There’s a whole early chapter devoted to describing an impromptu solo performance that just made me impatient and wanting to get on with the story. I’ll
leave it at that.
May 8, 2019
Don’t read this if it’s your first Crace novel. His others (that I’ve read - such as “Quarantine” and “Signals of Distress”) are much better - seemed like a different author or something dug up from his student days maybe!
April 14, 2020
What IS it about Jim Crace? I'ver read lots of his books, and there's no doubt he can craft a sentence and evoke a setting. But his characters and plot lines just don't hold my interest... I just find the stories dull and timid, just like the protagonist in this novel.
January 26, 2023
Lennie was a fantastic character. His love for boldness,brashness and bravery, while often being the opposite provided so much nuance. I loved Lennie and Francine's relationship, very funny. It did take me a while to get into the rhythm of the story but very enjoyable when I found the beat.
November 26, 2017
After about 15 minutes my husband and I both said "NAH" and stopped listening. Just wasn't making any sense and who cares?
July 16, 2019
I found this an entertaining, but somewhat disappointing book; it did not engage me like his other novels that I've read.
June 14, 2023
A strange book about a strange, somewhat pathetic man who thrashes about trying to make progress in his life but seems to go nowhere. I enjoyed reading it but don't necessarily recommend it.
July 11, 2010
Leonard Lessing is a man most people - certainly most middle-aged people - will find convincing and likeable, a jazz musician, nearing 50, whose daring and talent for improvisation are confined to the stage; in real life he's a hesitant character who dreams of heroic deeds but thinks twice about everything before opting for the safest course. When, therefore, he gets caught up on the fringes of a hostage drama he is well out of his depth and bumbles from calamity to crisis. I rather resent, incidentally, the explanation of his physical clumsiness - "he is a slightly lumbering left-hander". The belief that left-handers are clumsy and uncoordinated was old-fashioned, and somewhat offensive, decades ago and I'm surprised to see Crace repeating it.
The writing is mostly good, never more so than when it is describing Leonard's feelings about his music; it managed to communicate his passion to me, despite the fact that I don't like jazz. My biggest problem with the book is that I found its end very predictable. There was little tension here, despite the subject matter. I just knew, from early on, more or less exactly how things were going to end up. Calling your main characters Lesser and Max is an unnecessarily clunky signal too.
It's an amiable if not especially memorable book, with a light touch and some wry humour.
The writing is mostly good, never more so than when it is describing Leonard's feelings about his music; it managed to communicate his passion to me, despite the fact that I don't like jazz. My biggest problem with the book is that I found its end very predictable. There was little tension here, despite the subject matter. I just knew, from early on, more or less exactly how things were going to end up. Calling your main characters Lesser and Max is an unnecessarily clunky signal too.
It's an amiable if not especially memorable book, with a light touch and some wry humour.
October 22, 2010
Lennie Less is an accomplished British jazz saxophonist who is about to turn 50 in October 2024, and is reasonably happy, as he is in a comfortable marriage and his music has provided him with personal satisfaction and material comfort.
One day he watches a hostage drama taking place in a nearby town, and recognizes the intruder as Maxie Lermon, an American activist that he met years ago, as he was the lover of a Nadia Emmerson, a woman he also loved. He wants to be of some assistance, knowing that the man has a violent streak and might kill his hostages. He meets up with the teenage daughter of Maxie and Nadia; she concocts a risky plan to bring the hostage drama to an end. Lennie, who is cautious to a fault, has reservations about the plan, yet cannot completely distance himself from the woman he once loved, and the young girl he has become enamored with.
Despite an interesting story line I found this book to be quite disappointing, as I could not empathize with any of the characters, and I found Lennie, the main character, to be selfish, wishy washy and thoroughly annoying. Fortunately this was a short novel, but it's one I would not recommend.
One day he watches a hostage drama taking place in a nearby town, and recognizes the intruder as Maxie Lermon, an American activist that he met years ago, as he was the lover of a Nadia Emmerson, a woman he also loved. He wants to be of some assistance, knowing that the man has a violent streak and might kill his hostages. He meets up with the teenage daughter of Maxie and Nadia; she concocts a risky plan to bring the hostage drama to an end. Lennie, who is cautious to a fault, has reservations about the plan, yet cannot completely distance himself from the woman he once loved, and the young girl he has become enamored with.
Despite an interesting story line I found this book to be quite disappointing, as I could not empathize with any of the characters, and I found Lennie, the main character, to be selfish, wishy washy and thoroughly annoying. Fortunately this was a short novel, but it's one I would not recommend.
July 10, 2013
I enjoyed this book, although it has a slow start, almost too slow – and I was growing impatient, and was near putting it down forever, when the plot picked up – and I became involved with the main character and his situation.
