Being Dead

Ten years ago I read, and hated, Jim Crace's novel Genesis, so it was with reluctance that I picked up his Being Dead from a 3-for-$12 shelf at the antiquarian book fair. I already had two books and, with nothing more that I wanted, it would have to do. A lucky stroke, as it turns out, because Being Dead is a thoughtful, intense, sharply written novel. Two middle-aged zoologists are murdered at the seashore; their bodies begin to decay; their daughter searches for them; the police find them. That's it in a nutshell, but within those borders Crace explores the biology, theology, and poetry of death. For the daughter, the deaths are sad but also liberating. Death is universal and inescapable, so it is regrettable that modern society has turned it into an unmentionable. Crace remedies that.