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The Pesthouse
Jim Crace is a writer of spectacular originality and a command of language that moves a reader effortlessly into the world of his imagination. In The Pesthouse he imagines an America of the future where a man and a woman trek across a devastated and dangerous landscape, finding strength in each other and an unexpected love.
Once the safest, most prosperous place on earth, the United States is now a lawless, scantly populated wasteland. The machines have stopped. The government has collapsed. Farmlands lie fallow and the soil is contaminated by toxins. Across the country, families have packed up their belongings to travel eastward toward the one hope passage on a ship to Europe.
Franklin Lopez and his brother, Jackson, are only days away from the ocean when Franklin, nearly crippled by an inflamed knee, is forced to stop. In the woods near his temporary refuge, Franklin comes upon an isolated stone building. Inside he finds Margaret, a woman with a deadly infection and confined to the Pesthouse to sweat out her fever. Tentatively, the two join forces and make their way through the ruins of old America. Confronted by bandits rounding up men for slavery, finding refuge in the Ark, a religious community that makes bizarre demands on those they shelter, Franklin and Margaret find their wariness of each other replaced by deep trust and an intimacy neither one has ever experienced before.
The Pesthouse is Jim Crace’s most compelling novel to date. Rich in its understanding of America’s history and ethos, it is a paean to the human spirit.
Once the safest, most prosperous place on earth, the United States is now a lawless, scantly populated wasteland. The machines have stopped. The government has collapsed. Farmlands lie fallow and the soil is contaminated by toxins. Across the country, families have packed up their belongings to travel eastward toward the one hope passage on a ship to Europe.
Franklin Lopez and his brother, Jackson, are only days away from the ocean when Franklin, nearly crippled by an inflamed knee, is forced to stop. In the woods near his temporary refuge, Franklin comes upon an isolated stone building. Inside he finds Margaret, a woman with a deadly infection and confined to the Pesthouse to sweat out her fever. Tentatively, the two join forces and make their way through the ruins of old America. Confronted by bandits rounding up men for slavery, finding refuge in the Ark, a religious community that makes bizarre demands on those they shelter, Franklin and Margaret find their wariness of each other replaced by deep trust and an intimacy neither one has ever experienced before.
The Pesthouse is Jim Crace’s most compelling novel to date. Rich in its understanding of America’s history and ethos, it is a paean to the human spirit.
255 pages, Hardcover
First published March 2, 2007
61 people are currently reading
2140 people want to read
About the author
Jim Crace
22 books419 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 359 reviews
June 12, 2020
if you have read the road, you don't really need to read this. this was to be jim crace's third strike from me. and i don't dislike jim crace, it's just i wasn't wowed by either quarantine or being dead. his style is not embracing - it has the same detached, clinical style as hustvedt, which does not cuddle me, as a reader. i need literary slankets that cover all my parts and transport me (but leave my arms free to wave about)(did i go on about slankets in another review recently?... i feel like i did. they fascinate me) he isn't a bad writer by any stretch, this is just another example of Books That Aren't For Me. it takes place in a blighted america, many generations removed from an unexplained event that destroyed everything. what is left struggles to survive and find love and meaning and all the things people usually struggle to find in post-apocalyptic fiction. the best part is the quasi-religious anti-metal community that evolved around the "helpless gentlemen," who are old men who do not use their hands because of their beliefs and live in an ark that supports pilgrims waiting for boats to take them to a better place, they expect. these weak-armed, metal-shunning people were the most interesting characters in the book, but it was only an interlude in the story, unfortunately. for some reason, they reminded me of a joke from electric company magazine when i was a tot: where does admiral ackbar keep his armies?? huh?? wanna guess?? IN HIS SLEEEEEVIES!!! oh, the tears of laughter...so that's my review. i think me and jim crace are over now. like a junior high school boyfriend, i barely remember him.
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June 27, 2020
The story of this book had potential but, unfortunately, that expectation did not materialize. I read this book because I liked both ‘The Gift of Stones’ and ‘Harvest’. I was especially taken by ‘The Gift of Stones’ which was a highly imaginative novel set in the Stone Age. In contrast, ‘The Pesthouse’ is set in the far future, a future where people do not know anything about the past world of their ancestors of some three or four generations back, as everybody is illiterate and few items survived. Remnants of colapsed iron structures of that world are still visible along the roads where these hungry and unhappy people roam in search for a better life. The book has some similarities to the story of ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy, but in ‘The Road’ the protagonists seem to know what happened to their world and recognize what the remnants are, while in this novel nobody has a clue about anything of the past at all. I thought it a relentlessly bleak and depressing story with no spark of hope anywhere. Perhaps it was just not a fit book to read for me at this time of existential fear!
September 7, 2017
Fascinating story but somehow the pace was slow. Maybe it was because there is very little dialogue in the story. It's all description and for me this meant that action was low and it was hard at points to keep my interest high. Storyline reminded me of Cormac McCarthy. Not a bad read at all, I just have the feeling that the result of this story could have been better exploited. Three stars.
August 5, 2016
Mnogo volim da čitam distopijske i postapokaliptične romane, što su verovatno svi koji prate moje review-e mogli da skontaju... Neke romane Džima Krejsa odavno imam zahvaljujući tome što čitalački mejnstrim u Srbiji nije prepoznao njegove kvalitete pa ih je Laguna prodavala po niskim cenama... Tek nedavno mi je na listi romana za čitanje skočio na prvo mesto njegov najpoznatiji roman - Quarantine ili Iscelitelj. Iako nije dobio punih pet zvezdica, taj roman me je osvestio - da sam dugo ignorisao jednog od najintrigantnijih savremenih pisaca.
The Pesthouse, na veliku žalost onih koji čitaju književnost u prevodu, nije još preveden na srpski jezik. Naručio sam ga sa bookdepository-ja odmah nakon što sam pročitao sinopsis romana, jer mi se tematski učinio veoma interesantno. Moram odmah da naglasim da ni u jednom momentu nisam požalio što sam to učinio!
Ovaj roman bi mogao komotno da se svrsta u najbolje romane vezane za svoju tematiku. Glavni likovi su muškarac i žena, koji igrom slučaja uspevaju da prežive jednu manju kataklizmu. Iako stranci jedno drugom, pokušavaju da zajedničkim snagama dođu do obale, gde bi se ukrcali na brod i zauvek napustili opustošeno tlo zemlje koja im je nekad bila sve... Na tom putu će gubiti jedno drugo, spašavati život jedno drugom, zatajiti neke stvari, ali i biti otvoreni za nova osećanja i nove izazove... da bi ih konačno život doveo do krajnjeg ispita na kome će morati da utvrde da li će i gde nastaviti svoje živote - svako sam za sebe ili zajedno...
The Pesthouse nije lak roman - sama tematika onemogućava da se iščitava opušteno i nemarno. Ono što bih izdvojio kao odlično su glavni likovi, setting i interesantna "nova vera" koju je Krejs stvorio. Ima tu momenata koji liče na nezaobilazni "The Road", ali gledano u celini, roman je totalno originalan. Dok sam čitao, palo mi je na pamet da je Išiguro morao biti upoznat sa ovim romanom pre nego što se upustio u avanturu zvanu "The Buried Giant"jer oba romana imaju sličnu setnu i melanholičnu notu. Ono što me je tokom čitanja apsolutno oduševljavalo su, naravno, Krejsove neverovatno moćne rečenice. Krejs je majstor svog zanata. Obavezno ga treba upoznati!!!!
The Pesthouse, na veliku žalost onih koji čitaju književnost u prevodu, nije još preveden na srpski jezik. Naručio sam ga sa bookdepository-ja odmah nakon što sam pročitao sinopsis romana, jer mi se tematski učinio veoma interesantno. Moram odmah da naglasim da ni u jednom momentu nisam požalio što sam to učinio!