Leonard Lessing is a jazz musician in a failing marriage, who cannot bear to pick up his sax, and is feeling useless. He’s a bit of a coward, impetuous, but essentially decent – he gets involved with a hostage situation, a house surrounded by cops, and the man inside with the gun is a man he knew from 20 years ago, when he was active in far left politics. Not violent himself, but he rubbed shoulders with those keen to overthrow the government by any means.
Leonard meets the hostage takers' daughter, and she concocts a crazy plan which he dopily agrees to, and he’s caught up with his wife in the events around the house with all its dangers and media frenzy.
I became thoroughly engaged in this thoughtful book. Leonard, his wife, the hostage taker and his daughter are all interesting characters who drew me and held me, once the book took off from its pedestrian beginning.
Leonard Lessing is a jazz musician in a failing marriage, who cannot bear to pick up his sax, and is feeling useless. He’s a bit of a coward, impetuous, but essentially decent – he gets involved with a hostage situation, a house surrounded by cops, and the man inside with the gun is a man he knew from 20 years ago, when he was active in far left politics. Not violent himself, but he rubbed shoulders with those keen to overthrow the government by any means.
Leonard meets the hostage takers' daughter, and she concocts a crazy plan which he dopily agrees to, and he’s caught up with his wife in the events around the house with all its dangers and media frenzy.
I became thoroughly engaged in this thoughtful book. Leonard, his wife, the hostage taker and his daughter are all interesting characters who drew me and held me, once the book took off from its pedestrian beginning.
July 12, 2010
I am not sure what to say about this one. It was a short novel (223 pages), but to me, it seemed really long. Leonard Lessing is the main character. He is a jazz musician, and seems to suffer from inactivity and ineffectiveness. He seems to long to become an activist, but doesn't have the guts to actually take any steps toward the goal. There is a hostage situation close to his home, and he recognizes one of the hostage takes as someone he once knew. He goes to the site, and meets the hostage takers daughter. Then, there is a lot of exposition and not very much happening. I think this is one of the points the novel is trying to make but it made the novel seem long and drawn out to me, and not very enjoyable. He does have a strong literary style, and the character descriptions are very well done and you do get a great sense for the personalities of Leonard and a lot of the characters involved, so if you are into a more character driven novel, this might be for you. But if you are looking for a good page turning plot, this might leave you cold.
June 20, 2010
Let it be known: I love Jim Crace's work. However, this wasn't my favorite novel of his, and I'm still trying to figure out why. Even though it dealt with some appropriately topical and turgid issues - terrorism, missing children, militancy, mortality - it seemed a bit... I don't know... sleepy. The protagonist, Leonard Lessing, is a jazz musician, and because of this, I expected the prose to be-bop its way across the page. I was waiting for some literary riffs, playfulness, a shot of adrenaline. But instead the writing hit the same contemplative, lugubrious pitch throughout. This worked well when the scenes zeroed in on Lessing's melancholic middle-age retrospection, but it didn't quite deliver when the front-story (a hostage/terrorist situation) required a heightened sense of urgency/panic/action. Still a thoughtful read, and despite my quibbles, his sentences are truly gorgeous.
A good companion piece to James Hynes' "Next."
A good companion piece to James Hynes' "Next."
January 19, 2014
This is a witty novel, but a bit too word-conscious for its own good! The prose is often a vehicle for some cliched puns/word play (eg. US and UK meanings of 'pants'), but having said that, there is also some great imagery ("Saplings, bullied by the wind, yelp and squeak like animals") and superb descriptions of saxophone playing - no mean feat for the written word!
However, the characters didn't really come alive for me, and the events are a little old-hat (=student demos) and the plot turns (=old flame and retribution) a little contrived. I'm not really sure what is supposed to have happened - or maybe that's the point?!
I did like the way the plot is set in a near future, and would have preferred a few more references to how a future society would view said student demos and retribution!
However, the characters didn't really come alive for me, and the events are a little old-hat (=student demos) and the plot turns (=old flame and retribution) a little contrived. I'm not really sure what is supposed to have happened - or maybe that's the point?!
I did like the way the plot is set in a near future, and would have preferred a few more references to how a future society would view said student demos and retribution!
October 27, 2015
This book takes place in a more recognizable world than the other Jim Crace books I've read, but shares the same evocative and moving writing style. I've read lots of novels about aging political activists reckoning with their earlier recklessness, but none of them were quite like this one (at least partially because pretty much all of those other ones are about '60s radicals aging into the 1990s whereas this one is about more contemporary activists). A couple of the plot points were predictable and the main character is a little bit annoying at times, but I still found this book really hard to put down. The flaws really only stand out in between readings -- while reading it, they're barely noticeable due to Crace's perfectly crafted prose.
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