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Quarantine
Winner of the Whitbread Novel of the Year and a Booker Prize finalist.
Under an endless and unforgiving sky, four travellers enter the Judean desert in search of redemption. Instead, amidst the barren rocks, they are met by a dangerous man, Musa, and fall under his dark influence. But there is a fervent, solitary figure also sharing their landscape, denying the temptations of his neighbours, and, ultimately, the needs of his own body. So begin forty days and nights in one of the most unhospitable terrains on earth.
Under an endless and unforgiving sky, four travellers enter the Judean desert in search of redemption. Instead, amidst the barren rocks, they are met by a dangerous man, Musa, and fall under his dark influence. But there is a fervent, solitary figure also sharing their landscape, denying the temptations of his neighbours, and, ultimately, the needs of his own body. So begin forty days and nights in one of the most unhospitable terrains on earth.
256 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1997
106 people are currently reading
3487 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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April 2, 2023
What has one to do in the desert? Why do pilgrims, sinners, hermits and saints go there? Why had Jesus gone to the wilderness?
But who is nearer to you, God or Devil? Who sends all the ordeals and temptations?
Tyrants and God have the same nature – they are liars and they pursue their own purposes.
There was nothing else for Jesus to do, except to simplify his life. Repentance, meditation, prayer. Those were the joys of solitude. They had sustained the prophets for a thousand years. And they would be his daily companions. He started rocking with each word of prayer, putting all his body into it, speaking it out loud, concentrating on the sound, so that no part of him could be concerned with lesser matters or be reminded of the fear, the hunger and the chill. He seemed to find his adolescent rhapsodies. The prayers were in command of him. He shouted out across the valley, happy with the noise he made.
But who is nearer to you, God or Devil? Who sends all the ordeals and temptations?
He begged the devil to fly up and save him from the wind. He'd almost welcome the devil more than god. For the devil can be traded with, and exorcized. But god is ruthless and unstable.
Tyrants and God have the same nature – they are liars and they pursue their own purposes.
January 28, 2024
Alone But Never Lonely
Quarantine is Crace’s very appropriate term for Jesus’s forty days seclusion in the wilderness shortly after his baptism in the Jordan River. According to all of the synoptic gospels, he is ‘approved’ by God in his earthly mission at that ceremony. Forty days in the life of an individual (or forty years in the life of a people) is an important biblical poetical trope, which Crace appreciates as exactly what it is: a period of fundamental transformation in the nature of one’s being. The literary context of the forty days is important in order to understand Crace’s interpretation of the story.
Forty days as a spiritually significant period first appears in the book of Genesis. It is the period of persistent rain which wipes out the creation that has disappointed YHWH. It appears that YHWH was banking on a bit of high-speed natural selection. Noah’s family were spared his (later regretted) purge but had to undergo a double dose of purification - forty days of rain and forty days of drying out. One can only speculate about the ethical quality of human beings if the original gene pool had survived intact.
Although several of the patriarchs only marry at forty years of age, suggesting a period of maturation rather than purification, the cultural significance of forty years is established clearly by Israel’s wandering in the desert of Sinai after their escape from Egypt. During this period they are fed on the miraculously provided ‘manna,’ perhaps signifying the necessity for preparing to enter the promised land. Noah’s purification affected all of humanity; the desert wandering was an entirely Jewish affair.
While the Jewish nation was being held captive in Egypt, Moses spends forty days on the mountain of Horeb conferring with YHWH, the results of which are freedom and the tablets of the law. There may have been some spiritual purification or preparation involved but this is not reported in the biblical text. Rather Moses’s experience is purely revelatory. Legends suggest some sort of conference with the divine presence but its character is unknown. One further reference to forty days, also at the mountain of Horeb, is made regarding the time of penance by the prophet Elijah.
Finally there are three more uses of the period of forty years - the first for the time required to purify pagan lands before they can be settled by Israel; the second is the period of captivity of the Israelites by the Philistines as a punishment for disobedience; the last is as a period of punishment declared by the prophet Ezekiel on the land of Egypt.
So, as in much of biblical literature, Jesus’s sojourn in the wilderness doesn’t have an historically fixed significance. It is open to a variety of interpretations, of which Crace’s seems as informed and valid as many others. The New Testament story is clearly important and transmitted with variations through at least several of the Christ-following traditions. But it’s connotations run from radical purging, to spiritual renewal, to preparation for divine revelation, to the imposition of suffering as punishment.
It’s safe to assume that all these possibilities were known to the early transmitters of Christian tradition, and used to establish Jesus as the new Noah, the new ‘bread of life’, the new Moses, the prophet announcing a new Israel, and the messiah who was to undergo sacrificial punishment for the sins of Israel and the rest of the world. The forty days, therefore, designating a time of transformation, is of central importance in Christianity.
The use of the term ‘quarantine’ adds a new dimension to the forty days experience. While you’re in a state of disease, you are prevented from infecting others; but you may not make it out alive yourself. Quarantine represents a kind of existential threat which Crace’s Jesus is aware of: “He'd put his trust in god, as young men do. He would encounter god or die, that was the nose and tail of it. That's why he'd come.” Whatever happened at the Jordan was enough to inspire this idealistic and potentially deadly pilgrimage, but it wasn’t enough to convince Jesus that he knew what he was doing.
Jesus shares his quarantine with six others, four volunteers like himself and a hapless couple, she heavily pregnant and he an abusive monster. This group doesn’t conform with biblical prototypes which apply either to individuals or national groups. The randomness of this small collective is noteworthy as an innovative departure by Crace. It allows a social interaction among strangers into the depths of the forty days experience, whatever that experience entails.
Each member of the quarantined party has a unique issue: a Jewish matron, possibly infertile; an elderly Jewish stonemason hoping for a miracle cancer-cure; a Bedouin shepherd, apparently mad; a handsome blond foreigner seeking holy wisdom rather than god; the couple which had been abandoned by their caravanserai, she longing for freedom, he for wealth and power; and of course Jesus, whose encounter with god was dependent in his mind on the endurance of physical punishment. For him “Triumph over hardship was their proof of holiness.”
Crace creates an interesting spiritual logic for Jesus’s presence in the wilderness. For Jesus, god is the creator and guarantor of orderliness in the universe. His choice is to believe in cosmic-order rather than pandemonium. The wilderness with its harsh climate, its absence of edible plant-life and its general inhospitableness to life is God’s work yet to be completed. He just hasn’t got to it yet. It is “the edge of god's unfinished universe.” There Jesus could observe the divine creative process in action. This would be the sign he was looking for - his participation in the new creation. He wanted his god tangible.
Jesus’s intention is to isolate himself even within the isolation ward of his companions. He, like Moses and Elijah, wants alone-time with god. But his colleagues have different ideas. None of them has any interest in this tangible divinity nonsense. All they want are improvements in their situations not any sort of Sinaitic epiphany. So they annoy him, meddle in his solitude, harass him with trivial concerns, and interrupt his planned ritual.
In short, Crace’s Jesus is a religious snob who has no time for the worries and mundane concerns of the hoi pilloi, a type that would later be ridiculed as Pharasaic simply because they were punctilious in their observance of the law. But this is how he had been raised in a traditional Jewish household. These are the things that made him what he was - a devout servant of the Almighty who was keen to attract his favour - and what he hoped to become - a renowned preacher and interpreter of the law. Something considerably more than a village tradesman’s son.
They were a superstitious lot, Jesus forty days companions. When it suited, they had an eye for miracles and ‘angel births’ of unmarried mothers, the potency of dreams to shape reality, the demonic source of illness. He learns these things from them. But these are incidental to his real transformation, which has principally to do with his discovery that god, to the extent he exists, is present in them; that they are the source of his own re-creation; that without them his beliefs and ritual practices are useless, merely distracting self-delusions.
I think Crace’s intuition about the forty days is correct: Its power is profoundly transformative. In particular, its outcome cannot be anticipated. What is changed is an appreciation of what it means to exist as a person. The combination of isolation, physical hardship and an attitude of openness to change in the status quo produces not just change but changed expectations - about ourselves as well as about the world in general.
It is Jesus’s acceptance of the experiences of the others who are part of his forty days experience that is the catalyst for his new life in public. He ultimately knows himself, not the wilderness, to be the object of continuing creation; and the means of that continuing creation is other people, even the bad, crazy, and troubled ones, especially the bad, crazy, and troubled ones. This conclusion and the religious life it implies is as much a surprise to him as it is to his family and acquaintances. His forty days includes all previous biblical experiences as well - from Noah to Ezekiel, from purification to penance. In this sense at least Crace’s Jesus has become the entirety of the law and the prophets.
Quarantine is Crace’s very appropriate term for Jesus’s forty days seclusion in the wilderness shortly after his baptism in the Jordan River. According to all of the synoptic gospels, he is ‘approved’ by God in his earthly mission at that ceremony. Forty days in the life of an individual (or forty years in the life of a people) is an important biblical poetical trope, which Crace appreciates as exactly what it is: a period of fundamental transformation in the nature of one’s being. The literary context of the forty days is important in order to understand Crace’s interpretation of the story.
Forty days as a spiritually significant period first appears in the book of Genesis. It is the period of persistent rain which wipes out the creation that has disappointed YHWH. It appears that YHWH was banking on a bit of high-speed natural selection. Noah’s family were spared his (later regretted) purge but had to undergo a double dose of purification - forty days of rain and forty days of drying out. One can only speculate about the ethical quality of human beings if the original gene pool had survived intact.
Although several of the patriarchs only marry at forty years of age, suggesting a period of maturation rather than purification, the cultural significance of forty years is established clearly by Israel’s wandering in the desert of Sinai after their escape from Egypt. During this period they are fed on the miraculously provided ‘manna,’ perhaps signifying the necessity for preparing to enter the promised land. Noah’s purification affected all of humanity; the desert wandering was an entirely Jewish affair.
While the Jewish nation was being held captive in Egypt, Moses spends forty days on the mountain of Horeb conferring with YHWH, the results of which are freedom and the tablets of the law. There may have been some spiritual purification or preparation involved but this is not reported in the biblical text. Rather Moses’s experience is purely revelatory. Legends suggest some sort of conference with the divine presence but its character is unknown. One further reference to forty days, also at the mountain of Horeb, is made regarding the time of penance by the prophet Elijah.
Finally there are three more uses of the period of forty years - the first for the time required to purify pagan lands before they can be settled by Israel; the second is the period of captivity of the Israelites by the Philistines as a punishment for disobedience; the last is as a period of punishment declared by the prophet Ezekiel on the land of Egypt.
So, as in much of biblical literature, Jesus’s sojourn in the wilderness doesn’t have an historically fixed significance. It is open to a variety of interpretations, of which Crace’s seems as informed and valid as many others. The New Testament story is clearly important and transmitted with variations through at least several of the Christ-following traditions. But it’s connotations run from radical purging, to spiritual renewal, to preparation for divine revelation, to the imposition of suffering as punishment.
It’s safe to assume that all these possibilities were known to the early transmitters of Christian tradition, and used to establish Jesus as the new Noah, the new ‘bread of life’, the new Moses, the prophet announcing a new Israel, and the messiah who was to undergo sacrificial punishment for the sins of Israel and the rest of the world. The forty days, therefore, designating a time of transformation, is of central importance in Christianity.
The use of the term ‘quarantine’ adds a new dimension to the forty days experience. While you’re in a state of disease, you are prevented from infecting others; but you may not make it out alive yourself. Quarantine represents a kind of existential threat which Crace’s Jesus is aware of: “He'd put his trust in god, as young men do. He would encounter god or die, that was the nose and tail of it. That's why he'd come.” Whatever happened at the Jordan was enough to inspire this idealistic and potentially deadly pilgrimage, but it wasn’t enough to convince Jesus that he knew what he was doing.
Jesus shares his quarantine with six others, four volunteers like himself and a hapless couple, she heavily pregnant and he an abusive monster. This group doesn’t conform with biblical prototypes which apply either to individuals or national groups. The randomness of this small collective is noteworthy as an innovative departure by Crace. It allows a social interaction among strangers into the depths of the forty days experience, whatever that experience entails.