Ovaj roman bi mogao komotno da se svrsta u najbolje romane vezane za svoju tematiku. Glavni likovi su muškarac i žena, koji igrom slučaja uspevaju da prežive jednu manju kataklizmu. Iako stranci jedno drugom, pokušavaju da zajedničkim snagama dođu do obale, gde bi se ukrcali na brod i zauvek napustili opustošeno tlo zemlje koja im je nekad bila sve... Na tom putu će gubiti jedno drugo, spašavati život jedno drugom, zatajiti neke stvari, ali i biti otvoreni za nova osećanja i nove izazove... da bi ih konačno život doveo do krajnjeg ispita na kome će morati da utvrde da li će i gde nastaviti svoje živote - svako sam za sebe ili zajedno...
The Pesthouse nije lak roman - sama tematika onemogućava da se iščitava opušteno i nemarno. Ono što bih izdvojio kao odlično su glavni likovi, setting i interesantna "nova vera" koju je Krejs stvorio. Ima tu momenata koji liče na nezaobilazni "The Road", ali gledano u celini, roman je totalno originalan. Dok sam čitao, palo mi je na pamet da je Išiguro morao biti upoznat sa ovim romanom pre nego što se upustio u avanturu zvanu "The Buried Giant"jer oba romana imaju sličnu setnu i melanholičnu notu. Ono što me je tokom čitanja apsolutno oduševljavalo su, naravno, Krejsove neverovatno moćne rečenice. Krejs je majstor svog zanata. Obavezno ga treba upoznati!!!!
April 24, 2020
Leave it to Jim Crace, an author who typically works with something known and then presents it entirely askew, to write a novel about medieval America. Medieval America? Well, not exactly, but almost. The America in The Pesthouse is set in the future but the world is entirely medieval—a premodern world of small villages in which the highest technology is metalwork. The landscape is littered in places with the ruins of modernity (the rusting hulks of ships, for instance), but we don’t know when and why the previous society collapsed. It must have happened generations before the time of the novel, as none of the characters gives it a thought.
So we’re in a wonky future/past America skewed even more by the reversal of the east-west cultural imaginary from which American mythology has long worked: that the future and a better life lies west. In The Pesthouse everyone is fleeing in the opposite direction, heading east for a new life, and not just to the east coast to settle but to harbors to board ships headed further east, to cross the ocean presumably to Europe (the destinations are never revealed). Crace’s America is thus an emigrant nation (although there doesn’t seem to be any central government, just settlements) but the flow is out rather than in. It’s almost as if we’re watching a film on the history of America spooling backwards, everything in reverse. It’s a strange and invigorating experience.
The novel concerns two of these eastbound emigrants, Franklin and Margaret. Along with his brother, Franklin is fleeing from the Midwest; Margaret lives in a village along their route. After a natural catastrophe kills everyone in Margaret’s village (as well as Franklin’s brother), Franklin and Margaret continue on together. They are driven by “emigration fever,” seized by a vision of better a life. At one point, Franklin imagines the life he hopes to find overseas, sounding a good bit like the promotion tracts that centuries ago lured Europeans to the New World. After admitting he has no idea what life will be like in the lands across the ocean, he adds that he “was sure that life would be more prosperous. How could it not be better there? Safer, too. With opportunity, a word he’d come to love.” He says to Margaret: “And when we’re there, they say that there is land enough for everyone, and buildings made of decorated tone, and palaces and courts and gardens for their beauty, not for food. Three crops a year! Three meals a day!”
Franklin and Margaret’s journey east is essentially that of a road novel but on foot (and occasionally horse), filled with escapades, setbacks, captivity—the stuff of the American adventure tale. Bandits lurk; unfriendly emigrants jostle about; religious fanatics hold sway in their stronghold; unscrupulous farmers prey on the emigrants.
And yet for all the emphasis on America’s cultural legend valorizing the pursuit of a better life lying somewhere further on, there’s another myth lurking in the novel: that of independent yeoman farmer, long associated with Thomas Jefferson and more recently Wendell Berry. In fact, all the while that Franklin is fleeing east he’s haunted by the idea that he should have stayed behind and made a go of it at the homeplace; and Margaret as well dreams of a settled life with Franklin rather than a wandering life, admitting that “she wanted more than anything to settle in one place, a place where they were neither hungry nor afraid. The heart prefers tranquility.”
All in all, The Pesthouse is an exuberant novel interrogating many of the cultural beliefs that have long shaped America. And there’s one haunting line that speaks to the Covid-19 crisis that is now fundamentally reshaping America (and the world): “The toughest maladies have wings,” says Franklin, adding that there is no palisade high enough to keep deadly illness out.
So we’re in a wonky future/past America skewed even more by the reversal of the east-west cultural imaginary from which American mythology has long worked: that the future and a better life lies west. In The Pesthouse everyone is fleeing in the opposite direction, heading east for a new life, and not just to the east coast to settle but to harbors to board ships headed further east, to cross the ocean presumably to Europe (the destinations are never revealed). Crace’s America is thus an emigrant nation (although there doesn’t seem to be any central government, just settlements) but the flow is out rather than in. It’s almost as if we’re watching a film on the history of America spooling backwards, everything in reverse. It’s a strange and invigorating experience.
The novel concerns two of these eastbound emigrants, Franklin and Margaret. Along with his brother, Franklin is fleeing from the Midwest; Margaret lives in a village along their route. After a natural catastrophe kills everyone in Margaret’s village (as well as Franklin’s brother), Franklin and Margaret continue on together. They are driven by “emigration fever,” seized by a vision of better a life. At one point, Franklin imagines the life he hopes to find overseas, sounding a good bit like the promotion tracts that centuries ago lured Europeans to the New World. After admitting he has no idea what life will be like in the lands across the ocean, he adds that he “was sure that life would be more prosperous. How could it not be better there? Safer, too. With opportunity, a word he’d come to love.” He says to Margaret: “And when we’re there, they say that there is land enough for everyone, and buildings made of decorated tone, and palaces and courts and gardens for their beauty, not for food. Three crops a year! Three meals a day!”
Franklin and Margaret’s journey east is essentially that of a road novel but on foot (and occasionally horse), filled with escapades, setbacks, captivity—the stuff of the American adventure tale. Bandits lurk; unfriendly emigrants jostle about; religious fanatics hold sway in their stronghold; unscrupulous farmers prey on the emigrants.
And yet for all the emphasis on America’s cultural legend valorizing the pursuit of a better life lying somewhere further on, there’s another myth lurking in the novel: that of independent yeoman farmer, long associated with Thomas Jefferson and more recently Wendell Berry. In fact, all the while that Franklin is fleeing east he’s haunted by the idea that he should have stayed behind and made a go of it at the homeplace; and Margaret as well dreams of a settled life with Franklin rather than a wandering life, admitting that “she wanted more than anything to settle in one place, a place where they were neither hungry nor afraid. The heart prefers tranquility.”
All in all, The Pesthouse is an exuberant novel interrogating many of the cultural beliefs that have long shaped America. And there’s one haunting line that speaks to the Covid-19 crisis that is now fundamentally reshaping America (and the world): “The toughest maladies have wings,” says Franklin, adding that there is no palisade high enough to keep deadly illness out.
September 2, 2007
Whoa...this book is a trip. I never know what to think when someone says some else's prose is "lyrical" or "hallucinogenic." I only know that this guy is a darn good writer. I'm surprised and not surprised that this book received mixed reviews.
