MADreads

On the road, post 9/11 style

June 4th, 2007 Jim - South Madison

Sarah at Alicia Ashman recently mentioned feeling alone in her liking of Jim Crace.  Her post reminded me how much I too have enjoyed his work and prompted me to discover that he has new novel, The Pesthouse.

A big part of The Pesthouse is its setting in a future America. After catastrophes specified and unspecified, it is a decidedly primitive place: there appear to be no cars, no communication systems, no science or medicine.  A harsh and lawless place, the majority of this America’s woebegone inhabitants are in the process of picking up stakes and heading East.  Pathetic and near hopeless, they mindlessly stream toward the ocean and sailing ships, neither of which they’ve ever seen (and can hardly imagine).  In reality, nobody seems quite sure where they are going, other than East, but they feel the time’s come to flee.  Vivid and detailed, the setting of this novel is worth the price of admission; it serves the English Crace as a forum from which he casts a caustic eye on modern America and the ideas and myths that have shaped it.

However, it is the love story at the center of the novel that won my heart.  Among the desperate stream of would-be emigrants are two comically shy, gentle and sheltered individuals: the literally giant mama’s boy Franklin who grew up in the sticks of this stickish America and the radically bereft and mortally ill Margaret who heretofore has led a sheltered life in a clannish community.

Compelled by circumstance, having lost everything and everyone close to them and confronted by a world for which they feel grievously ill-suited, the two turn to each other as a last resort.  Unable to imagine another way forward, they find themselves ‘drawn’ into the desperate Eastward tide of emigrants.  As they confront harrowing adventures on their journey East, toward a land of dreams both are too smart to really believe in, they create/find a home with each other.

I came to this book fresh after reading Cormac McCarthy’s dark and moving novel, The Road.  The two novels share a remarkable amount in terms of story and theme. One can only wonder if the two were aware that they were writing such similar stories at the same time.  Someone, somewhere, should see if the two would review the other’s novel.

Ultimately, the two books are very different in how they treat their material and the differences favor Crace.  McCarthy’s book felt like an elegy. Crace’s book is marked by humor and compassion. It offers pertinent reflections and ideas.  It offers hope.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction