Jim Crace

Jim Crace is a truly great writer, up there with Coetzee, Marquez and Roth for me. He is always serious and only rarely does he get out of control. But after Genesis and Devil's Larder---huge stinkers---I got a little wary. I let Pesthouse pass me by. But I shouldn't have. It is quite good in a quiet almost gentle way.

Given Crace's habit of pulling no punches----remember the slow disintegration of the corpses of Being Dead, no maggot undocumented, or the breast feeding woman's mastitis in Arcadia? Ouch.I still do. Pesthouse is about a man and a woman trying to flee with the rest of the inhabitants of a dystopic America. Somehow it manages to be both horrifying and tender. He doesn't spend a lot of time explaining how America got this way---it just is, there is no set up, no explanation. But details like how a baby's dry lips are softened with the woman's ear wax are plentiful.

"A writer of hallucinatory skill" the late John Updike said. I agree, John, except for the two stinkers.