First off, there's that whole "how can a Brit write about America" thing. Well pish-tosh, what Mr. Crace has written isn't just about America. It could have been set in England. Or Germany. Substitute any technologically advanced culture. It works. Eco-disaster? Could happen. Ancient collapsed highways? Already happened in Britain.
Then there's the "it isn't as good as his previous works" argument. I'm just going to brush that one aside. Yes. Blatantly. What is Good? Incredibly dense prose that leads to a morally ambiguous or, preferably, dismal conclusion? Message to Big Newspaper Reviewers: a happy ending can be Good too. And you wonder why the Big Newspapers are jettisoning Book Reviewers?
And now the truth can be known. It isn't as "good" as his previous works because it ends happily and it follows a somewhat predictable path. ...hmmm...happy ending...form-based...Holy Cow! It's Genre!!!!! Oh Mr. Crace, how far you have fallen! You have written a somewhat romantic post-apocalyptic adventure tale!
Out! Out of the Academic Halls of Those Who Know Best!
As you can see, I find most of the negative reviews to be bull-crap. Read the work for its own merits. Apply your own standards. Here are mine:
Does it hold my interest?
Are the characters well-developed?
When scenery must be described is it done vividly?
Does the prose plod away or does it spring to life?
Would a 17 year-old male or female with age-appropriate reading skills be able to read it, be challenged by it, and understand it?
I'm sure I have more standards, but those are 5 of the ones I can think of. A book that a) holds my interest and b)meets 2 of the other standards above is something I might read. The Pesthouse meets all five and then some.
I was pulled into the dystopia and enjoyed it. You may, too.
First off, there's that whole "how can a Brit write about America" thing. Well pish-tosh, what Mr. Crace has written isn't just about America. It could have been set in England. Or Germany. Substitute any technologically advanced culture. It works. Eco-disaster? Could happen. Ancient collapsed highways? Already happened in Britain.
Then there's the "it isn't as good as his previous works" argument. I'm just going to brush that one aside. Yes. Blatantly. What is Good? Incredibly dense prose that leads to a morally ambiguous or, preferably, dismal conclusion? Message to Big Newspaper Reviewers: a happy ending can be Good too. And you wonder why the Big Newspapers are jettisoning Book Reviewers?
And now the truth can be known. It isn't as "good" as his previous works because it ends happily and it follows a somewhat predictable path. ...hmmm...happy ending...form-based...Holy Cow! It's Genre!!!!! Oh Mr. Crace, how far you have fallen! You have written a somewhat romantic post-apocalyptic adventure tale!
Out! Out of the Academic Halls of Those Who Know Best!
As you can see, I find most of the negative reviews to be bull-crap. Read the work for its own merits. Apply your own standards. Here are mine:
Does it hold my interest?
Are the characters well-developed?
When scenery must be described is it done vividly?
Does the prose plod away or does it spring to life?
Would a 17 year-old male or female with age-appropriate reading skills be able to read it, be challenged by it, and understand it?
I'm sure I have more standards, but those are 5 of the ones I can think of. A book that a) holds my interest and b)meets 2 of the other standards above is something I might read. The Pesthouse meets all five and then some.
I was pulled into the dystopia and enjoyed it. You may, too.
August 24, 2014
Jim Crace's second novel,
The Gift Of Stones
, was set in an unnamed village on the English coast at the twilight of the Neolithic period; his eighth,The Pesthouse, moves far into the future, centuries after an unnamed natural disaster has ravaged most of North America.
The event - which apparently consisted of multiple seismic shifts - has destroyed America's infrastructure and demolished her cities and factories, stripping the continent of its industries and technological advances - and stripped the country from any remains of an administrative structure, leaving it without a government. However, the event wasn't fatal - although a disease known as "the flux" has emerged, the soil is still arable and fertile, the water is clean, and birthrate is normal. Instead of demolishing America, the catastrophe has made society regress hundreds of years back into its colonial past, not unlike it was in the seventeenth century - a world full of small, fragmented communities, formed by peasants and craftsmen grow their own food and trade their wares with others. Scientific development has basically vanished, and hunters, nomads and religious cults abound in this world, while the debris fields of destroyed buildings and industrial machines loom in the distance as remains of the past that nobody remembers and few could imagine.
Although society is able to survive on some basic level, people are leaving en masse and heading eastward across the ruined land, where they hope to board ships sailing across the ocean - to Europe and/or Asia, which they presume were untouched by the disaster and where they hope to find a better life. Two brother emigrants, Jason and Franklin Lopes, arrive at the settlement of Ferrytown, just two weeks from the coast. However, just before entering the town, Franklin hobbles his knee and cannot go on; he has to rest in a nearby forest, while his brother goes to Ferrytown alone to get supplies. Deciding to stay the night, he will be among hundreds killed by a tragic natural disaster - leaving Franklin as one of only two survivors. The other is a young woman, Margaret, who survived only because she was sick with the flux - and quarantined in the Pesthouse, an isolated cabin high above the town. Ineluctably, both characters meet, and decide to continue the journey together.
My low rating of The Pesthouse does not reflect on Jim Crace's talent as a writer - the book has his trademark quality, as do all of his works - but is rather concerned with the subject choice. There have been hundreds upon hundreds of dystopian novels with a similar premise, and The Pesthouse to stand out among them. Ordinarily, Jim Crace's writing is tight in rigorous; in this case, Franklin and Margaret embark on an adventure which often feels pointlessly diverted and disengaging. The few interesting portions and buried under those that feel like retreads of familiar tropes. While I found the conclusion satisfying the journey there simply wasn't memorable. Overall, a missed opportunity by a gifted author.
The event - which apparently consisted of multiple seismic shifts - has destroyed America's infrastructure and demolished her cities and factories, stripping the continent of its industries and technological advances - and stripped the country from any remains of an administrative structure, leaving it without a government. However, the event wasn't fatal - although a disease known as "the flux" has emerged, the soil is still arable and fertile, the water is clean, and birthrate is normal. Instead of demolishing America, the catastrophe has made society regress hundreds of years back into its colonial past, not unlike it was in the seventeenth century - a world full of small, fragmented communities, formed by peasants and craftsmen grow their own food and trade their wares with others. Scientific development has basically vanished, and hunters, nomads and religious cults abound in this world, while the debris fields of destroyed buildings and industrial machines loom in the distance as remains of the past that nobody remembers and few could imagine.
Although society is able to survive on some basic level, people are leaving en masse and heading eastward across the ruined land, where they hope to board ships sailing across the ocean - to Europe and/or Asia, which they presume were untouched by the disaster and where they hope to find a better life. Two brother emigrants, Jason and Franklin Lopes, arrive at the settlement of Ferrytown, just two weeks from the coast. However, just before entering the town, Franklin hobbles his knee and cannot go on; he has to rest in a nearby forest, while his brother goes to Ferrytown alone to get supplies. Deciding to stay the night, he will be among hundreds killed by a tragic natural disaster - leaving Franklin as one of only two survivors. The other is a young woman, Margaret, who survived only because she was sick with the flux - and quarantined in the Pesthouse, an isolated cabin high above the town. Ineluctably, both characters meet, and decide to continue the journey together.
My low rating of The Pesthouse does not reflect on Jim Crace's talent as a writer - the book has his trademark quality, as do all of his works - but is rather concerned with the subject choice. There have been hundreds upon hundreds of dystopian novels with a similar premise, and The Pesthouse to stand out among them. Ordinarily, Jim Crace's writing is tight in rigorous; in this case, Franklin and Margaret embark on an adventure which often feels pointlessly diverted and disengaging. The few interesting portions and buried under those that feel like retreads of familiar tropes. While I found the conclusion satisfying the journey there simply wasn't memorable. Overall, a missed opportunity by a gifted author.