Each member of the quarantined party has a unique issue: a Jewish matron, possibly infertile; an elderly Jewish stonemason hoping for a miracle cancer-cure; a Bedouin shepherd, apparently mad; a handsome blond foreigner seeking holy wisdom rather than god; the couple which had been abandoned by their caravanserai, she longing for freedom, he for wealth and power; and of course Jesus, whose encounter with god was dependent in his mind on the endurance of physical punishment. For him “Triumph over hardship was their proof of holiness.”
Crace creates an interesting spiritual logic for Jesus’s presence in the wilderness. For Jesus, god is the creator and guarantor of orderliness in the universe. His choice is to believe in cosmic-order rather than pandemonium. The wilderness with its harsh climate, its absence of edible plant-life and its general inhospitableness to life is God’s work yet to be completed. He just hasn’t got to it yet. It is “the edge of god's unfinished universe.” There Jesus could observe the divine creative process in action. This would be the sign he was looking for - his participation in the new creation. He wanted his god tangible.
Jesus’s intention is to isolate himself even within the isolation ward of his companions. He, like Moses and Elijah, wants alone-time with god. But his colleagues have different ideas. None of them has any interest in this tangible divinity nonsense. All they want are improvements in their situations not any sort of Sinaitic epiphany. So they annoy him, meddle in his solitude, harass him with trivial concerns, and interrupt his planned ritual.
In short, Crace’s Jesus is a religious snob who has no time for the worries and mundane concerns of the hoi pilloi, a type that would later be ridiculed as Pharasaic simply because they were punctilious in their observance of the law. But this is how he had been raised in a traditional Jewish household. These are the things that made him what he was - a devout servant of the Almighty who was keen to attract his favour - and what he hoped to become - a renowned preacher and interpreter of the law. Something considerably more than a village tradesman’s son.
They were a superstitious lot, Jesus forty days companions. When it suited, they had an eye for miracles and ‘angel births’ of unmarried mothers, the potency of dreams to shape reality, the demonic source of illness. He learns these things from them. But these are incidental to his real transformation, which has principally to do with his discovery that god, to the extent he exists, is present in them; that they are the source of his own re-creation; that without them his beliefs and ritual practices are useless, merely distracting self-delusions.
I think Crace’s intuition about the forty days is correct: Its power is profoundly transformative. In particular, its outcome cannot be anticipated. What is changed is an appreciation of what it means to exist as a person. The combination of isolation, physical hardship and an attitude of openness to change in the status quo produces not just change but changed expectations - about ourselves as well as about the world in general.
It is Jesus’s acceptance of the experiences of the others who are part of his forty days experience that is the catalyst for his new life in public. He ultimately knows himself, not the wilderness, to be the object of continuing creation; and the means of that continuing creation is other people, even the bad, crazy, and troubled ones, especially the bad, crazy, and troubled ones. This conclusion and the religious life it implies is as much a surprise to him as it is to his family and acquaintances. His forty days includes all previous biblical experiences as well - from Noah to Ezekiel, from purification to penance. In this sense at least Crace’s Jesus has become the entirety of the law and the prophets.
Read
April 13, 2020 They were amazed at all the stories he could tell. He’d come from forty days of quarantine up in the wilderness. He hadn’t drunk or eaten anything. He’d gone up thin and come back fat, thanks to god’s good offices. He’d shared his cave with angels and messiahs; he’d met a healer and a man who could make bread from stones.
One of the travellers gave Musa food to eat. Another let him ride inside his donkey cart. He sat on bales of scrub hay, his fat legs hanging off the back. What little sun there was came from the summit of the precipice. Musa looked up to the scree, shading his eyes against the light, and checked the spot where he had left his worldly goods. He was alarmed for an instant. There was somebody climbing down towards his hiding place, half hidden in the shade. A man or woman? Musa was not sure. Whoever it was did not stop to search amongst the rocks, but hurried down across a patch of silvery shale. Now Musa had a clearer view; a thin and halting figure tacking the scree, almost a mirage–ankleless, no arms–in the lifting light. Musa shouted to his new companions. ‘Look there,’ he said. ‘That’s the one I mentioned to you. The healer. Risen from the grave.’
How about that! I read that passage earlier this Easter morning, a day associated with the end of the fasting period in the Christian Church, and with resurrection. The book gods are good to me surely.
One of the travellers gave Musa food to eat. Another let him ride inside his donkey cart. He sat on bales of scrub hay, his fat legs hanging off the back. What little sun there was came from the summit of the precipice. Musa looked up to the scree, shading his eyes against the light, and checked the spot where he had left his worldly goods. He was alarmed for an instant. There was somebody climbing down towards his hiding place, half hidden in the shade. A man or woman? Musa was not sure. Whoever it was did not stop to search amongst the rocks, but hurried down across a patch of silvery shale. Now Musa had a clearer view; a thin and halting figure tacking the scree, almost a mirage–ankleless, no arms–in the lifting light. Musa shouted to his new companions. ‘Look there,’ he said. ‘That’s the one I mentioned to you. The healer. Risen from the grave.’
How about that! I read that passage earlier this Easter morning, a day associated with the end of the fasting period in the Christian Church, and with resurrection. The book gods are good to me surely.
February 10, 2017
Reading Jim Grace I feel like he’s very aware of writing in a kind of oral tradition. He’s very attentive to the music and the rhythm of the way that sentences sound like. Even though he uses simple vocabulary the percussion of each sentence is very complicated and Jim Grace attends to it very closely. There’s always a drum beat running through his sentences. They are so musically and rhythmically based that you almost want to tap your feet to them.
I was really charmed by this story. It started off with five pilgrims including Jesus venturing out into the Judean desert for a forty day quarantine. They choose caves not far apart from each other to spend their quarantine in and search for enlightenment or purification. For the quarantiners are hoping to cleanse themselves of madness, cancer and infertility. What follows is a period of fasting and praying and in due course the tired and thirsty pilgrims become afflicted with religious and spiritual hallucinations. And dark visions.
Now I was under the impression that this book was very close to the traditional story of Jesus in the wilderness even though Jesus in this book was portrayed as a human with human failings. I don’t know much about the bible. Quarantine looked to me like the most real story about the origin of Jesus and the Christian religion. I thought that Jim Grace could only be a devout Christian but reading up on him I've discovered that he is actually a staunch atheist and this book is not written from the Christian perspective at all.
In fact, the idea for this story came to Jim Grace from a dark and troubled place down the road from where he used to live. This place was a hostel for patients with mental health problems. The patients used to wander around his suburb and fascinate Jim Grace with their stories and illnesses. One day he sneaked into this hostel which consisted of tiny rooms like cells occupied by a community of depressives, addicts, obsessives and schizophrenics.
Jim Grace wanted to write about this community but instead of setting it in Birmingham he was looking for a parallel; a place where he could set that subject matter which would dislocate the reader. He is after all a fabulist writer. One day his friends who were visiting Palestine sent him a postcard of the Mount of Temptation. This was the place where the historical Christ spent his forty days of battling with the devil. In this postcard he noticed lots of caves and it occurred to him that at the time of Christ anyone who had a problem, any depressive, addict or obsessive, not just the Son of God, might have taken to these caves to battle with their demons. And this became the parallel to the hostel down his road.
Indeed in Jim Grace’s Quarantine Jesus’ prayers seem more like epileptic fits rather than communications with God.
I was really charmed by this story. It started off with five pilgrims including Jesus venturing out into the Judean desert for a forty day quarantine. They choose caves not far apart from each other to spend their quarantine in and search for enlightenment or purification. For the quarantiners are hoping to cleanse themselves of madness, cancer and infertility. What follows is a period of fasting and praying and in due course the tired and thirsty pilgrims become afflicted with religious and spiritual hallucinations. And dark visions.
Now I was under the impression that this book was very close to the traditional story of Jesus in the wilderness even though Jesus in this book was portrayed as a human with human failings. I don’t know much about the bible. Quarantine looked to me like the most real story about the origin of Jesus and the Christian religion. I thought that Jim Grace could only be a devout Christian but reading up on him I've discovered that he is actually a staunch atheist and this book is not written from the Christian perspective at all.
In fact, the idea for this story came to Jim Grace from a dark and troubled place down the road from where he used to live. This place was a hostel for patients with mental health problems. The patients used to wander around his suburb and fascinate Jim Grace with their stories and illnesses. One day he sneaked into this hostel which consisted of tiny rooms like cells occupied by a community of depressives, addicts, obsessives and schizophrenics.
Jim Grace wanted to write about this community but instead of setting it in Birmingham he was looking for a parallel; a place where he could set that subject matter which would dislocate the reader. He is after all a fabulist writer. One day his friends who were visiting Palestine sent him a postcard of the Mount of Temptation. This was the place where the historical Christ spent his forty days of battling with the devil. In this postcard he noticed lots of caves and it occurred to him that at the time of Christ anyone who had a problem, any depressive, addict or obsessive, not just the Son of God, might have taken to these caves to battle with their demons. And this became the parallel to the hostel down his road.
Indeed in Jim Grace’s Quarantine Jesus’ prayers seem more like epileptic fits rather than communications with God.
June 10, 2020
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 1997
I first read this book shortly after the paperback was first published in the late 90s, and although I remember liking it, I remember very little of the detailed content. So I welcomed the chance to reread it as part of The Mookse and the Gripes group's current project to revisit the 1997 Booker shortlist.
If anything I was even more impressed that before, and it was interesting to pick up on what was discussed at the time of Crace's last book The Melody, about the way Crace uses imaginary locations as the settings for his books because he does not want to get bogged down with too much real world details. This discussion mentions some invented natural elements that recur in several of his books, for example the tarbony tree.
So this is very much a fictional book, but one that addresses well known religious themes and Biblical stories, and because Crace, like me, is an atheist, I had no problems with some of his more controversial and provocative choices, and can't speak for those with keener religious sensibilities.
The starting point is the well-known Biblical story of Jesus's 40 days in the wilderness. Crace was interested in bringing a modern scientific perspective to the question of what might happen if a real human tried to emulate him. Although Jesus plays a part in the story, and is generally treated respectfully, Crace's story diverges a long way from the original.
At the start of the book we meet Miri, the wife of Musa, a travelling merchant who has fallen ill while travelling across the wilderness with a larger group. Thinking he is about to die, they leave the couple behind in their tent with just enough provisions to survive until the party returns. Miri attempts to tend him, but the situation looks hopeless and she starts to dig a grave by hand. Meanwhile 5 other travellers arrive, intending to use caves as homes for a religious quarantine period. The first 4 are normal humans, and looking for divine help with domestic problems by fasting during daylight hours for 40 days, and the fifth, who remains apart from the rest of the group, is Jesus, looking to start his more extreme form of quarantine. While Miri is at the grave site, Jesus visits Musa's tent, takes a little food and water and nurses Musa a little. Meanwhile the grave starts to fill with groundwater, providing a vital source of water to the quarantiners, and Musa wakes up alone in his tent.
Musa is very much the villain of the piece, and his miraculous recovery has consequences. His merchant instincts lead him to find a way to exploit the other quarantiners, firstly by claiming to own the land and also by selling them some of the supplies he has in his tent. He is an expert story-teller, and he soon has them all doing his bidding. Musa is an abusive husband, and also covets Marta, a female quarantiner who is desperate for a child because her marriage is approaching the ten year point at which being childless becomes grounds for divorce.
Jesus proves harder to crack - he has found the most remote cave, only accessible by a risky scramble down a cliff face, and although Musa tries to tempt him with food and water, he refuses all sustenance, confident that his God will protect him.
Overall I found this book very impressive, and may yet upgrade it to 5 stars. I am looking forward to rereading The God of Small Things and Grace Notes to see whether they are still as good as I remember them to be.
I first read this book shortly after the paperback was first published in the late 90s, and although I remember liking it, I remember very little of the detailed content. So I welcomed the chance to reread it as part of The Mookse and the Gripes group's current project to revisit the 1997 Booker shortlist.
If anything I was even more impressed that before, and it was interesting to pick up on what was discussed at the time of Crace's last book The Melody, about the way Crace uses imaginary locations as the settings for his books because he does not want to get bogged down with too much real world details. This discussion mentions some invented natural elements that recur in several of his books, for example the tarbony tree.
So this is very much a fictional book, but one that addresses well known religious themes and Biblical stories, and because Crace, like me, is an atheist, I had no problems with some of his more controversial and provocative choices, and can't speak for those with keener religious sensibilities.
