Being Dead by Jim Crace

I was not overly impressed with Being Dead by Jim Crace. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2000, this book, like my last, begins with a murder. Joseph and Celice, husband and wife, are murdered brutally on the beach at Baritone Bay. The narrative then moves back and forth between the decomposing bodies and, first the story of how the two victims fell in love and then later of how their daughter Syl deals with their deaths.

The prose in this book is quite good, but the story itself did not really grab me. I think I will try another of Crace's books, perhaps Quarantine, both a Booker finalist and a Whitbread winner. But, Being Dead really left me flat.

1.5/5