June 28, 2007
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)
Longtime followers of my creative projects know that in general I don't like publishing bad reviews; that for the most part I see it as a waste of both my time and yours, in that I could be spending that time instead pointing out great artists you may have never heard of. However, since one of the things this website is dedicated to is honest artistic criticism, I also feel it's important to acknowledge books that I found just too bad to bother finishing, as well as give you an idea of why I found them that bad to begin with. Hence, this new series of short essays.
The Accused: The Pesthouse, by Jim Crace
How far I got: 80 pages (first third), plus the ending
Crimes:
1) Nakedly and shamelessly stealing concepts and plot points from Tatyana Tolstaya's far superior The Slynx, only in an American setting this time and without any of the humor or witty wordplay of the original.
2) Positing a world where a nuclear holocaust for some reason causes the survivors to revert to a hokey "Little House on the Prairie" style vernacular and lifestyle. ("And then Ma, she done told us about the Magic Steel Silos in the East, where they done say that the Wise Short-Haired Ones once used to live, my Ma done told me..." Sheesh, Crace, enough.)
3) Creating the ultimate post-apocalyptic wet dream for snotty east-coast liberal intellectuals; a United States where everything west of the Mississippi has become a series of heathen backwards rural villages, where the only "civilization" left is found on the Atlantic Seaboard (of course), where the mouth-breathing ultra-religious Heartland swarm are causing their own destruction through superstition and a lack of education, and where ultimate salvation can only come by getting on a boat and sailing permanently to Europe (of course!).
4) Being liked by John Updike.
Verdict: Guilty!
Sentence: Six months detention in the Midwest, to perhaps give the author an inkling of how not to horribly insult us. And no, not at the Iowa Writers Workshop.
Longtime followers of my creative projects know that in general I don't like publishing bad reviews; that for the most part I see it as a waste of both my time and yours, in that I could be spending that time instead pointing out great artists you may have never heard of. However, since one of the things this website is dedicated to is honest artistic criticism, I also feel it's important to acknowledge books that I found just too bad to bother finishing, as well as give you an idea of why I found them that bad to begin with. Hence, this new series of short essays.
The Accused: The Pesthouse, by Jim Crace
How far I got: 80 pages (first third), plus the ending
Crimes:
1) Nakedly and shamelessly stealing concepts and plot points from Tatyana Tolstaya's far superior The Slynx, only in an American setting this time and without any of the humor or witty wordplay of the original.
2) Positing a world where a nuclear holocaust for some reason causes the survivors to revert to a hokey "Little House on the Prairie" style vernacular and lifestyle. ("And then Ma, she done told us about the Magic Steel Silos in the East, where they done say that the Wise Short-Haired Ones once used to live, my Ma done told me..." Sheesh, Crace, enough.)
3) Creating the ultimate post-apocalyptic wet dream for snotty east-coast liberal intellectuals; a United States where everything west of the Mississippi has become a series of heathen backwards rural villages, where the only "civilization" left is found on the Atlantic Seaboard (of course), where the mouth-breathing ultra-religious Heartland swarm are causing their own destruction through superstition and a lack of education, and where ultimate salvation can only come by getting on a boat and sailing permanently to Europe (of course!).
4) Being liked by John Updike.
Verdict: Guilty!
Sentence: Six months detention in the Midwest, to perhaps give the author an inkling of how not to horribly insult us. And no, not at the Iowa Writers Workshop.
July 11, 2008
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.
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.
April 11, 2018
I was surprised to see a good amount of bad or so-so reviews. I enjoyed reading this. Never heard of the author but would read him again.
The story is post-apocalyptic but feels like it takes place in medieval times.
I was going to write a review, but find that I don't remember much of what happened at this point to do so.
The story is post-apocalyptic but feels like it takes place in medieval times.
I was going to write a review, but find that I don't remember much of what happened at this point to do so.
April 1, 2011
Poor Jim Crace. Almost every review I’ve read of this book compares it to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and I’m going to do the same. Can’t help it. They’re both novels set in post-apocalyptic America with two people struggling to get to the coast, and they both came out at about the same time too. And to me, The Road was better. It was just a brilliant novel, one of the best I’ve read in years. The Pesthouse was good, but suffers from the comparison.
Whereas The Road is set within living memory of the mysterious disaster that destroyed civilisation, The Pesthouse is set long after. The cities and highways of our present world have mostly disappeared, and the few remaining ruins are complete mysteries to the future inhabitants. They look at the rusty hulks of sunken ships, for example, and think how stupid their ancestors must have been to try to sail something so heavy, which obviously sank before it left the shore.
It’s a story of return – the futuristic America is reminiscent of the America of the past, and everyone is now migrating east towards the hope of sailing to foreign lands, a reversal of the great westward migration of the 19th century. It’s also a love story, as Franklin and Margaret travel together, surviving separation and all kinds of travails to keep pushing east. With their families killed and with violence and depravity all around them, their love is about all they have to cling onto.
Perhaps the reason I didn’t love it as much as The Road was about the language. Cormac McCarthy used a beautifully spare style, and I found it really mesmerising. It was understated, allowing the horror of the situation to speak for itself. Here there is more description, more emotion in the language, and it leaves less to the imagination. Also the relationship between the boy and his father in The Road was touching and believable, whereas the relationship between Franklin and Margaret here feels a little predictable – you know as soon as they meet that they’re going to fall in love, and that even if they get separated in the vast expanse of America with no way to contact each other, they’ll miraculously find each other again.
I’m making it sound as if I didn’t like the book. That’s not true. I liked it well enough, but it just didn’t blow me away as The Road did (there, I mentioned it again!). I don’t regret reading it, but I wouldn’t strongly recommend it to others.
Whereas The Road is set within living memory of the mysterious disaster that destroyed civilisation, The Pesthouse is set long after. The cities and highways of our present world have mostly disappeared, and the few remaining ruins are complete mysteries to the future inhabitants. They look at the rusty hulks of sunken ships, for example, and think how stupid their ancestors must have been to try to sail something so heavy, which obviously sank before it left the shore.
It’s a story of return – the futuristic America is reminiscent of the America of the past, and everyone is now migrating east towards the hope of sailing to foreign lands, a reversal of the great westward migration of the 19th century. It’s also a love story, as Franklin and Margaret travel together, surviving separation and all kinds of travails to keep pushing east. With their families killed and with violence and depravity all around them, their love is about all they have to cling onto.
Perhaps the reason I didn’t love it as much as The Road was about the language. Cormac McCarthy used a beautifully spare style, and I found it really mesmerising. It was understated, allowing the horror of the situation to speak for itself. Here there is more description, more emotion in the language, and it leaves less to the imagination. Also the relationship between the boy and his father in The Road was touching and believable, whereas the relationship between Franklin and Margaret here feels a little predictable – you know as soon as they meet that they’re going to fall in love, and that even if they get separated in the vast expanse of America with no way to contact each other, they’ll miraculously find each other again.
I’m making it sound as if I didn’t like the book. That’s not true. I liked it well enough, but it just didn’t blow me away as The Road did (there, I mentioned it again!). I don’t regret reading it, but I wouldn’t strongly recommend it to others.
January 8, 2009
This book was a nice addition to my post-apocalypse shelf due to the fact that it was primarily a romance novel. But not the harlequin type, fellas; you won't lose any street cred for reading this one.
The setting is many generations after an apocalyptic event that ruined most of North America. Crace doesn't describe the nature of the apocalypse or when it happened (I was guessing around 500 years prior), but these details don't matter. The entire story could have taken place in potato-famine Ireland and been little different. Crace does indicate that it's been long enough for the remaining Americans to have forgotten the purpose of the giant, densely stacked and rotting buildings in forbidden areas and other modern remnants. I thought it was new and interesting to hear the survivors attempt to explain the existence of endless, perfectly flat pathways wide enough to allow dozens of horses to travel abreast (highways).