The starting point is the well-known Biblical story of Jesus's 40 days in the wilderness. Crace was interested in bringing a modern scientific perspective to the question of what might happen if a real human tried to emulate him. Although Jesus plays a part in the story, and is generally treated respectfully, Crace's story diverges a long way from the original.
At the start of the book we meet Miri, the wife of Musa, a travelling merchant who has fallen ill while travelling across the wilderness with a larger group. Thinking he is about to die, they leave the couple behind in their tent with just enough provisions to survive until the party returns. Miri attempts to tend him, but the situation looks hopeless and she starts to dig a grave by hand. Meanwhile 5 other travellers arrive, intending to use caves as homes for a religious quarantine period. The first 4 are normal humans, and looking for divine help with domestic problems by fasting during daylight hours for 40 days, and the fifth, who remains apart from the rest of the group, is Jesus, looking to start his more extreme form of quarantine. While Miri is at the grave site, Jesus visits Musa's tent, takes a little food and water and nurses Musa a little. Meanwhile the grave starts to fill with groundwater, providing a vital source of water to the quarantiners, and Musa wakes up alone in his tent.
Musa is very much the villain of the piece, and his miraculous recovery has consequences. His merchant instincts lead him to find a way to exploit the other quarantiners, firstly by claiming to own the land and also by selling them some of the supplies he has in his tent. He is an expert story-teller, and he soon has them all doing his bidding. Musa is an abusive husband, and also covets Marta, a female quarantiner who is desperate for a child because her marriage is approaching the ten year point at which being childless becomes grounds for divorce.
Jesus proves harder to crack - he has found the most remote cave, only accessible by a risky scramble down a cliff face, and although Musa tries to tempt him with food and water, he refuses all sustenance, confident that his God will protect him.
Overall I found this book very impressive, and may yet upgrade it to 5 stars. I am looking forward to rereading The God of Small Things and Grace Notes to see whether they are still as good as I remember them to be.
April 3, 2013
Jim Crace's short novel Quarantine was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1997, but did not win - it lost to The God of Small Things. Despite not being a long novel - the Penguin edition clocks in at just 243 pages - Quarantine aims to achieve a high goal: retell the story of Jesus's 40 day sojourn in the desert and his temptation by the Devil.
The problem with retellings of well-known stories is precisely the fact that they are well known - the author has to show a certain degree of invention to make up for that fact. It can be done by adapting the story to the modern setting, which is what Francis Ford Coppola did to Heart of Darkness and created Apocalypse Now). Many foreign films have been remade for the American market, keeping the story but localizing the cast and setting. Crace does not take this road - his work is set in the Judaean Desert 2000 years ago - but the story does not follow the Biblical gospels. Crace's Jesus is all too human: he has no divine aspirations, and came to the desert to fast and grow closer to God. He throws himself totally at his mercy - with no food and water and little shelter - guided only by his faith.
Crace's Jesus is only one of several characters driven to the remoteness of the desert. The novel features six other characters, all of whom interact with Jesus in some way: the most interesting - and important - is Musa, a greedy trader and abusive man who was left in the desert by his partners to die a slow death, sickness eating him from the inside. He is accompanied by Miri, his pregnant wife who eagerly awaits his death. Although he is the most important person of the scene, Jesus is not the main character - in fact he is mostly seen through the eyes of others, who all project themselves onto him and see him through their needs. These characters are essential for Jesus to fulfill his destiny. Musa will come in contact with Jesus, and will be touched by him - all the people will be touched by Jesus in one way or another, and the impact he had on them will have consequences for the whole world.
Crace's writing has the dreamlike and hazy quality, almost hallucinatory, appropriate for the setting and theme; he focuses on the miniscule detail of the wilderness of the desert, its animals, plants and insects. Folk beliefs of the times and people play an important part: Musa's sickness is understood to have been caused by a devil who snuck inside him through his mouth, and lit a fire under his chest.
In 2011 I've read Philip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ , which I thought was a fantastic re-telling of the story of Jesus and a fable of the rise of Christianity (and a controversial one, too, resulting in hate threats of damnation being sent to the author). In his work, Pullman not focused his story on Jesus - he split him into two distinct persons, Jesus and Christ, which I thought worked splendidly and his book impacted me greatly - something which I did not expect and was verypleasantly surprised by. I felt that Jim Crace's book lost potential impact by letting Jesus be seen largely through the eyes of other characters; they themselves are well drawn and interesting (especially Musa), but you just can't compete with the Messiah. I mean, how often do you really get to see the Son of God up close and personal?
In the end, found Quarantine to be a fablelike novel, stylishly written and full of symbolism, but constrained by the story it took upon itself - which is well known and holds few surprises even for those who do not know their Bible. It entered the canon of literary stories of Jesus - done by writers as different as Anne Rice and Norman Mailer - but I'm afraid that for all its quality if will remain in the background precisely because of its gentleness and meekness, overshadowed by more daring and controversal projects.
The problem with retellings of well-known stories is precisely the fact that they are well known - the author has to show a certain degree of invention to make up for that fact. It can be done by adapting the story to the modern setting, which is what Francis Ford Coppola did to Heart of Darkness and created Apocalypse Now). Many foreign films have been remade for the American market, keeping the story but localizing the cast and setting. Crace does not take this road - his work is set in the Judaean Desert 2000 years ago - but the story does not follow the Biblical gospels. Crace's Jesus is all too human: he has no divine aspirations, and came to the desert to fast and grow closer to God. He throws himself totally at his mercy - with no food and water and little shelter - guided only by his faith.
Crace's Jesus is only one of several characters driven to the remoteness of the desert. The novel features six other characters, all of whom interact with Jesus in some way: the most interesting - and important - is Musa, a greedy trader and abusive man who was left in the desert by his partners to die a slow death, sickness eating him from the inside. He is accompanied by Miri, his pregnant wife who eagerly awaits his death. Although he is the most important person of the scene, Jesus is not the main character - in fact he is mostly seen through the eyes of others, who all project themselves onto him and see him through their needs. These characters are essential for Jesus to fulfill his destiny. Musa will come in contact with Jesus, and will be touched by him - all the people will be touched by Jesus in one way or another, and the impact he had on them will have consequences for the whole world.
Crace's writing has the dreamlike and hazy quality, almost hallucinatory, appropriate for the setting and theme; he focuses on the miniscule detail of the wilderness of the desert, its animals, plants and insects. Folk beliefs of the times and people play an important part: Musa's sickness is understood to have been caused by a devil who snuck inside him through his mouth, and lit a fire under his chest.
In 2011 I've read Philip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ , which I thought was a fantastic re-telling of the story of Jesus and a fable of the rise of Christianity (and a controversial one, too, resulting in hate threats of damnation being sent to the author). In his work, Pullman not focused his story on Jesus - he split him into two distinct persons, Jesus and Christ, which I thought worked splendidly and his book impacted me greatly - something which I did not expect and was verypleasantly surprised by. I felt that Jim Crace's book lost potential impact by letting Jesus be seen largely through the eyes of other characters; they themselves are well drawn and interesting (especially Musa), but you just can't compete with the Messiah. I mean, how often do you really get to see the Son of God up close and personal?
In the end, found Quarantine to be a fablelike novel, stylishly written and full of symbolism, but constrained by the story it took upon itself - which is well known and holds few surprises even for those who do not know their Bible. It entered the canon of literary stories of Jesus - done by writers as different as Anne Rice and Norman Mailer - but I'm afraid that for all its quality if will remain in the background precisely because of its gentleness and meekness, overshadowed by more daring and controversal projects.
July 4, 2016
"Karantin", odnosno "Iscelitelj" (kako je u Srbiji preveden ovaj roman) je moj prvi susret sa Džimom Krejsom. Ni sam ne znam zašto do tog susreta nije došlo ranije. Krejs je na mojoj listi odavno jer sam još davnih dana odlučio da prorešetam nominovane za Bukera (iako ova nagrada nije uvek data najzaslužnijem autoru i najboljem delu za datu godinu, sam spisak nominovanih krije gomilu bisera književnosti).
Krejs me je kupio već na prvim stranicama. Iako sam čitao (na momente rogobatan) srpski prevod, bilo je nemoguće ne primetiti koliko autor interesantno piše.
Iako se roman proteže na nekih dvestotinjak strana, on ne može da se čita površno, niti lagano. To nije samo zbog izuzetnog stila autora već i zbog tematike koju je autor odabrao.
Radnja romana je smeštena u pustinju u Judeji, pre nekih 2000 godina. Dakle, već na osnovu ovog podatka može da se pretpostavi da će roman imati nekakve veze sa Isusom i njegovim životom. Krejs od svih slika iz Isusovog života koji su opisani u Bibliji, bira onu koja je možda i najintrigantnija - Isusov odlazak u pustinju na 40 dana, gde biva iskušavan od strane đavola. Međutim, Krejsov pogled na ceo taj biblijski događaj nije religiozan već profani - svetovni. On pokušava da celu ovu situaciju vidi iz jednog drugog ugla, ugla pustinje u kojoj onaj ko joj se u potpunosti preda viđa i fatamorgane i halucinacije.
Isus nije sam u pustinji. Tu su i Musa, trgovac koji je ostavljen da umre u pustinji, kao višak tovara karavana, i njegova supruga Miri koja čeka dete. U pustinju dolazi još četvoro ljudi koji traže rešenje za svoje probleme - Marta koja želi dete, Šim, Afas i Badu. Svako od njih dolazi u pustinju da bude bliži Bogu (jer od gradske vreve Bog ih možda ne čuje) i traži ili isceljenje ili spas. Kada Musa na čudesan način ozdravi on će svoju trgovačku propast i sopstvenu bolest okrenuti sebi u korist i bukvalno početi da maltretira sve ostale isposnike, pokazujući svoju mračnu materijalističku stranu. Pustinju je teško pobediti, a posebno ako je neko kao Musa tamo, da oteža tih 40 dana pakla...
Iako sam Isus ima manju "ulogu" u ovom romanu, sam završetak (koji ne želim da spojlujem) ipak ima veći odraz na njegov lik i ono što sledi. Ovaj roman bi mogao da se stavi u istu ravan sa Ruždijevim "Satanskim stihovima", kao Krejsov pokušaj demistifikacije i profanizacije hrišćanstva. Ovo je veoma inteligentan i odlično napisan roman, ali u nekoliko momenata (na primer Musino ozdravljenje,...) sam autor nije mogao da izbegne korišćenje mistifikacije i "nadnaravnog".
Apsolutno čvrsta četvorka, a druženje sa Krejsom se nastavlja!
Krejs me je kupio već na prvim stranicama. Iako sam čitao (na momente rogobatan) srpski prevod, bilo je nemoguće ne primetiti koliko autor interesantno piše.
Iako se roman proteže na nekih dvestotinjak strana, on ne može da se čita površno, niti lagano. To nije samo zbog izuzetnog stila autora već i zbog tematike koju je autor odabrao.
Radnja romana je smeštena u pustinju u Judeji, pre nekih 2000 godina. Dakle, već na osnovu ovog podatka može da se pretpostavi da će roman imati nekakve veze sa Isusom i njegovim životom. Krejs od svih slika iz Isusovog života koji su opisani u Bibliji, bira onu koja je možda i najintrigantnija - Isusov odlazak u pustinju na 40 dana, gde biva iskušavan od strane đavola. Međutim, Krejsov pogled na ceo taj biblijski događaj nije religiozan već profani - svetovni. On pokušava da celu ovu situaciju vidi iz jednog drugog ugla, ugla pustinje u kojoj onaj ko joj se u potpunosti preda viđa i fatamorgane i halucinacije.
Isus nije sam u pustinji. Tu su i Musa, trgovac koji je ostavljen da umre u pustinji, kao višak tovara karavana, i njegova supruga Miri koja čeka dete. U pustinju dolazi još četvoro ljudi koji traže rešenje za svoje probleme - Marta koja želi dete, Šim, Afas i Badu. Svako od njih dolazi u pustinju da bude bliži Bogu (jer od gradske vreve Bog ih možda ne čuje) i traži ili isceljenje ili spas. Kada Musa na čudesan način ozdravi on će svoju trgovačku propast i sopstvenu bolest okrenuti sebi u korist i bukvalno početi da maltretira sve ostale isposnike, pokazujući svoju mračnu materijalističku stranu. Pustinju je teško pobediti, a posebno ako je neko kao Musa tamo, da oteža tih 40 dana pakla...
