{"id":1649,"date":"2016-04-07T12:51:31","date_gmt":"2016-04-07T19:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1649"},"modified":"2017-12-18T08:32:13","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:32:13","slug":"review-quarantine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/07\/review-quarantine\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Quarantine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Quarantine\"<\/a>
\n Quarantine<\/a> by Jim Crace<\/a>
\n My rating: 3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

I read Jim Crace\u2019s Harvest<\/em> and said of it: \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to going back and reading his other award-winning writing.\u201d And now I have done so, although I am embarrassed to say this is the third book I\u2019ve read by him, not the second. When I went to look up his other novels, I realized I had already read Being Dead<\/em>. I say I\u2019m \u201cembarrassed\u201d because, apparently, I\u2019m not very good at remembering authors.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ll say this, that reading someone you \u201cknow\u201d is different from reading someone you don\u2019t. I read Harvest<\/em> with no expectations. Unfortunately, I can\u2019t say the same for Quarantine<\/em>. I admit, I went in, expecting to be as moved, and I was not. Which may have been the fault of having expectations.<\/p>\n

And here is a story with Jesus in it\u2014virtually no one would be able to read a novel with Jesus in it and not have a picture in their head already. This, too, could lead to disappointment. Crace\u2019s Jesus is not holy enough. Or he is too holy. Or too human. Not human enough. Too historically authentic. Lacking in reverence. Too reverential. Take your pick. It is a testimony to Crace\u2019s creativity that this Jesus will be nothing like anyone\u2019s expectations.<\/p>\n

This is a novel that uses all the language and imagery and sensibility of religion, but is not in the least religious. Here is hard-scrabble account, the harsh reality of spending 40 days in the desert, that somehow evokes a calmness and a peace. <\/p>\n

But for all that, Jesus is not the main character in this novel. The main character is the devil that tempts him, but not a biblical devil. An evil, but the kind that\u2019s as familiar as any jerk that cuts you off in traffic. As ubiquitous as the lies that eat away your soul\u2014the ones that you are told, and the ones you accept.<\/p>\n

It would be too easy to liken one\u2019s dropping oneself into a book to a quarantine, a fast, a spiritual journey begging questions of a god, the author. That\u2019s maybe glib, and certainly not the point of this novel. But whenever I go into these books, either wide-eyed or jaded, I always come out of them either plump or emaciated, dirtier or cleaner\u2014but never the same as when I started. That\u2019s all one can really ask of a good read. I expected something else, was not satisfied in that expectation, and yet I\u2019m not left wanting.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quarantine by Jim Crace My rating: 3 of 5 stars I read Jim Crace\u2019s Harvest and said of it: \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to going back and reading his other award-winning writing.\u201d And now I have done so, although I am embarrassed to say this is the third book I\u2019ve read by him, not the second. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: Quarantine”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-qB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1650,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions\/1650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}