Many survivors are attempting to travel east and find passage to Europe and promises of better land, a struggle that felt uniquely American to me. This journey is the driving force behind the main two characters and their romance.
The characters are natural, honest and naive. Their romance is hesitant, fearful and hopeful. The chemistry is very endearing. If endearing is not your thing, though, there are plenty of slavers, religious zealots, bandits and wild dogs to keep your attention. Crace found a good balance.
If you'd like to add to an existing post-apocalypse collection, or to ease your way in to the genre with something a little less punishing than The Road, then The Pesthouse definitely needs to be on your to-read list.
The setting is many generations after an apocalyptic event that ruined most of North America. Crace doesn't describe the nature of the apocalypse or when it happened (I was guessing around 500 years prior), but these details don't matter. The entire story could have taken place in potato-famine Ireland and been little different. Crace does indicate that it's been long enough for the remaining Americans to have forgotten the purpose of the giant, densely stacked and rotting buildings in forbidden areas and other modern remnants. I thought it was new and interesting to hear the survivors attempt to explain the existence of endless, perfectly flat pathways wide enough to allow dozens of horses to travel abreast (highways).
Many survivors are attempting to travel east and find passage to Europe and promises of better land, a struggle that felt uniquely American to me. This journey is the driving force behind the main two characters and their romance.
The characters are natural, honest and naive. Their romance is hesitant, fearful and hopeful. The chemistry is very endearing. If endearing is not your thing, though, there are plenty of slavers, religious zealots, bandits and wild dogs to keep your attention. Crace found a good balance.
If you'd like to add to an existing post-apocalypse collection, or to ease your way in to the genre with something a little less punishing than The Road, then The Pesthouse definitely needs to be on your to-read list.
August 24, 2008
I'd heard of Jim Crace, but this was the first book I read of his, and it was a happy surprise. It's a post-apocalyptic love story between two characters on a pilgrimage to supposed safety. Elements of Mad Max minus the heroics and The Grapes of Wrath, but with warmth.
May 11, 2018
I wouldn't be the first person to note a certain similarity with Cormac McCarthy's bleak post-apocalyptic The Road although it appears that I am very much in the minority in preferring Crace's novel.
In contrast with The Road, it is not straight-forwardly, or at least, immediately, post-apocalyptic. Rather, it is set in a world that appears recognisably medieval in terms of its technology and local social organisation - there are horses and carts, townships and tolls, farms and potters, but there is, on the other hand, no sign of anything resembling a national government or state. There are only occasional clues that set this story in the future, rather than an imagined past.
Set in the ruins of industrial civilisation, it is left unsaid what caused its disintegration, whether it was sudden collapse or protracted decline over hundreds of years. Nonetheless, there appears to be some new unspecified collapse in the west which is leading people to migrate eastward, where there are rumours of a much more developed, richer civilisation on the other side of the ocean. The story begins with two brothers, Franklin and Jackson, on that eastward migration, but they quickly become separated and the majority of the novel focuses on an understated romance between Franklin and Margaret, a woman he meets at a 'Pesthouse' - a kind of quarantine for people believed to be suffering from 'the flux' (as best I can tell, the bubonic plague - one of the ways in which civilisation has regressed is that modern medicine is not even a memory. People seek to cure illness by attaching a pigeon to their feet to drain the toxins from their body and into the bird...)
They in turn become separated when they run into slavers, who take the healthy adults captive, while leaving the old, the infirm and the young to their fate.
I would struggle to say exactly what it was that I liked about this book so much more than The Road . There is a plot of sorts, but it's really about the journey through a strange world, and perhaps it was this, and the fact that it was not simply a way for the author to channel his feelings of melodramatic despair. I also liked some of the little details – in particular the eccentric religious order, the Finger Bishops, that Margaret finds herself spending some time with. It seemed exactly the kind of Chinese Whispers version of a monastry that could emerge over time if civilisation were to crumble.
I liked the little nods to the passage of time – there's a reference at one point early on in the book (which I'm afraid I don't have in front of me right now, so I won't attempt to recall it) to a poem with 'rhyme words' that do not, of course, rhyme in any contemporary dialect of English that I've ever heard. But which, given time, could eventually end up doing so (some future equivalent of the great vowel-shift?). And then there's Margaret's astonishment when she stumbles on what are clearly a pair of binoculars, though she does not recognise them as such, regarding them as an artefact of an unimaginably complex society.
Interesting enough, then, that I think I should chase down some more Jim Crace novels.
In contrast with The Road, it is not straight-forwardly, or at least, immediately, post-apocalyptic. Rather, it is set in a world that appears recognisably medieval in terms of its technology and local social organisation - there are horses and carts, townships and tolls, farms and potters, but there is, on the other hand, no sign of anything resembling a national government or state. There are only occasional clues that set this story in the future, rather than an imagined past.
Set in the ruins of industrial civilisation, it is left unsaid what caused its disintegration, whether it was sudden collapse or protracted decline over hundreds of years. Nonetheless, there appears to be some new unspecified collapse in the west which is leading people to migrate eastward, where there are rumours of a much more developed, richer civilisation on the other side of the ocean. The story begins with two brothers, Franklin and Jackson, on that eastward migration, but they quickly become separated and the majority of the novel focuses on an understated romance between Franklin and Margaret, a woman he meets at a 'Pesthouse' - a kind of quarantine for people believed to be suffering from 'the flux' (as best I can tell, the bubonic plague - one of the ways in which civilisation has regressed is that modern medicine is not even a memory. People seek to cure illness by attaching a pigeon to their feet to drain the toxins from their body and into the bird...)
They in turn become separated when they run into slavers, who take the healthy adults captive, while leaving the old, the infirm and the young to their fate.
I would struggle to say exactly what it was that I liked about this book so much more than The Road . There is a plot of sorts, but it's really about the journey through a strange world, and perhaps it was this, and the fact that it was not simply a way for the author to channel his feelings of melodramatic despair. I also liked some of the little details – in particular the eccentric religious order, the Finger Bishops, that Margaret finds herself spending some time with. It seemed exactly the kind of Chinese Whispers version of a monastry that could emerge over time if civilisation were to crumble.
I liked the little nods to the passage of time – there's a reference at one point early on in the book (which I'm afraid I don't have in front of me right now, so I won't attempt to recall it) to a poem with 'rhyme words' that do not, of course, rhyme in any contemporary dialect of English that I've ever heard. But which, given time, could eventually end up doing so (some future equivalent of the great vowel-shift?). And then there's Margaret's astonishment when she stumbles on what are clearly a pair of binoculars, though she does not recognise them as such, regarding them as an artefact of an unimaginably complex society.
Interesting enough, then, that I think I should chase down some more Jim Crace novels.
September 20, 2017
America post-apocaliptică este foarte asemănătoare cu America de acum câteva secole, cu Evul mediu de oriunde: este populată de găști de tâlhari, au loc la fiecare pas crime și violuri, febra căutării pământului plin de ”aur” și rodnic domină, clădirile sunt niște ruine, există secte care propovăduiesc mântuirea sub o formă sau alta.
Între toate acestea, sunt oameni care încearcă să supraviețuiască și să răzbată spre ocean, de unde pot evada spre Europa. Numai că nimic nu este de încredere, iar eroii noștri, Franklin și Margaret, trebuie să treacă peste molimă și peste moartea rudelor pentru a avea o viață bună. Împreună sau nu.