Iako sam Isus ima manju "ulogu" u ovom romanu, sam završetak (koji ne želim da spojlujem) ipak ima veći odraz na njegov lik i ono što sledi. Ovaj roman bi mogao da se stavi u istu ravan sa Ruždijevim "Satanskim stihovima", kao Krejsov pokušaj demistifikacije i profanizacije hrišćanstva. Ovo je veoma inteligentan i odlično napisan roman, ali u nekoliko momenata (na primer Musino ozdravljenje,...) sam autor nije mogao da izbegne korišćenje mistifikacije i "nadnaravnog".
Apsolutno čvrsta četvorka, a druženje sa Krejsom se nastavlja!
September 11, 2008
Now this is how you write a gripping book.
Quarantine is what you might call a novel of ideas. It seeks to give an account of Jesus' forty-day sojourn in the desert and to explain how Christianity (or, if you will, the cult of Christ) came into being. While it's not overly blasphemous, it does present its theories in a way to which people who take the New Testament very literally might object. See, for one thing, Crace's Jesus is not the Son of God, but rather a clumsy and all too human carpenter who takes his faith more seriously than his work; for another, he is not actually the main character of the novel, nor even its most interesting character. That honour goes to Musa, surely one of the most fascinating villains in twentieth-century literature.
Quarantine is about the (apparently common in Biblical times) act of quarantining -- i.e., secluding oneself in the desert for a while to meditate and commune with God. Jesus is only one of several characters who, on the first day of the story, arrive in an inhospitable part of the wilderness to take up lodgings in some barren caves and begin meditating. He's different from the other quarantiners, though. While the others only fast during the day and aren't averse to talking to each other when not meditating, Jesus is determined not to eat or drink anything for forty days and to stay completely on his own. But before he retreats into his cave, he touches a dying man, Musa, who promptly recovers. Needless to say, Musa is convinced Jesus is a miraculous healer, and tries to get him out of his cave to talk. But Jesus refuses, believing Musa is a devil come to tempt him. And so a fascinating battle of wills begins, which quickly works its way to a haunting (and remarkably plausible) conclusion.
Crace is a fabulous writer. His metaphor-laden prose has a breath-taking, occasionally hallucinatory quality (especially in the marvellous second half of the book), and his descriptions of pretty much anything are superb. His Judean desert is an exciting place, so vivid it almost becomes a character in itself. His descriptions of fasting and what it does to one's body and mind are terrifying. (Trust me, after reading this book you'll never consider hunger striking again.) Yet it's the characters who steal the show. Jesus' struggle against temptation and hallucinations is rendered impressively, and rather more realistically than the stories told about this in the Bible. But while Jesus is important to the story for the effect he has on the other characters, he is not the most riveting character in the book. That would be Musa, a tyrannical merchant with a frightful sense of entitlement and very little compassion for anyone, let alone a bunch of afflicted souls who have come to the desert to pray. He's a nasty piece of work, is Musa, but Crace has drawn him so well that you find yourself fascinated by his exploits, even when he sets out, over the course of several pages, to plan the rape of the lone woman among the quarantiners (some of the most riveting prose I've ever come across). No, Musa is not Satan, but it's easy to see why Jesus believes he is. He's rotten to the core, which makes what he does on the final page of the book all the more extraordinary. I found myself glued to the pages whenever the story was told from his point of view, admiring Crace for the skill with which he brought his antagonist to life without making you want to close the book in disgust. The other perspectives are less impressive, but still entirely worth reading. Crace can draw characters in just a few lines, and his way with words is such that the effect is quite dazzling. He is quite the storyteller.
So. Do seek this book out, people. Don't believe the baffling number of three-star reviews on this site; instead, check out the plethora of five-star reviews on Amazon.co.uk (here) and remember that Quarantine was voted the Whitbread Novel of the Year and short-listed for the Booker Prize. Then read the book. I promise you you won't regret it.
Quarantine is what you might call a novel of ideas. It seeks to give an account of Jesus' forty-day sojourn in the desert and to explain how Christianity (or, if you will, the cult of Christ) came into being. While it's not overly blasphemous, it does present its theories in a way to which people who take the New Testament very literally might object. See, for one thing, Crace's Jesus is not the Son of God, but rather a clumsy and all too human carpenter who takes his faith more seriously than his work; for another, he is not actually the main character of the novel, nor even its most interesting character. That honour goes to Musa, surely one of the most fascinating villains in twentieth-century literature.
Quarantine is about the (apparently common in Biblical times) act of quarantining -- i.e., secluding oneself in the desert for a while to meditate and commune with God. Jesus is only one of several characters who, on the first day of the story, arrive in an inhospitable part of the wilderness to take up lodgings in some barren caves and begin meditating. He's different from the other quarantiners, though. While the others only fast during the day and aren't averse to talking to each other when not meditating, Jesus is determined not to eat or drink anything for forty days and to stay completely on his own. But before he retreats into his cave, he touches a dying man, Musa, who promptly recovers. Needless to say, Musa is convinced Jesus is a miraculous healer, and tries to get him out of his cave to talk. But Jesus refuses, believing Musa is a devil come to tempt him. And so a fascinating battle of wills begins, which quickly works its way to a haunting (and remarkably plausible) conclusion.
Crace is a fabulous writer. His metaphor-laden prose has a breath-taking, occasionally hallucinatory quality (especially in the marvellous second half of the book), and his descriptions of pretty much anything are superb. His Judean desert is an exciting place, so vivid it almost becomes a character in itself. His descriptions of fasting and what it does to one's body and mind are terrifying. (Trust me, after reading this book you'll never consider hunger striking again.) Yet it's the characters who steal the show. Jesus' struggle against temptation and hallucinations is rendered impressively, and rather more realistically than the stories told about this in the Bible. But while Jesus is important to the story for the effect he has on the other characters, he is not the most riveting character in the book. That would be Musa, a tyrannical merchant with a frightful sense of entitlement and very little compassion for anyone, let alone a bunch of afflicted souls who have come to the desert to pray. He's a nasty piece of work, is Musa, but Crace has drawn him so well that you find yourself fascinated by his exploits, even when he sets out, over the course of several pages, to plan the rape of the lone woman among the quarantiners (some of the most riveting prose I've ever come across). No, Musa is not Satan, but it's easy to see why Jesus believes he is. He's rotten to the core, which makes what he does on the final page of the book all the more extraordinary. I found myself glued to the pages whenever the story was told from his point of view, admiring Crace for the skill with which he brought his antagonist to life without making you want to close the book in disgust. The other perspectives are less impressive, but still entirely worth reading. Crace can draw characters in just a few lines, and his way with words is such that the effect is quite dazzling. He is quite the storyteller.
So. Do seek this book out, people. Don't believe the baffling number of three-star reviews on this site; instead, check out the plethora of five-star reviews on Amazon.co.uk (here) and remember that Quarantine was voted the Whitbread Novel of the Year and short-listed for the Booker Prize. Then read the book. I promise you you won't regret it.
January 4, 2021
In the desert, a small band of pilgrims seeks enlightenment and miracles during a 40-day fast. One of the men, a merchant named Musa, is near death. His wife Miri uses her hands to dig a burial ground. Languishing and soon to expire, the sickened Musa is cured by Jesus. He too has come to pray and fast.
Miri is shocked to find her husband revived on her return to their itinerant cave dwelling. After his recovery, Musa takes little time to terrorize the small group of travelers. He takes their money, goods and any food they own. Jesus remains apart from the main contingent and suffers intensely as he prays and fasts.
The contrast between Jesus and Musa is the central thrust of the action. Musa represents temptation and sin. He actively seeks to spoil Jesus' fast while running roughshod over the others.
The pathway to salvation for the worshipers is fraught with difficulties. Musa looms dangerously over all their fates. Croce's language matches the spareness and desperation of the land. A drop of water or a taste of honey represents a fortuitous grasp of life sustaining substances. He depicts Jesus' 40-day wilderness meditation in convincing and present force. He is a fly on the wall recording meticulous details of the experience of the men and women during their desert quarantine. The writing is reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy though the plot is simpler. Croce is either brave or crazy to take on Jesus' life with this raw parable. Few would dare such an audacious theme and far fewer would succeed so brilliantly.
Miri is shocked to find her husband revived on her return to their itinerant cave dwelling. After his recovery, Musa takes little time to terrorize the small group of travelers. He takes their money, goods and any food they own. Jesus remains apart from the main contingent and suffers intensely as he prays and fasts.
The contrast between Jesus and Musa is the central thrust of the action. Musa represents temptation and sin. He actively seeks to spoil Jesus' fast while running roughshod over the others.
The pathway to salvation for the worshipers is fraught with difficulties. Musa looms dangerously over all their fates. Croce's language matches the spareness and desperation of the land. A drop of water or a taste of honey represents a fortuitous grasp of life sustaining substances. He depicts Jesus' 40-day wilderness meditation in convincing and present force. He is a fly on the wall recording meticulous details of the experience of the men and women during their desert quarantine. The writing is reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy though the plot is simpler. Croce is either brave or crazy to take on Jesus' life with this raw parable. Few would dare such an audacious theme and far fewer would succeed so brilliantly.
February 5, 2014
I feel like Jim Crace maybe shot himself in the foot a little bit with this one, as far as the star ratings go - I swung between one and four stars about every thirty pages, which is to say sometimes it was fascinating-unsettling and sometimes it was skin-crawl-unsettling and the latter is Not For Me and that is what one star means.
The skin-crawl was deliberate, though, so Crace definitely did what he set out to do. I'm still not sure I got the rating right. But there comes a point after which it really doesn't matter, so three stars it is and he's welcome to them.
I picked this up while I was ineffectively Christmas shopping - put me in Waterstones and my gift buying becomes a case of one for you, one for me. So I got Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle for my dad, and Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters for my housemate, and that was quite enough effort for one afternoon so I went for a browse and THIS HAPPENED.
The cover of my copy looks like this:
which, doesn't it look so dramatic? I love it very much. And the blurb was fascinating and then the book was in my hand and I was at the till and I had such high hopes for this book. Four strangers walk into the desert, for forty days of quarantine, prayer and fasting. They are met by an obnoxious git of the most malevolent kind (my wording, I think Jim Crace would say it a bit more elegantly but you get the gist), and his wife who is six months pregnant. They are followed into the desert by a fifth stranger, a young man from Galilee who lurks nearby, fulfilling his quarantine separately from all of them. "So begin forty days and nights in one of the most inhospitable terrains on earth." SHIVERS. TAKE MY MONEY.
The young Galilean is called Jesus. Jim Crace plays his cards on religion very close to his chest - apparently, Jesus was only meant to be a secondary character, until his story turned out to be interesting enough to warrant an equal billing with the others. Quarantine is really a study of seven people in very close quarters, having to rely on each other. It's a shame that most of them are horrible.
Here is why this book gives me second thoughts about the sort of reader I am: it was well-written. It was lyrical, the sort of thing you might want to read aloud, if only to yourself. Sometimes it was very uncomfortable and a couple of the characters ought to be dropped down a well. But Crace meant to make me think that - he wrote a thing that was interesting and clever, I just didn't want to read it. I don't like that I can't appreciate that properly, but really my brain just turns into one loud chorus of NOPE and I have to put it down and spend the rest of my bus journey staring out of the window. Is this something that I'll get better at with practice, is it a thing I should try and do more of so that I'll read books that will get me to ask more interesting questions? This book was outside my comfort zone and I really am undecided as to whether I should follow it or keep a distance because Reading Should Be Fun.
We'll see. In the meantime, I have moved on to a 1920s thriller with flappers in it, which may have just answered my own question in the short term. I don't know. This book was hard for me. I might have to process that for a bit longer yet.
The skin-crawl was deliberate, though, so Crace definitely did what he set out to do. I'm still not sure I got the rating right. But there comes a point after which it really doesn't matter, so three stars it is and he's welcome to them.
I picked this up while I was ineffectively Christmas shopping - put me in Waterstones and my gift buying becomes a case of one for you, one for me. So I got Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle for my dad, and Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters for my housemate, and that was quite enough effort for one afternoon so I went for a browse and THIS HAPPENED.
