Being Dead
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Written by Jim Crace.
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Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)
"Their bodies had expired, but anyone could tell—just look at them—that Joseph and Celice were still devoted. For while his hand was touching her, curved round her shin, the couple seemed to have achieved that peace the world denies, a period of grace, defying even murder. Anyone who found them there, so wickedly disfigured, would nevertheless be bound to see that something of their love had survived the death of cells. The corpses were surrendered to the weather and the earth, but they were still a man and wife, quietly resting; flesh on flesh; dead, but not departed yet."
From that moment forward, Being Dead becomes less about murder and more about death. Alternating chapters move back in time from the murder in hourly and two-hourly increments. As the narrative moves backward, we see Celice and Joseph make the small decisions about their day that will lead them inexorably towards their own deaths. In other chapters the narrative moves forward. Celice and Joseph are on vacation and nobody misses them until they do not return. Thus, it is six days before their bodies are found. Crace describes in minute detail their gradual return to the land with the help of crabs, birds, and the numerous insects that attack the body and gently and not so gently prepare it for the dust-to-dust phase of death.
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MaTitwonky thinks this book is Worth Reading.
Being Dead is about Celice and Joseph who decide to take a day off from working (actually Joseph decides for them) so they can revisit a secluded place that holds sentimental memories as well as one jarring remembrance from before they were married. Joseph wants to recapture the feeling of lust and youth they experienced and have lost over the 30 years of their marriage. They are murdered at their lonely spot, and it takes 6 days before they are found. The substance of the story involves what happens to this sad, dead couple during that 6 days as well as a recap as to what brought them to this spot in the first place.
Being Dead is about a marriage of long duration, what attracts people to one another at the beginning of relationships, and what holds them together after the daily mundane events of life take over their partnership. It's a sad story because interspersed with the retelling of Celice and Joseph's life together is the present event of their union in death.
For me this book was exactly the right length. Less of it could have raised the question, "So what?" More of it would have become tedious.
I'd recommend this book to someone looking for a different kind of story than the usual mainstream novel that's interesting, thought provoking, and ultimately, sad.