Un roman foarte intens și imprevizibil, care împletește tonul post-apocaliptic cu unul medieval, lupta pentru supraviețuire cu primele semne ale iubirii într-o lume total ostilă.
Jim Crace scrie foarte bine.
Între toate acestea, sunt oameni care încearcă să supraviețuiască și să răzbată spre ocean, de unde pot evada spre Europa. Numai că nimic nu este de încredere, iar eroii noștri, Franklin și Margaret, trebuie să treacă peste molimă și peste moartea rudelor pentru a avea o viață bună. Împreună sau nu.
Un roman foarte intens și imprevizibil, care împletește tonul post-apocaliptic cu unul medieval, lupta pentru supraviețuire cu primele semne ale iubirii într-o lume total ostilă.
Jim Crace scrie foarte bine.
August 1, 2012
Meh. This novel is slow to start, picks up nicely in the middle, then has a crap ending. Sadly, it had a lot of potential. It was like The Road in slow motion with less suspense, toned-down violence, and wimpier characters. And at least in The Road I genuinely liked the man and the boy. In this novel, Margaret was alright, but Franklin was a complete loser. I'm sorry, nice guys in post-apocalyptic wastelands finish last. You need to be ruthless and quick, not plodding and optimistic. My biggest problem with the novel was the characters - they were all complete and utter wimps. The men just let themselves get taken into slavery and then never stage a revolt, and the women never, ever do anything! There are women at one point who are angry because they can't get on the ships because they don't have a trade like the men do. Well, instead of being a whore and complain about it, why don't you (gasp!) LEARN A TRADE? Seriously. If I were in their situation I would find a way to learn a trade to get on the ship. But no, they just decide they'd rather be lazy and be whores. And Margaret isn't all that great either. There's naive and then there's stupid. You were naive the first time, but the second time? Why don't you take a knife with you, idiot? Seriously, the women in this novel pissed me right off. This is supposed to be post-apocalyptic, right, so why aren't there women who are the granddaughters of strong women like we have today? It seems completely illogical that everyone would revert back to a medieval conception of women? Argh!!
Also, it is never explained why the world is post-apocalyptic. I'm fine with that, actually I enjoy that speculative aspect of the genre, but the author has to do it properly; they have to provide subtle hints as to whether it was nukes or biological warfare or what. That "road" they come to at one point... is that supposed to a crater? That seems like the only indication that a bomb had been dropped, but I'm still not sure if that's even what the road was. It could have just been a damn road. Also, Did a barrel of nuclear waste roll into it? Was it some kind of miasma? If so, where did it dissipate into? Shit like that doesn't just come out of the woods and then retreat again!
Anyway, the novel's only mitigating factors were as follows: it was only 250 pages, it was very detailed description-wise (except for the road part), and... it was only 250 pages.
The ending sucked. I get the point of it, but
Yeah, so only read this book if you're really bored.
Also, it is never explained why the world is post-apocalyptic. I'm fine with that, actually I enjoy that speculative aspect of the genre, but the author has to do it properly; they have to provide subtle hints as to whether it was nukes or biological warfare or what. That "road" they come to at one point... is that supposed to a crater? That seems like the only indication that a bomb had been dropped, but I'm still not sure if that's even what the road was. It could have just been a damn road. Also, Did a barrel of nuclear waste roll into it? Was it some kind of miasma? If so, where did it dissipate into? Shit like that doesn't just come out of the woods and then retreat again!
Anyway, the novel's only mitigating factors were as follows: it was only 250 pages, it was very detailed description-wise (except for the road part), and... it was only 250 pages.
The ending sucked. I get the point of it, but
Yeah, so only read this book if you're really bored.
June 17, 2010
The Pesthouse is set in the distant future, though I'm not exactly sure how distant. America is a vast wilderness where Americans are infected with sickness and there is a lack of all modern conveniences, including medicines and electricity. People are emigrating from the interior to the east coast in hopes of catching a ship to take them somewhere better, although no one seems to know much about these places beyond the sea, only that things will be better there.
Margaret is infected with the "flux" and has been banished from her village, Ferrytown, to the pesthouse up on Butter Hill. She will be left there until she either dies of the flux or recovers enough to come back to the village on her own. Franklin is an emigrant, traveling to the east from his failed family farm with his older brother Jackson. He has become lame after many days of travel over rough country and finally talks Jackson into letting him rest in the woods above Ferrytown while Jackson goes on to see if he can get them some food and a spot on the ferry that will take them across the river.
Franklin discovers Margaret in the little sod house on the hill and is at first afraid of her illness. But life outside the pesthouse becomes uncomfortable with rain and cold finally driving him to seek shelter in the house with Margaret. The two are brought together after a natural disaster wipes out the town, including Margaret's family and Franklin's brother, Jackson. They decide to continue Franklin's journey to the east, both of them in search of a better life. Instead they find more trouble and hardship than they'd had before ever setting out. But they also find love and a new family, one to call their own.
I enjoyed this book very much and intend to read more by Jim Crace. The story had more to it than the standard post-apocalypse fare that I love. And while many times I get frustrated with an author who leaves to much unsaid, I think I enjoyed speculating on all the possible reasons for the condition that America was in and why people had adapted their lives in they way they had. I was especially intrigued by the Helpless Gentlemen and the Ark in Tidewater; that place creeped me out! Margaret and Franklin were entirely believable characters and their voices kept me reading and rooting for them to find happiness again. If you're looking for something a little more hopeful than McCarthy's The Road, try this one. It's a good read!
Margaret is infected with the "flux" and has been banished from her village, Ferrytown, to the pesthouse up on Butter Hill. She will be left there until she either dies of the flux or recovers enough to come back to the village on her own. Franklin is an emigrant, traveling to the east from his failed family farm with his older brother Jackson. He has become lame after many days of travel over rough country and finally talks Jackson into letting him rest in the woods above Ferrytown while Jackson goes on to see if he can get them some food and a spot on the ferry that will take them across the river.
Franklin discovers Margaret in the little sod house on the hill and is at first afraid of her illness. But life outside the pesthouse becomes uncomfortable with rain and cold finally driving him to seek shelter in the house with Margaret. The two are brought together after a natural disaster wipes out the town, including Margaret's family and Franklin's brother, Jackson. They decide to continue Franklin's journey to the east, both of them in search of a better life. Instead they find more trouble and hardship than they'd had before ever setting out. But they also find love and a new family, one to call their own.
I enjoyed this book very much and intend to read more by Jim Crace. The story had more to it than the standard post-apocalypse fare that I love. And while many times I get frustrated with an author who leaves to much unsaid, I think I enjoyed speculating on all the possible reasons for the condition that America was in and why people had adapted their lives in they way they had. I was especially intrigued by the Helpless Gentlemen and the Ark in Tidewater; that place creeped me out! Margaret and Franklin were entirely believable characters and their voices kept me reading and rooting for them to find happiness again. If you're looking for something a little more hopeful than McCarthy's The Road, try this one. It's a good read!
June 26, 2009
This book is very similar to and came out close to the same time as The Road. However, it's not so bleakly dark and has a happy ending rather than a bittersweet one. Rather than a boy and his father pushing a shopping cart to the southern coast, a man and a woman push a barrow to the eastern coast. However, both authors choose to leave America's apocalypse as a mystery of the past.
The Pesthouse is set in a 1000-year-old America which has seen better days. Technology is a thing of the past and literacy is non-existent. The hope and dream for those who are left is to reach the coast, sail across the ocean, and hope things are better on a foreign shore. Two brothers leave their home on the plains for the ocean. Only one brother makes it, finding adventure and love along the way.