The cover of my copy looks like this:
which, doesn't it look so dramatic? I love it very much. And the blurb was fascinating and then the book was in my hand and I was at the till and I had such high hopes for this book. Four strangers walk into the desert, for forty days of quarantine, prayer and fasting. They are met by an obnoxious git of the most malevolent kind (my wording, I think Jim Crace would say it a bit more elegantly but you get the gist), and his wife who is six months pregnant. They are followed into the desert by a fifth stranger, a young man from Galilee who lurks nearby, fulfilling his quarantine separately from all of them. "So begin forty days and nights in one of the most inhospitable terrains on earth." SHIVERS. TAKE MY MONEY.
The young Galilean is called Jesus. Jim Crace plays his cards on religion very close to his chest - apparently, Jesus was only meant to be a secondary character, until his story turned out to be interesting enough to warrant an equal billing with the others. Quarantine is really a study of seven people in very close quarters, having to rely on each other. It's a shame that most of them are horrible.
Here is why this book gives me second thoughts about the sort of reader I am: it was well-written. It was lyrical, the sort of thing you might want to read aloud, if only to yourself. Sometimes it was very uncomfortable and a couple of the characters ought to be dropped down a well. But Crace meant to make me think that - he wrote a thing that was interesting and clever, I just didn't want to read it. I don't like that I can't appreciate that properly, but really my brain just turns into one loud chorus of NOPE and I have to put it down and spend the rest of my bus journey staring out of the window. Is this something that I'll get better at with practice, is it a thing I should try and do more of so that I'll read books that will get me to ask more interesting questions? This book was outside my comfort zone and I really am undecided as to whether I should follow it or keep a distance because Reading Should Be Fun.
We'll see. In the meantime, I have moved on to a 1920s thriller with flappers in it, which may have just answered my own question in the short term. I don't know. This book was hard for me. I might have to process that for a bit longer yet.
June 12, 2020
The inspiration for the book is the account in the Bible of Jesus's fast and temptation in the desert, as he was preparing himself for his ministry. Five people are fasting in this story for various reasons, one of them named Jesus. He is the only one who fasts both day and night, the others break their fast after sunset. He is the only one not tempted, bullied or taken advantage of by the 'devil', here an unscrupulous merchant called Musa.
The story and characters are both excellent, but the way the author uses biblical sources mixed with normal life makes the book outstanding.
The story and characters are both excellent, but the way the author uses biblical sources mixed with normal life makes the book outstanding.
June 2, 2020
Life's too short for this.
Halfway into the book, it is getting more and more uninteresting, as well as dull (though dull's okay for a desert retreat into the wilderness), with none of these contrived and token characters exceeding 2 dimensions, and Jesus being interesting only on account of being, well y'know, that Jesus! And so everyone's kind of hooked on him, for no apparent reason except that the script says so, and script is scripture. Hah! Sure there's some merit in illustrating how remarkably unremarkable some episodes in Jesus's life would have been, but why go through all these pages, just to tell us that? It's not like anyone imagined that 40 days fasting in the wilderness was a spiritual vacation. This whole gig might've made a better short story, than a mostly unsatisfactory novel (partly on account of its promise, of the nifty idea and swanky lit prize listing type).
The prose is itself annoyingly well-written, though the desert doesn't accommodate all the description of scrag and scree and erm, scruff or whatnot, the geography's overstated, and there's not much else going on. I liked Miri's hopes (before being miraculously dashed), and her loom. But all in all, the whole project showed less promise than I was willing to sacrifice 100-odd more pages reading time on.
Halfway into the book, it is getting more and more uninteresting, as well as dull (though dull's okay for a desert retreat into the wilderness), with none of these contrived and token characters exceeding 2 dimensions, and Jesus being interesting only on account of being, well y'know, that Jesus! And so everyone's kind of hooked on him, for no apparent reason except that the script says so, and script is scripture. Hah! Sure there's some merit in illustrating how remarkably unremarkable some episodes in Jesus's life would have been, but why go through all these pages, just to tell us that? It's not like anyone imagined that 40 days fasting in the wilderness was a spiritual vacation. This whole gig might've made a better short story, than a mostly unsatisfactory novel (partly on account of its promise, of the nifty idea and swanky lit prize listing type).
The prose is itself annoyingly well-written, though the desert doesn't accommodate all the description of scrag and scree and erm, scruff or whatnot, the geography's overstated, and there's not much else going on. I liked Miri's hopes (before being miraculously dashed), and her loom. But all in all, the whole project showed less promise than I was willing to sacrifice 100-odd more pages reading time on.
August 3, 2011
Dervish fire, serpent's smiling face,
Wind-charred, cave-dreamt, in fasting vow,
Merchant goad, hunger for the now,
Sere masters of the flesh, the base,
Soulless, formless, hell's cracked-shell space,
From body hale now withered bough,
Love's courses ne'er found room enow,
To grow, bound in faith's carapace.
Yep, that's ridiculous, but it truly is about all I can muster for Mr. Crace, a writer who has never yet risen above so-so for me, though I enter each book expecting big things. If The Pesthouse is merely merely, I do believe I shall foreswear this gentleman's words for the foreseeable future.
Wind-charred, cave-dreamt, in fasting vow,
Merchant goad, hunger for the now,
Sere masters of the flesh, the base,
Soulless, formless, hell's cracked-shell space,
From body hale now withered bough,
Love's courses ne'er found room enow,
To grow, bound in faith's carapace.
Yep, that's ridiculous, but it truly is about all I can muster for Mr. Crace, a writer who has never yet risen above so-so for me, though I enter each book expecting big things. If The Pesthouse is merely merely, I do believe I shall foreswear this gentleman's words for the foreseeable future.
June 29, 2016
Jim Crace never fails to surprise. The fact that all is books are wildly different from the last heightens my respect for him.
Quarantine is about Jesus' 40 day fast in the desert but the story revolves other characters interactions with Him, notably the devil who tried to tempt Jesus.
As with every Jim Crace novel, it is excellent. No need to say anymore really.
Quarantine is about Jesus' 40 day fast in the desert but the story revolves other characters interactions with Him, notably the devil who tried to tempt Jesus.
As with every Jim Crace novel, it is excellent. No need to say anymore really.
December 10, 2010
A though-provoking book but not enjoyable. (I don't care how many medals it won.) This book had beautiful images and real-seeming characters, but the story itself wasn't that compelling. The writing was quite good (mechanically), but again - not a very gripping story. One man's opinion, anyway.
September 16, 2015
....or, "When Good Miracles Happen to Bad People".
Really, I'm being reductive here of a very rich and beautifully written work, full of the most poetic and rhythmic language. And while one of the main characters is a Galilean named Jesus, he is just one of several individuals in the book who are in crisis, and, to my mind, not nearly the most interesting or important.
Crace's meditative and provocative novel is the story of five pilgrims who come to the desert back in ancient times in order to fast and meditate for the "quarantine" period of forty days (and, naturally, forty nights). The most important of these is Marta, who has come to the desert, supposedly barren, hoping for a miracle that will allow her to avoid being divorced by her husband for the crime of childlessness. Additionally, there is also fool, a traveller, an old man dying of cancer, and a carpenter trying to prove his devotion and piety to his family and the members of his village.
They all come across a vile and conniving merchant, Musa, and his oppressed and pregnant wife, Miri, abandoned by a caravan when the husband suffers a fever and descends into a coma. Miri's fervent wish is that Musa, abusive and tyrannical, will finally die and free her from a life of servitude and punishment, but then a strange thing happens: while she is out preparing his grave, Jesus comes upon the man in their tent and inadvertently, almost accidentally, heals him. Thus Christ's first miracle is to save the life of an evil and predatory man, paving the way for the man's renewed predation and violation of those around him.
Further, drastic re-imaginings of the Christ myth are woven into the narrative as the plot plays out, not least of which is Jesus's death from starvation several days before the 40-day period comes to an end. Yet in telling what can be thought of as an alternate history of the man Jesus, Crace leaves open the possibility of his divinity, from a hinted-at supernatural intervention late in the novel, to the ambiguity of whether that man seen walking into the mountains is the resurrected Messiah.
There is no question though that the author wants to examine the personalities of those in physical and emotional extremity, and show how it is human nature to seek others in moments of crisis. And Crace, an avowed atheist, rejects an easy dismissal and belittling of belief, instead positing the idea that from the most dire and bleak of circumstances, hope can still survive, and transcendence is available where you least expect it. Quarantine is a sober, seductive story, full of exquisite language and a crystalline clarity of place, where humanity's struggle for survival and understanding is etched in sharp relief against an unforgiving, eternal landscape.
Really, I'm being reductive here of a very rich and beautifully written work, full of the most poetic and rhythmic language. And while one of the main characters is a Galilean named Jesus, he is just one of several individuals in the book who are in crisis, and, to my mind, not nearly the most interesting or important.
Crace's meditative and provocative novel is the story of five pilgrims who come to the desert back in ancient times in order to fast and meditate for the "quarantine" period of forty days (and, naturally, forty nights). The most important of these is Marta, who has come to the desert, supposedly barren, hoping for a miracle that will allow her to avoid being divorced by her husband for the crime of childlessness. Additionally, there is also fool, a traveller, an old man dying of cancer, and a carpenter trying to prove his devotion and piety to his family and the members of his village.
They all come across a vile and conniving merchant, Musa, and his oppressed and pregnant wife, Miri, abandoned by a caravan when the husband suffers a fever and descends into a coma. Miri's fervent wish is that Musa, abusive and tyrannical, will finally die and free her from a life of servitude and punishment, but then a strange thing happens: while she is out preparing his grave, Jesus comes upon the man in their tent and inadvertently, almost accidentally, heals him. Thus Christ's first miracle is to save the life of an evil and predatory man, paving the way for the man's renewed predation and violation of those around him.
Further, drastic re-imaginings of the Christ myth are woven into the narrative as the plot plays out, not least of which is Jesus's death from starvation several days before the 40-day period comes to an end. Yet in telling what can be thought of as an alternate history of the man Jesus, Crace leaves open the possibility of his divinity, from a hinted-at supernatural intervention late in the novel, to the ambiguity of whether that man seen walking into the mountains is the resurrected Messiah.
There is no question though that the author wants to examine the personalities of those in physical and emotional extremity, and show how it is human nature to seek others in moments of crisis. And Crace, an avowed atheist, rejects an easy dismissal and belittling of belief, instead positing the idea that from the most dire and bleak of circumstances, hope can still survive, and transcendence is available where you least expect it. Quarantine is a sober, seductive story, full of exquisite language and a crystalline clarity of place, where humanity's struggle for survival and understanding is etched in sharp relief against an unforgiving, eternal landscape.
February 9, 2012
Quarantine is a good novel: the writing technique of Jim Crace is flawless, language poetic (reviewers note that he uses iambic meters to control the length of his short sentences), the characters serve their purposes well and the era he creates is too real (supposedly, a forte of Crace). And for these reasons this novel should be picked. I recommend it. I am glad that I read it. BUT, I am also left disappointed.
The author has choosen an easy way out.
The book tells Jesus's story of 40 days of quarantine (no food, no water), portraying him as a timid young unworldly devout sans any mystical powers and divine knowledge. Many chapters are devoted in the first half solely to the faith based rationalizations necessary for Jesus (or Gally, as the other hermits call him) to justify this self-chosen harshness to himself, to keep the morale up.
Cleverly (and not too cleverly) the author distances narrator from Gally's mind in the second half and delineates him through the five other characters.
Why? It helps him evade the whole question surrounding Jesus's spiritual enlightenment, and God.
Too easy, I say. Especially because he does not shy away from suggesting that the anecdotes of Jesus's miracles are nothing but a work of Satan, a proof of power of story telling to play with the weak minds of the nincompoops, the naive nomads, the unworldly villagers in the desert. Sell belief, buy respect. Sell redemption, buy authority, power. Veracity is immaterial. In those harsh and cruel times, what people needed most was not so much the truth, but a belief in the possibility of miracles.
So, is Jesus's after-quarantine story fabulous? Was he just another man, a very noble and compassionate man albeit, who was driven by his belief of being a Son Of God? These are not questions left for readers. The authors suggests his stance within the book, shyly, slyly.
Alas! he missed out on an opportunity to explore or take a strong position on spirituality. What he offers, in the end, is neither bold nor too illuminating. Just another atheistic take.
P.S. Narrative often reminded me of Woolf's To The Lighthouse. This book has a good rare display of stream of thoughts technique.
The author has choosen an easy way out.
The book tells Jesus's story of 40 days of quarantine (no food, no water), portraying him as a timid young unworldly devout sans any mystical powers and divine knowledge. Many chapters are devoted in the first half solely to the faith based rationalizations necessary for Jesus (or Gally, as the other hermits call him) to justify this self-chosen harshness to himself, to keep the morale up.
Cleverly (and not too cleverly) the author distances narrator from Gally's mind in the second half and delineates him through the five other characters.
Why? It helps him evade the whole question surrounding Jesus's spiritual enlightenment, and God.
Too easy, I say. Especially because he does not shy away from suggesting that the anecdotes of Jesus's miracles are nothing but a work of Satan, a proof of power of story telling to play with the weak minds of the nincompoops, the naive nomads, the unworldly villagers in the desert. Sell belief, buy respect. Sell redemption, buy authority, power. Veracity is immaterial. In those harsh and cruel times, what people needed most was not so much the truth, but a belief in the possibility of miracles.
So, is Jesus's after-quarantine story fabulous? Was he just another man, a very noble and compassionate man albeit, who was driven by his belief of being a Son Of God? These are not questions left for readers. The authors suggests his stance within the book, shyly, slyly.
Alas! he missed out on an opportunity to explore or take a strong position on spirituality. What he offers, in the end, is neither bold nor too illuminating. Just another atheistic take.
P.S. Narrative often reminded me of Woolf's To The Lighthouse. This book has a good rare display of stream of thoughts technique.
June 14, 2020
This is the fifth book I have read as part of a Goodreads group (re-)read of the 1997 Booker shortlist. It is fair to say that it hasn’t been going well so far (I just have the winner, The God of Small Things, left to read).
This book presents quite a challenge to me. I am approaching 60 years of age and I have spent 50 of those as a member of the Christian church. Admittedly, the church and I have had a bit of a rocky relationship, but its founder and I have yet to fall out. This is a book about the 40 days (hence the title) that Jesus spent in the wilderness after his baptism and immediately prior to the start of his public ministry. As such, even though it is given scant coverage in the Gospels, this period of Jesus’ life is foundational. In his afterword, Crace explains that he originally wanted to use this setting to write something completely different: In writing Quarantine I expected - indeed, intended - two things. Firstly to produce a satire of Thatcher’s Britain and simultaneously to inflict some bruises on religious dogma. But he then goes on to say: I can remember very well the afternoon that Quarantine abandoned me and my intended satire of Thatcherism and went off on a tangent. In explanation, he says: It (the Imp of Storytelling) had caused me, an atheist, intent on writing a novel broadly about contemporary earthly matters, to create a book of strangely scriptural intensity, a novel which (mostly) underscored people’s faith in gods rather than undermined it.
Crace gives us a very imperfect Jesus, which is the first challenge to a church-going person. Here, Jesus is unsure about his beliefs, somewhat self-absorbed, very shy around people, fearful with no confidence in his relationship with god (no capital G and never his Father, as would be normal in Christianity). And Jesus doesn’t get off to a very good start: he heals Musa who then goes on to ruin everyone else’s life! But Jesus is very much not the main character in the novel: this honour goes to Musa who begins the book on the verge of death but comes through that to dominate the other characters. And Musa is not a pleasant person (the third book of the five I’ve read from the shortlist that includes a main character who hits his lover/wife). When a group of travellers arrive at a site to begin their quarantine, forty days of day time fasting (Jesus intends to include the nights, too) and living in a solitary cave, Musa sees his chance to make some money. His only frustration is that Jesus has set himself up out of reach and refuses to engage (i.e. be taken advantage of). The developing relationships between these seven people (Musa and his wife Miri plus five travellers of whom Jesus is one) are the backbone of the story, although the focus is very much on Musa, Miri and Marta (“Miri and Marta” = “Mary and Martha”, I assume).
As I was reading the book, I had to do a bit of research about poetry because I rarely read poems and I know very little (perhaps nothing would be more accurate) about the theory of poetry. I did, however, find myself highlighting several sentences with a note that said “poetic”. These gradually accumulate through the book, to the extent that I eventually had to put it down and look a few things up. I discovered a review of this book that was by someone who had noticed the same thing as I did but who was able to write about it because he knows stuff:
”One peculiarity of this novel is that much of it consists of long unbroken stretches of iambs; many sentences, in fact, read like perfect iambic pentameter lines. Such sentences abound most noticeably in the chapter introducing Jesus. We're told he's devout: "He'd put his trust in god, as young men do." He's had experience walking barefoot: "He'd learnt the single lesson of the thorn." And why has he come to the desert? "This was where the world was not complete. What better place to find his god at work?" Iambs also proliferate in the later passages on Jesus: "He did not need to move his lips to pray. He'd reached the stage where every breath was prayer. . . ." Many of these five-foot sentences are arresting, even epigrammatic. ("When fear and shame are comrades, tongues lie still.") But the odd alternation between strict iambic meter and looser, prosier rhythms ultimately proves distracting. Did Crace, one finds oneself wondering, initially write this book (or part of it) as a blank-verse narrative?’
It’s interesting more than important, but a plethora of sentences that read “de-DUH, de-DUH, de-DUH, de-DUH, de-DUH” is, as the reviewer above noted, a bit distracting.
There are several Biblical references in the novel. Perhaps most notably “Jesus slept” which must surely be deliberately echoing John 11:35, the shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept”.
Strangely, though, I haven’t found (I haven’t searched really hard) any Christian criticism of this book. Given the reaction to Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ”, this is surprising, except that it probably shows the relative importance of film and literature in our culture. I write as one who found the Scorsese film a deeply spiritual experience (especially when combined with Peter Gabriel’s wonderful and powerful soundtrack) rather than something offensive and I wasn’t, in the end, offended by this book. In the case of Scorsese, the film really is faith affirming at the end when Jesus rejects the life he has imagined for himself and chooses to remain hanging on the cross. Here, in Quarantine, I think my lack of offence is driven mainly by the fact that I cannot relate the Jesus in the book to the Jesus in church. And, unfortunately, towards the end of the book I did find myself hurrying through because I was, unusually for Crace books I have read, getting a bit bored.
This book presents quite a challenge to me. I am approaching 60 years of age and I have spent 50 of those as a member of the Christian church. Admittedly, the church and I have had a bit of a rocky relationship, but its founder and I have yet to fall out. This is a book about the 40 days (hence the title) that Jesus spent in the wilderness after his baptism and immediately prior to the start of his public ministry. As such, even though it is given scant coverage in the Gospels, this period of Jesus’ life is foundational. In his afterword, Crace explains that he originally wanted to use this setting to write something completely different: In writing Quarantine I expected - indeed, intended - two things. Firstly to produce a satire of Thatcher’s Britain and simultaneously to inflict some bruises on religious dogma. But he then goes on to say: I can remember very well the afternoon that Quarantine abandoned me and my intended satire of Thatcherism and went off on a tangent. In explanation, he says: It (the Imp of Storytelling) had caused me, an atheist, intent on writing a novel broadly about contemporary earthly matters, to create a book of strangely scriptural intensity, a novel which (mostly) underscored people’s faith in gods rather than undermined it.
Crace gives us a very imperfect Jesus, which is the first challenge to a church-going person. Here, Jesus is unsure about his beliefs, somewhat self-absorbed, very shy around people, fearful with no confidence in his relationship with god (no capital G and never his Father, as would be normal in Christianity). And Jesus doesn’t get off to a very good start: he heals Musa who then goes on to ruin everyone else’s life! But Jesus is very much not the main character in the novel: this honour goes to Musa who begins the book on the verge of death but comes through that to dominate the other characters. And Musa is not a pleasant person (the third book of the five I’ve read from the shortlist that includes a main character who hits his lover/wife). When a group of travellers arrive at a site to begin their quarantine, forty days of day time fasting (Jesus intends to include the nights, too) and living in a solitary cave, Musa sees his chance to make some money. His only frustration is that Jesus has set himself up out of reach and refuses to engage (i.e. be taken advantage of). The developing relationships between these seven people (Musa and his wife Miri plus five travellers of whom Jesus is one) are the backbone of the story, although the focus is very much on Musa, Miri and Marta (“Miri and Marta” = “Mary and Martha”, I assume).
As I was reading the book, I had to do a bit of research about poetry because I rarely read poems and I know very little (perhaps nothing would be more accurate) about the theory of poetry. I did, however, find myself highlighting several sentences with a note that said “poetic”. These gradually accumulate through the book, to the extent that I eventually had to put it down and look a few things up. I discovered a review of this book that was by someone who had noticed the same thing as I did but who was able to write about it because he knows stuff:
”One peculiarity of this novel is that much of it consists of long unbroken stretches of iambs; many sentences, in fact, read like perfect iambic pentameter lines. Such sentences abound most noticeably in the chapter introducing Jesus. We're told he's devout: "He'd put his trust in god, as young men do." He's had experience walking barefoot: "He'd learnt the single lesson of the thorn." And why has he come to the desert? "This was where the world was not complete. What better place to find his god at work?" Iambs also proliferate in the later passages on Jesus: "He did not need to move his lips to pray. He'd reached the stage where every breath was prayer. . . ." Many of these five-foot sentences are arresting, even epigrammatic. ("When fear and shame are comrades, tongues lie still.") But the odd alternation between strict iambic meter and looser, prosier rhythms ultimately proves distracting. Did Crace, one finds oneself wondering, initially write this book (or part of it) as a blank-verse narrative?’
It’s interesting more than important, but a plethora of sentences that read “de-DUH, de-DUH, de-DUH, de-DUH, de-DUH” is, as the reviewer above noted, a bit distracting.
There are several Biblical references in the novel. Perhaps most notably “Jesus slept” which must surely be deliberately echoing John 11:35, the shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept”.
Strangely, though, I haven’t found (I haven’t searched really hard) any Christian criticism of this book. Given the reaction to Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ”, this is surprising, except that it probably shows the relative importance of film and literature in our culture. I write as one who found the Scorsese film a deeply spiritual experience (especially when combined with Peter Gabriel’s wonderful and powerful soundtrack) rather than something offensive and I wasn’t, in the end, offended by this book. In the case of Scorsese, the film really is faith affirming at the end when Jesus rejects the life he has imagined for himself and chooses to remain hanging on the cross. Here, in Quarantine, I think my lack of offence is driven mainly by the fact that I cannot relate the Jesus in the book to the Jesus in church. And, unfortunately, towards the end of the book I did find myself hurrying through because I was, unusually for Crace books I have read, getting a bit bored.
July 16, 2009
A different take on Jesus' 40 days and 40 nights quarantine
A more realistic story on how an eccentric, deeply religious man, with strong will and intelligence, was mistaken to have committed a miracle and then gathered a following of people. Jesus in this story is not a flawless son of God, but very human, with his own human weaknesses and temptations. Crace set himself a difficult task of going in and out of the minds of his 7 characters, but just about pulls it off. Jesus and the greedy, evil Musa, who represents the devil with his market goods as temptations, are the most fully rounded characters. The others are a bit more superficial but the story is more on how Jesus fights off Satan's temptations, so it is rightfully so that they are more developed. The writing is high class, but the story does not always have the narrative progressive hold, making it sometimes difficult to keep going with it. Definitely worth a read and will leave you haunted and reflective a long time after you finish the book.
A more realistic story on how an eccentric, deeply religious man, with strong will and intelligence, was mistaken to have committed a miracle and then gathered a following of people. Jesus in this story is not a flawless son of God, but very human, with his own human weaknesses and temptations. Crace set himself a difficult task of going in and out of the minds of his 7 characters, but just about pulls it off. Jesus and the greedy, evil Musa, who represents the devil with his market goods as temptations, are the most fully rounded characters. The others are a bit more superficial but the story is more on how Jesus fights off Satan's temptations, so it is rightfully so that they are more developed. The writing is high class, but the story does not always have the narrative progressive hold, making it sometimes difficult to keep going with it. Definitely worth a read and will leave you haunted and reflective a long time after you finish the book.
January 26, 2015
‘Quarantine’ by Jim Crace was recommended to me after my love affair with ‘Harvest’, a novel which I will only lend to the most reliable friends who know of my possessive nature where certain books are concerned.