I greatly enjoyed the lyrical quality of the author's prose. There is very little dialogue in this novel which works nicely. The cadence of the book makes for an enjoyable read. It's easy to find yourself finishing up the book in only one or two sittings. I wonder if this book might have made a bigger splash if it hadn't been preceded by a more famous author's rendition of a similar idea. Jim Crace really deserves more fame than he has. I, for one, am adding all his previous works to my wishlist after this one read.
The Pesthouse is set in a 1000-year-old America which has seen better days. Technology is a thing of the past and literacy is non-existent. The hope and dream for those who are left is to reach the coast, sail across the ocean, and hope things are better on a foreign shore. Two brothers leave their home on the plains for the ocean. Only one brother makes it, finding adventure and love along the way.
I greatly enjoyed the lyrical quality of the author's prose. There is very little dialogue in this novel which works nicely. The cadence of the book makes for an enjoyable read. It's easy to find yourself finishing up the book in only one or two sittings. I wonder if this book might have made a bigger splash if it hadn't been preceded by a more famous author's rendition of a similar idea. Jim Crace really deserves more fame than he has. I, for one, am adding all his previous works to my wishlist after this one read.
May 28, 2007
I heard about The Pesthouse on The Diane Rehm Show. I thought the author sounded really interesting and the plot fascinating. But it turns out that the story is about as strong as Diane’s voice. (Oh no he didn’t!) (Oh yes I did!)
Anyway, the story really doesn’t go anywhere and seems to get bogged down with narrative. I honestly can’t find anything remarkable about the book. At the same time, I can’t find anything remarkably terrible about it either. I guess I’d say that reading it was like being in zero gravity. (as if I have a clue what that’s really like.) Nothing pulled me one way or another. A very average story.
Anyway, the story really doesn’t go anywhere and seems to get bogged down with narrative. I honestly can’t find anything remarkable about the book. At the same time, I can’t find anything remarkably terrible about it either. I guess I’d say that reading it was like being in zero gravity. (as if I have a clue what that’s really like.) Nothing pulled me one way or another. A very average story.
July 3, 2016
I started reading this book on holiday in 2012. It wasn't interesting enough to continue at the time but I recently came across it and I was curious to see what would happen.
As it turns out, nothing really happens. I did like the different type of post apocalyptic world but it was all very repetitive and quite boring.
As it turns out, nothing really happens. I did like the different type of post apocalyptic world but it was all very repetitive and quite boring.
June 17, 2016
This book reads as if Jim Crace's publishers saw how popular The Road was and said "Hey Jim, we'll pay you a bunch of money to write something just like The Road." And he did. And it was bad.
For now I will assume that it doesn't reflect on Jim Crace's less commissioned works.
For now I will assume that it doesn't reflect on Jim Crace's less commissioned works.
April 28, 2020
Dystopian Novel
I’m not the biggest fan of dystopian novels but since I’m living in my home during a pandemic I thought I might try one. The Pesthouse is about a bubonic plague in America novel. People have gone back to horses, carriages, slaves and odd religious cults. I think I might have found more pathos in the story of it wasn’t so stuck in another era. Maybe bubonic plague, horses and buggies aren’t the way we’re going but the past. Something new might be our pandemic story.
I’m not the biggest fan of dystopian novels but since I’m living in my home during a pandemic I thought I might try one. The Pesthouse is about a bubonic plague in America novel. People have gone back to horses, carriages, slaves and odd religious cults. I think I might have found more pathos in the story of it wasn’t so stuck in another era. Maybe bubonic plague, horses and buggies aren’t the way we’re going but the past. Something new might be our pandemic story.
November 1, 2021
A story of challenges, communication and crisis. Mr Crace has a compelling eloquence in his writing, and the slow pace of the story allows the reader to enjoy the journey. I found myself empathising with the key characters of Franklin (Pidgeon) and Margaret (Mags) and willing them to move forward. Whilst this is undoubtedly a love story; it's so much more. Humanity in it's continuum of evil to kindness and all points in between, in a land ravaged by greed and arrogance. A testimony to Mr Crace, that despite preferring faster pace novels, I savoured this one... and want more!
December 21, 2017
Bought this from the sale table at McNally Jackson on or near Independent Bookstore Day, in 2016, or maybe 2015?
August 18, 2018
This is the most booorrriing post-apocalyptic book I have ever read - in fact, maybe the most boring book in any category. Certainly the terrible audiobook narration didn't help - Michael Kramer brings all the excitement of an NPR newscaster - but I don't think the story would have fared much better with a different narrator or if I'd read it myself. I only read this book because a review of another post-apoc book - The Dog Stars - compared it to both Pesthouse and The Road. However, comparing this book to The Road is like comparing Battlefield Earth to The Foundation Trilogy.
(WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW!)
To begin with, the two main characters are dull, dull, dull. They're certainly not heroic, and not even particularly likeable. When Franklin is kidnapped, Margaret mopes a bit but never makes any attempt to find much less rescue him. And Margaret shows only the briefest flickers of regret when she steals another family's child to raise as her own - a moral issue Crace explores in only the loosest terms. As to Franklin, he is basically a large, dim doofus, only one or two notches above Lenny in Of Mice and Men.
And then there's the plot, or what there is of it. The book jacket hints at the "bizarre demands" of the Ark as if it's a major story component - and indeed, when Margaret reaches the Ark it turns out to hold a lot of dramatic potential. But that potential is never explored, as the Ark appears and then disappears within a few chapters through which Margaret effortlessly breezes, with her long winter months there described in a few brief paragraphs. Throughout the book, there is no major conflict, no main antagonist - just Pidgeon and Mags rambling towards the coast. (If you care - and trust me, you shouldn't - the post-apocalyptic "vision" of The Pesthouse falls somewhere between the utter desolation of The Road and the more upbeat World Made By Hand, if you can ever use the word "upbeat" to describe this genre.)
The one thing I DID like about the book is the fact that there is never any explanation for how America ended up the way it did, apparently centuries after some apocalyptic disaster. In fact, the early chapters of the book read more like a Western, with only hints that this is less than the Old West as we know it - such as their being no guns, just bows and arrows as weapons; or mention of Margaret's random collection of coins "from the old America." I also liked the kickoff of a landslide triggering the release of underwater gases that wipe out all of Ferrytown, creating a bizarre ghost town where every living creature died in its sleep. But towards the end, some of these "distant future" items don't make sense: how long in the future would this be for society to have forgotten how to read (but yet still use words like "knucklehead"), or to have apparently lost the use of all machinery?
In the end, what most hurts The Pesthouse (which also doesn't play much of a role in the story) is that this is ultimately an unnecessary book, as it doesn't cover any new ground that hasn't been covered better elsewhere.
(WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW!)
To begin with, the two main characters are dull, dull, dull. They're certainly not heroic, and not even particularly likeable. When Franklin is kidnapped, Margaret mopes a bit but never makes any attempt to find much less rescue him. And Margaret shows only the briefest flickers of regret when she steals another family's child to raise as her own - a moral issue Crace explores in only the loosest terms. As to Franklin, he is basically a large, dim doofus, only one or two notches above Lenny in Of Mice and Men.
And then there's the plot, or what there is of it. The book jacket hints at the "bizarre demands" of the Ark as if it's a major story component - and indeed, when Margaret reaches the Ark it turns out to hold a lot of dramatic potential. But that potential is never explored, as the Ark appears and then disappears within a few chapters through which Margaret effortlessly breezes, with her long winter months there described in a few brief paragraphs. Throughout the book, there is no major conflict, no main antagonist - just Pidgeon and Mags rambling towards the coast. (If you care - and trust me, you shouldn't - the post-apocalyptic "vision" of The Pesthouse falls somewhere between the utter desolation of The Road and the more upbeat World Made By Hand, if you can ever use the word "upbeat" to describe this genre.)