This novel is of the same quality; the language astonishing, with descriptions of people and place as rich, as vivid. The reader is standing alongside the characters, seeing the same scene, suffering the parched earth, the bitter wind, the blistering sun, the bitter nights, the fear.
Aware that this is in some way a retelling of the ‘forty days in the wilderness’ that Jesus undertook in the Bible from the quotation which prefaces the novel, we wonder as to who Musa and Miri might represent. This cruel and boastful man who appears to be dying in the opening pages, we wish dead as does his downtrodden wife.
The first strangers, four pilgrims who arrive to fulfil their quarantine, are not obvious contenders for roles in the original text either. Jesus arrives in Chapter 6,’far younger than he might have seemed from a distance’ ‘preferring the pious habitats of lunatics and bats’ determined that his God will be revealed through ecstatic prayers and fasting. His apparent miracle of making Musa well sets off a chain of events of which he is unaware.
Musa’s power to bully the other pilgrims as well as his wife. builds to a climax when the apparently mad badu is sent to coax Jesus from his precipitous retreat.
Perhaps other readers identified earlier in the novel the alter egos of these characters and what might be the final outcome. I did not which meant that I was on tenterhooks, almost praying for good to overcome evil, until the last few pages. And those final revelations are immensely satisfying. Compelling and convincing; this will be another book to stay close to my bookshelf, shared with care!
This novel is of the same quality; the language astonishing, with descriptions of people and place as rich, as vivid. The reader is standing alongside the characters, seeing the same scene, suffering the parched earth, the bitter wind, the blistering sun, the bitter nights, the fear.
Aware that this is in some way a retelling of the ‘forty days in the wilderness’ that Jesus undertook in the Bible from the quotation which prefaces the novel, we wonder as to who Musa and Miri might represent. This cruel and boastful man who appears to be dying in the opening pages, we wish dead as does his downtrodden wife.
The first strangers, four pilgrims who arrive to fulfil their quarantine, are not obvious contenders for roles in the original text either. Jesus arrives in Chapter 6,’far younger than he might have seemed from a distance’ ‘preferring the pious habitats of lunatics and bats’ determined that his God will be revealed through ecstatic prayers and fasting. His apparent miracle of making Musa well sets off a chain of events of which he is unaware.
Musa’s power to bully the other pilgrims as well as his wife. builds to a climax when the apparently mad badu is sent to coax Jesus from his precipitous retreat.
Perhaps other readers identified earlier in the novel the alter egos of these characters and what might be the final outcome. I did not which meant that I was on tenterhooks, almost praying for good to overcome evil, until the last few pages. And those final revelations are immensely satisfying. Compelling and convincing; this will be another book to stay close to my bookshelf, shared with care!
September 3, 2023
SJC Review: 5.71
This novel is a brilliant illustration of the creative craft and thought-provoking potential of literature. Crace has tackled and successfully surmounted the potentially explosive subject-matter of fictionalising Christ's forty dsys in the wilderness. In doing so, he has so wonderfully captured the rocky desolation of the setting, while humanising the unendurable suffering of the Galilee carpenter's fast. Indeed, the author has blended the human frailty and possible divinity of this character to leave those questions as to Jesus' historical or spiritual significance unanswered. As such, Jesus' potential miraculous restoration to life of the merchant, Musa, could equally be mere coincidence. What is clear is that the latter character constitutes the height of Crace's powers of character creation. The human embodiment of vice and corruption, not only will this despicable merchant's self-interest prey upon those others who have sought solace in this bleak landscape, but will also be the human instrument of temptation to divert Christ from his stoic fast. The novel does not attempt to reveal the truth behind Christ's divinity and leaves a tantalising duality of interpretation as to Jesus' fate in the wilderness and as to the birth of Christianity.
This novel is a brilliant illustration of the creative craft and thought-provoking potential of literature. Crace has tackled and successfully surmounted the potentially explosive subject-matter of fictionalising Christ's forty dsys in the wilderness. In doing so, he has so wonderfully captured the rocky desolation of the setting, while humanising the unendurable suffering of the Galilee carpenter's fast. Indeed, the author has blended the human frailty and possible divinity of this character to leave those questions as to Jesus' historical or spiritual significance unanswered. As such, Jesus' potential miraculous restoration to life of the merchant, Musa, could equally be mere coincidence. What is clear is that the latter character constitutes the height of Crace's powers of character creation. The human embodiment of vice and corruption, not only will this despicable merchant's self-interest prey upon those others who have sought solace in this bleak landscape, but will also be the human instrument of temptation to divert Christ from his stoic fast. The novel does not attempt to reveal the truth behind Christ's divinity and leaves a tantalising duality of interpretation as to Jesus' fate in the wilderness and as to the birth of Christianity.
January 24, 2021
Imaginative retelling of Jesus' 40 days in the Wilderness [called herein a Quarantine.] While Jesus goes there to pray and to grow closer to God, there are 5 others also there: 3 men and 2 women, whose lives are touched by Jesus in some way. Lots of literary license here--not your traditional New Testament version, especially the ending which will probably be off-putting to evangelical Christians. Beautifully written and vividly descriptive.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
January 23, 2022
The 40-day fast of Jesus Christ in the desert brilliantly re-imagined and dramatized. Here, he wasn’t alone. There were 4 others: 3 men and a woman also went there, occupied a cave each to fast for 40 days. He wasn’t a Christ yet then, just someone from Galilee, and the others (including another woman, pregnant, with her wily, abusive merchant-husband who was dying at the start of the story but was somehow miraculously cured by Jesus when the latter came to their tent and stole a pouch of water) nicknamed him Gally.
The five went there to fast for various reasons (one had cancer and wanted to be cured, the woman because she was barren and wanted to have a child because her husband is about to divorce her, etc.). Gally’s reason? To get rid of sin, to put him at god’s right hand. His was a brave, total fast: no food AND no water. In 30 days he was dead, completely naked, all skin and bones.
But the evil merchant, recipient of Gally’s miraculous healing, not only was able to seemingly make everything right for everyone, but also to sort of resurrect Gally and make him divine . And likewise to make a profitable business out of it.
Now if I’m gonna fast for 40 days I’d definitely just do it partly: I’ll not eat, but I’d have plenty of water with me (not energy drinks, or even beer, because that would be cheating). Science says that without food I can stay alive for 2 to 3 months, so 40 days would be doable. But without food and water, an average person would pass out in 25 days and die in 30 (like Gally, though he was conscious—or delirious to be precise—on his last day).
It would help if I could have a lot of books to read. Or maybe a chess set and some chess games to analyse. Here Gally, on the 4th day of his fast, managed to create a board game and played against himself. While playing, he reached an epiphany: that the spiritual life is much like a game between two players, one real and suffering, and the other absent and imaginary—
“When he had finished writing out the word for god, laying claim to every stone and any flat face of clay which had room enough for lettering, he chose something simpler to occupy his mind. He took up his pointed writing rock and scratched a basket of three circles in the sun-dried floor, just inside his cave, and cut the circles into quarters with a cross. It was a rough grid on which to play the mill-game. This was how bad boys avoided temple lessons, hiding in the medlar trees, and playing on the mill-board for prizes of dried grapes, with sacrilegious forfeits for the ones that lost: put grass snakes in the priest’s side room; steal walnuts from the temple tree; rap on his door and run…And this was how old men killed time until the time killed them, sitting with their backs arched in the shade, above a mill-game board, waiting for their girls to serve a meal or for the mood to send them home. Jesus searched for tiny stones to act as counters—six blacking-brown, six white or grey—and spent the day as best he could in opposition to himself, testing all the blocked and ambushed routes around the grid. He’d never been much good at the mill-game when he was young. He had not practised. He’d prayed instead. He could not see the point of games.
“Now he had all the practice that he wanted. He could enjoy the dodging conflict of the little stones, the way they tussled for the cross-roads of the board, and did their best to flee the outer ring and hold the centre ground. There was another sermon there, he thought. Outside the temple gates on market day, raised on a cart. The mill-game as a symbol of the world, with god its inner circle and the stones as pilgrims hunting for the centre of the cross. It was a holy game.
“He could, therefore, persuade himself not to mind the guilty times when he abandoned prayers, when he lost heart in the repetition of the scriptures. Instead, he contested with himself in the mill-game and played both parts, the winner and the loser. Indeed, it seemed the game itself was a sort of prayer, with just one supplicant and no one to respond except himself. The mill-game worshipper, alone in quarantine, could not presume the company of god. Nor could the man at prayer. Both of them had to play both roles, and be in opposition to themselves and make all moves, and lose and win in equal part. God would not show himself. He would not sit cross-legged on the far side of the board, replying to each move of Jesus’s with his own stratagems, drawing in his breath when he seemed bettered, crying out when he had Jesus trapped, dispensing charity and hope and forfeits when he had placed the final stone inside the cross. He would not simply run up like a dog whenever Jesus prayed.
“It was no comfort, knowing that the winner was the loser too. Jesus could not sleep, even though he had relented in his disciplines and allowed himself to lie naked and depleted on the ground, out of the draught, his shoulder as a pillow. His skin became as cold as clay. Where were the camel and the thorn? He rolled into a ball, his knees pulled up towards his chin, his thin arms clasped around his shins, his backbone bumpy like a rabbit’s gut. It was the fourth night of his quarantine, and he was weak.”
The author has a powerful imagination and a way with words. He had even able to conjure the past when the world had not been inflicted yet with the pestilence that was humanity, and the future when this blissful state shall be restored by a cataclysmic storm:
“…This was the way the world had been before mankind, the childhood of the earth when it was innocent and undisturbed. This way the way the world would be when all mankind had gone, when the cleansing wind of prophecy had swept all sins and virtues from the earth and the wilderness was strewn with fallen and abandoned faiths.”
The five went there to fast for various reasons (one had cancer and wanted to be cured, the woman because she was barren and wanted to have a child because her husband is about to divorce her, etc.). Gally’s reason? To get rid of sin, to put him at god’s right hand. His was a brave, total fast: no food AND no water. In 30 days he was dead, completely naked, all skin and bones.
But the evil merchant, recipient of Gally’s miraculous healing, not only was able to seemingly make everything right for everyone, but also to sort of resurrect Gally and make him divine . And likewise to make a profitable business out of it.
Now if I’m gonna fast for 40 days I’d definitely just do it partly: I’ll not eat, but I’d have plenty of water with me (not energy drinks, or even beer, because that would be cheating). Science says that without food I can stay alive for 2 to 3 months, so 40 days would be doable. But without food and water, an average person would pass out in 25 days and die in 30 (like Gally, though he was conscious—or delirious to be precise—on his last day).
It would help if I could have a lot of books to read. Or maybe a chess set and some chess games to analyse. Here Gally, on the 4th day of his fast, managed to create a board game and played against himself. While playing, he reached an epiphany: that the spiritual life is much like a game between two players, one real and suffering, and the other absent and imaginary—
“When he had finished writing out the word for god, laying claim to every stone and any flat face of clay which had room enough for lettering, he chose something simpler to occupy his mind. He took up his pointed writing rock and scratched a basket of three circles in the sun-dried floor, just inside his cave, and cut the circles into quarters with a cross. It was a rough grid on which to play the mill-game. This was how bad boys avoided temple lessons, hiding in the medlar trees, and playing on the mill-board for prizes of dried grapes, with sacrilegious forfeits for the ones that lost: put grass snakes in the priest’s side room; steal walnuts from the temple tree; rap on his door and run…And this was how old men killed time until the time killed them, sitting with their backs arched in the shade, above a mill-game board, waiting for their girls to serve a meal or for the mood to send them home. Jesus searched for tiny stones to act as counters—six blacking-brown, six white or grey—and spent the day as best he could in opposition to himself, testing all the blocked and ambushed routes around the grid. He’d never been much good at the mill-game when he was young. He had not practised. He’d prayed instead. He could not see the point of games.
“Now he had all the practice that he wanted. He could enjoy the dodging conflict of the little stones, the way they tussled for the cross-roads of the board, and did their best to flee the outer ring and hold the centre ground. There was another sermon there, he thought. Outside the temple gates on market day, raised on a cart. The mill-game as a symbol of the world, with god its inner circle and the stones as pilgrims hunting for the centre of the cross. It was a holy game.