The one thing I DID like about the book is the fact that there is never any explanation for how America ended up the way it did, apparently centuries after some apocalyptic disaster. In fact, the early chapters of the book read more like a Western, with only hints that this is less than the Old West as we know it - such as their being no guns, just bows and arrows as weapons; or mention of Margaret's random collection of coins "from the old America." I also liked the kickoff of a landslide triggering the release of underwater gases that wipe out all of Ferrytown, creating a bizarre ghost town where every living creature died in its sleep. But towards the end, some of these "distant future" items don't make sense: how long in the future would this be for society to have forgotten how to read (but yet still use words like "knucklehead"), or to have apparently lost the use of all machinery?
In the end, what most hurts The Pesthouse (which also doesn't play much of a role in the story) is that this is ultimately an unnecessary book, as it doesn't cover any new ground that hasn't been covered better elsewhere.
August 19, 2010
Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure sure sure, comparisons to The Road are inevitable and maybe (or maybe not) unfair, but really, what can you say about The Pesthouse, really, other than it just isn't as successful McCarthy's take on postapocalyptia. The approaches are similar, where little is given concerning the cause of the current state of the world, and the focus of the book is two figures crossing a bleak and ruined continent. Crace's book is essentially a love story, though, which I thought was to its detriment. Pretty well-paced at the beginning, the story started to sag and the characters seemed a bit directionless about half-way through. I thought the Finger Baptists were contrived and cringe-inducingly silly, and, really, I didn't quite care what happened to Mag or Franklin. I cared more about the two characters in Being Dead, and those people were already dead. Crace's tone also wavers here, is probably my biggest complaint. I also didn't like the timelessness/ahistorical nature of things, which may be a personal preference. I'm assuming this is meant to be set in the future, though all traces of technology seem to have disappeared, and, more strangely, language seems to have devolved to that of antebellum time, what with some of the things characters say every now and then. Whatever. Pretty well-written, but overall I was disappointed. I'll keep reading Crace.
March 1, 2017
This book is set in a futuristic post-apocalyptic type America, that is surprisingly reminiscent of frontier America in terms of technology and lifestyle. Franklin Lopez, traveling with his brother Jackson to the east coast, in hopes of boarding a ship to escape America, is injured, and thus becomes separated from his brother. He soon meets a woman named Margaret, confined to a pesthouse by an apparent outbreak of flux. Margaret and Franklin begin to travel together toward the east, meeting rogues, ruffians, religious extremists, scared average folks, and desperate people along the way. They are separated for a time, but come back together, joined by others along the way.
This book was ok, but didn't seem all that original. Maybe it's because I recently read The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which also discusses traveling through post-apocalyptic America, or maybe it's just because it really felt like the book was more about a rather banal romance between an awkward man and a hesitant spinster than about humans struggling to survive in an apocalyptic world. Plus the frontier vibe kept throwing me off, I kept forgetting that this was supposedly in the future. And the narrator kept breaking out of voice to ask questions like "Why did Franklin do such and such?" or "How did Margaret respond to so and so?" which is always annoying to me.
This book was ok, but didn't seem all that original. Maybe it's because I recently read The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which also discusses traveling through post-apocalyptic America, or maybe it's just because it really felt like the book was more about a rather banal romance between an awkward man and a hesitant spinster than about humans struggling to survive in an apocalyptic world. Plus the frontier vibe kept throwing me off, I kept forgetting that this was supposedly in the future. And the narrator kept breaking out of voice to ask questions like "Why did Franklin do such and such?" or "How did Margaret respond to so and so?" which is always annoying to me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 17, 2013
Jim Crace is clearly a masterful writer, the prose is beautiful, reminding me in some parts of Cormac McCarthy's dreamy, descriptive style. In fact, The Pesthouse in itself is rather like The Road, only with a bit of colour, optimism and a not-unhappy ending.
I so wanted to like this, if just for Crace's admirable ability as a writer. That said, the long, descriptive paragraphs, full of sentences, skillfully put together, broken by numerous commas, used to say the same thing, again, in another way, differently, from another point of view, not quite the same as before, do get, after a while, tiring and repetitive. Like too much sweet filling in a cake.
Sadly the book, for me, in spite of the craftsmanship, narrated in a third person that kept me distanced from the (rather bland, yet all too real) characters, had no heart or point. People set out on a voyage seeking a better life in a distant place. Disaster occurs. People die, mismatched people meet, fall in love, yet cant consummate or express that love, people are separated, people meet again and return to where they started from.
I just didn't get it - it was either too deep or there wasn't anything to get, except perhaps the vague notion that we should follow our hearts not convention and, no matter how bad things get, the grass always appears greener on the other side of the fence.
I so wanted to like this, if just for Crace's admirable ability as a writer. That said, the long, descriptive paragraphs, full of sentences, skillfully put together, broken by numerous commas, used to say the same thing, again, in another way, differently, from another point of view, not quite the same as before, do get, after a while, tiring and repetitive. Like too much sweet filling in a cake.
Sadly the book, for me, in spite of the craftsmanship, narrated in a third person that kept me distanced from the (rather bland, yet all too real) characters, had no heart or point. People set out on a voyage seeking a better life in a distant place. Disaster occurs. People die, mismatched people meet, fall in love, yet cant consummate or express that love, people are separated, people meet again and return to where they started from.
I just didn't get it - it was either too deep or there wasn't anything to get, except perhaps the vague notion that we should follow our hearts not convention and, no matter how bad things get, the grass always appears greener on the other side of the fence.
January 25, 2010
The Pesthouse to me was The Road-lite. Same journey towards the coast, same conflict with roving bands of marauders. However, the landscape is quite a bit more pleasant, there's a love story, and no cannibalism. This does not mean it has less of an impact, or is a weaker story, but the parallels are certainly there.
My issue with this book was with its dystopian elements. I am a big fan of the genre, and in the best examples of these books the setting is just as important as the characters. Why the world of the book is the way it is, what went wrong with our world which resulted in the world of the book, those are what separate a good dystopian story from straight fantasy. The Pesthouse is very light on dystopian setting. We never get a sense of why America has eroded into a middle-age style agrarian society. Despite a few landscape links and some cryptic discussions of how long it has been since the world collapsed, this was a decent emigration story that could have been set in potato-famine Ireland or Venus without much alteration.
My issue with this book was with its dystopian elements. I am a big fan of the genre, and in the best examples of these books the setting is just as important as the characters. Why the world of the book is the way it is, what went wrong with our world which resulted in the world of the book, those are what separate a good dystopian story from straight fantasy. The Pesthouse is very light on dystopian setting. We never get a sense of why America has eroded into a middle-age style agrarian society. Despite a few landscape links and some cryptic discussions of how long it has been since the world collapsed, this was a decent emigration story that could have been set in potato-famine Ireland or Venus without much alteration.
July 22, 2007
Meh. Not so great. Not really worth the read, in my opinion. It's the story of a man and a woman during some unexplained post-apocolyptic future America who are journeying to the ocean in hopes of getting on a boat to Europe, which has now become the destination of choice for all hopeless Americans. Take away the artifice of the post-apocalyptic setting and the story is really a rather shallow and uninspired story that has been done time and again by better authors. I felt like the author never fully embraced his story or characters, and skirted around or glossed over potentially meaningful threads like survival ethics, the human spirit, and the idea of love being both fragile and a source of great strength. There's no real plot or depth the set this particular story apart from all the other similar stories. (It's unavoidable to compare Pesthouse to The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. And The Road wins hands down.)Ultimately, I was disappointed and unimpressed.
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