“He could, therefore, persuade himself not to mind the guilty times when he abandoned prayers, when he lost heart in the repetition of the scriptures. Instead, he contested with himself in the mill-game and played both parts, the winner and the loser. Indeed, it seemed the game itself was a sort of prayer, with just one supplicant and no one to respond except himself. The mill-game worshipper, alone in quarantine, could not presume the company of god. Nor could the man at prayer. Both of them had to play both roles, and be in opposition to themselves and make all moves, and lose and win in equal part. God would not show himself. He would not sit cross-legged on the far side of the board, replying to each move of Jesus’s with his own stratagems, drawing in his breath when he seemed bettered, crying out when he had Jesus trapped, dispensing charity and hope and forfeits when he had placed the final stone inside the cross. He would not simply run up like a dog whenever Jesus prayed.
“It was no comfort, knowing that the winner was the loser too. Jesus could not sleep, even though he had relented in his disciplines and allowed himself to lie naked and depleted on the ground, out of the draught, his shoulder as a pillow. His skin became as cold as clay. Where were the camel and the thorn? He rolled into a ball, his knees pulled up towards his chin, his thin arms clasped around his shins, his backbone bumpy like a rabbit’s gut. It was the fourth night of his quarantine, and he was weak.”
The author has a powerful imagination and a way with words. He had even able to conjure the past when the world had not been inflicted yet with the pestilence that was humanity, and the future when this blissful state shall be restored by a cataclysmic storm:
“…This was the way the world had been before mankind, the childhood of the earth when it was innocent and undisturbed. This way the way the world would be when all mankind had gone, when the cleansing wind of prophecy had swept all sins and virtues from the earth and the wilderness was strewn with fallen and abandoned faiths.”
October 16, 2024
So so, I didn't end up engaging with this retelling of Christ's 40 days of abstinence in the desert as I thought I might.
Maybe it's because Jesus was more of a peripheral figure in this tale
Maybe it's because Jesus was more of a peripheral figure in this tale
February 4, 2015
Jim Crace's prose lifts you to a place that makes you feel wiser and better, yet his characters are real humans with real flaws and problems. Quarantine is an exotic blend of everyday hardship and transcendent faith.
Quarantine takes place about 30 AD in the dry scrub of the Holy Land where people in need of guidance go alone into the wilderness to seek God through a process called quarantine that involves fasting, prayer, and reflection. In the novel, a group of characters loosely band together for mutual comfort and safety, but the character who holds himself apart from them and most fervently prays for enlightenment is Jesus of Nazareth.
It is Crace's depiction of the divinity--and the humanity--of Jesus that makes Quarantine special. Crace’s Jesus is young and unsure even though divine power infuses his very breath. In conveying Jesus' nature, Crace writes, "When Jesus prayed, there came a point where the words were speaking him, and he became their object, not their source. Sometimes these prayers spoke to him in Greek or Aramaic… But there were occasions, more mystifying, feverish, and blissful, when the language was unknown, a tripping, spittle-basted tongue, plosive and percussive and high-pitched. Then, if he was left undisturbed for long enough with these wild rhapsodies, he might feel his spirit soften and solidify at once. He was an egg immersed in boiling water, a fusing and dividing trinity of yolk and white and shell." This passage for me, was an "Ahh" moment.
Of the inescapable terrain the quarantiners must endure, Crace writes, “[the scrub] made no claims. It did not promise anything, except, maybe, to replicate through its array of absences the body’s inner solitude and to free its tenants and its guests from their addictions and their vanities. The empty lands…were siblings to the empty spaces in the heart.”
Quarantine shares a story. It reveals character. It brings readers close to a man who changed the world but suggests this man is someone one might meet any time, anywhere.
Quarantine takes place about 30 AD in the dry scrub of the Holy Land where people in need of guidance go alone into the wilderness to seek God through a process called quarantine that involves fasting, prayer, and reflection. In the novel, a group of characters loosely band together for mutual comfort and safety, but the character who holds himself apart from them and most fervently prays for enlightenment is Jesus of Nazareth.
It is Crace's depiction of the divinity--and the humanity--of Jesus that makes Quarantine special. Crace’s Jesus is young and unsure even though divine power infuses his very breath. In conveying Jesus' nature, Crace writes, "When Jesus prayed, there came a point where the words were speaking him, and he became their object, not their source. Sometimes these prayers spoke to him in Greek or Aramaic… But there were occasions, more mystifying, feverish, and blissful, when the language was unknown, a tripping, spittle-basted tongue, plosive and percussive and high-pitched. Then, if he was left undisturbed for long enough with these wild rhapsodies, he might feel his spirit soften and solidify at once. He was an egg immersed in boiling water, a fusing and dividing trinity of yolk and white and shell." This passage for me, was an "Ahh" moment.
Of the inescapable terrain the quarantiners must endure, Crace writes, “[the scrub] made no claims. It did not promise anything, except, maybe, to replicate through its array of absences the body’s inner solitude and to free its tenants and its guests from their addictions and their vanities. The empty lands…were siblings to the empty spaces in the heart.”
Quarantine shares a story. It reveals character. It brings readers close to a man who changed the world but suggests this man is someone one might meet any time, anywhere.
March 8, 2013
I suspect that what many fundamentalist Christians find blasphemous about this book is precisely what I found so appealing . It’s an intriguing exploration of the Biblical story of Jesus’ 40 days in the desert and while there are vague similarities and references to the Biblical account, Jim Crace invites the reader to move far beyond what’s found in the Gospels. Reminiscent of Kazantzakis’s “Last Temptation of Christ” Crace’s Jesus is wracked with doubts and uncertainties about who he is, while at the same time plagued by an almost insane desire to be united with the mysterious source of his spiritual quest. True to the Gospel narratives, he is driven into the desert to fast and deal with a series of temptations; however Matthew's, Mark's and Luke’s account of what happens there pales in comparison to what Crace has done with the story. He paints a vivid picture of the dangers that await those who venture off into the desert and describes in horrifying detail what happens to the body when it is deprived of water and food for 40 days. But it’s what Crace has done with the character of Jesus and the other travelers he encounters in the desert – most notably the demonic merchant Musa - that makes this book so riveting. There is much to ponder here about the nature of temptation and the will to withstand it, as well as the presence of evil and the role of compassion, suffering and hope. I was fascinated by the way Crace wove Scriptural references into his narrative –as well the connection between some of his characters and those that are familiar to anyone who has read the Gospels (Miri/Mary; Marta/Martha; Musa the tempter.) But what kept me reading was Crace’s provocative treatment of the suffering, ultimately redemptive Christ-figure. While this book is not likely to show up on the Pope’s Lenten reading list, as far as I’m concerned it’s one of the most thought-provoking “spiritual” books I’ve come across in a long time.
July 4, 2016
Be well.
As much as I was hoping for a zombie apocalypse novel, this was a retelling of what was reputed to be Christ's 40 day fast in the desert. So.. not what I was expecting, to say the least ^_^
This book is well-written & Crace is wonderful with his attention to detail. I have only read his "The Devil's Larder" prior to this, which was a delicious, erotic collection of short stories which I highly, highly recommend!
This? Well, it all depends. I am not a religious person, so I honestly found some of this to be a bit much. I am.. not sure what the point of this novel was. I feel as though I may have missed something in my reading of it. The writing is certainly lovely, the concept fascinating, but it comes up short.
There are a variety of characters -- Jesus, Musa, Miri, Marta, Badu, Shim, Aphas. However, I felt as though the only characters we really learned about in depth were Jesus & Musa. Musa was one of the most horrendous characters I have read about. A truly awful villain that you cannot help but continue to read on & on about. It is almost a hate read, or a rage interest in this man who I am assuming is meant to represent Satan. The other characters felt non consequential, which is a shame.
This is a hard novel to review & after writing this, I am still not sure how I felt about it!
As much as I was hoping for a zombie apocalypse novel, this was a retelling of what was reputed to be Christ's 40 day fast in the desert. So.. not what I was expecting, to say the least ^_^
This book is well-written & Crace is wonderful with his attention to detail. I have only read his "The Devil's Larder" prior to this, which was a delicious, erotic collection of short stories which I highly, highly recommend!
This? Well, it all depends. I am not a religious person, so I honestly found some of this to be a bit much. I am.. not sure what the point of this novel was. I feel as though I may have missed something in my reading of it. The writing is certainly lovely, the concept fascinating, but it comes up short.
There are a variety of characters -- Jesus, Musa, Miri, Marta, Badu, Shim, Aphas. However, I felt as though the only characters we really learned about in depth were Jesus & Musa. Musa was one of the most horrendous characters I have read about. A truly awful villain that you cannot help but continue to read on & on about. It is almost a hate read, or a rage interest in this man who I am assuming is meant to represent Satan. The other characters felt non consequential, which is a shame.
This is a hard novel to review & after writing this, I am still not sure how I felt about it!
June 8, 2015
I like Crace's writing and his story-telling skills ... but probably not as much as I should given his critical standing in the literary community. Take Quarantine - shortlisted for the Booker prize - shouldn't that warrant a 5 star rating? this is the third or fourth Crace I have read and I really do appreciate how he approaches his subject matter. he has this way of sidling up to the characters instead of coming at them head on. while the reviews may play up the idea that Quarantine is about Jesus and his forty day fast in the desert, Jesus is only one of a half dozen characters AND there are characters so so much more interesting than him. he provides a centre around which the story unfolds and the characters interact.
I am always impressed by how much story Crace manages to tell in a relatively short book. It is one of the things that I most admire in a writer.
I guess Crace is an author I really admire ... deserving of five star ratings and literary acclaim. maybe I am just waiting for that one particular story that resonates with me emotionally, that delivers a metaphor punch to my gut, that wows me .... maybe I am saving that five star rating for the one I really admire but also connect with on a deeply personal level.
I am always impressed by how much story Crace manages to tell in a relatively short book. It is one of the things that I most admire in a writer.
I guess Crace is an author I really admire ... deserving of five star ratings and literary acclaim. maybe I am just waiting for that one particular story that resonates with me emotionally, that delivers a metaphor punch to my gut, that wows me .... maybe I am saving that five star rating for the one I really admire but also connect with on a deeply personal level.
December 6, 2022
Crace takes the story of the 40 days of the temptation of Christ in the Judean desert and remakes it by adding four other travellers who join in with a desire to transform themselves through the same punishing self sacrifice that he refers to as "quarantine". Each individual is looking to get something different out of the 40 day process. There is a Satan figure called Musa who is a wife beating, greedy trader who only cares about money. At one point he actually convinces the group in the desert that he is the landlord of the desert and they need to pay him. Musa, even though he gets cured of a deadly fever by Jesus, spends his time looking for ways to tempt the group into breaking their fast.
Similar to Crace's novel, Harvest, the style is very direct and almost matter of fact in its violence and brutality but that is what gives his books that wild primitive feeling. I do think I would have gotten more out of the story if I was a bible reader. If you are, you might want to try this one out.
Similar to Crace's novel, Harvest, the style is very direct and almost matter of fact in its violence and brutality but that is what gives his books that wild primitive feeling. I do think I would have gotten more out of the story if I was a bible reader. If you are, you might want to try this one out.
July 5, 2016
Quarantine is an interesting book to give it the due credit. It lost to God of Small things at Booker in 1997 and is acclaimed supremely high by critics. At times next to Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Which is where I find myself having reading either the wrong books or reading the right books wrongly.
I found Quarantine Meek and With no beginning and no definitive end. I found it a bit scratching the surface kind of writing wherein there was a scope to hit treasure if only due deeper. The central character 'Musa' is the evil in the life of other 5 characters including 'Jesus' and still he comes out relatively better off while rest lose a part or full of them. The book also kind of undermine's women's position in the society during that time and probably that has carried over till today. Troubling to say the least.
Its a quick read and that goes in its favor. I recommend it as a reading over the weekend but not put it under your goodread shelf of must read.
I found Quarantine Meek and With no beginning and no definitive end. I found it a bit scratching the surface kind of writing wherein there was a scope to hit treasure if only due deeper. The central character 'Musa' is the evil in the life of other 5 characters including 'Jesus' and still he comes out relatively better off while rest lose a part or full of them. The book also kind of undermine's women's position in the society during that time and probably that has carried over till today. Troubling to say the least.
Its a quick read and that goes in its favor. I recommend it as a reading over the weekend but not put it under your goodread shelf of must read.
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