Customer Reviews

Genesis: A Novel

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I find Jim Crace's work to be up and down. Of his last three books, I think Being Dead and The Devil's Larder are both incredibly good books. On the other hand, I was rather disappointed with Quarantine. Here, I am sorry to say, is another disappointment.

Genesis is the story of a man, Felix Dern, who has produced a child with every woman with whom he's ever had sex. That amounts to six children, if we include the one who is yet a fetus at the top of the novel. And yet, Lix, as he is called, is a timid man despite his fame as an actor. How does he manage this?

It can't be because of his supposed fertility which appears a non-issue to me despite the fact that Crace keeps coming back to it. Lix doesn't cause a child every time he has sex (which would have been really interesting.) And he can't be afraid that every time he has a relationship with a woman he will have a child. He doesn't even know of his first child and his child with his first love-for-a-month, the fiery Freda, doesn't explain the years of abstinence that follows this break-up.

Does his nature come from the repression of this unnamed city in which he lives his life? It's hard to tell but it seems unlikely since his fame allows him a lot of freedom and travel to America. If his home is so bad why didn't he just stay in Hollywood?

When it comes right down to it, I couldn't fathom Lix at all and this ruined the book for me. Though Crace has an excellent prose style, the only place where this story really came alive for me was near the end where we got a glimpse at Lix through the eyes of his children. Perhaps that would have been a better book.

Jim Crace writes novels rich in imagination and ideas, and his GENESIS is no exception. QUARANTINE (1988), for instance, follows Jesus's forty days in the desert from the desert's perspective, and the award-winning novel, BEING DEAD (2000), involves two decomposing corpses. Not surprisingly, there are those of us who follow Crace's literary path through strange and imaginary territory rather compulsively.

In a recent New York Times' interview, Crace described GENESIS as "a novel based on the Darwinist impulse," in which he examines the ease with which his protagonist can "hand on his gene packet" (12/03/03). Felix Dern (aka "Lix") is a celebrated, intellectual actor and singer living in a police state (p. 7), plagued with sudden floods and riots, and called the City of Kisses (formerly known by Rousseau's "truer title," the City of Balconies). Every woman Lix dares to sleep with bears his child (p. 3). Crace's novel follows Lix for roughly twenty-six years of his life, from his final year as a theater student and anarchist at an Arts Academy, to a night spent stranded in his car with his second wife, Mouetta, on their wedding anniversary. Along the way, Crace explores Lix's sexual encounters with five different women resulting in six children. For Lix, "to be so fertile was a curse" (p. 28).

GENESIS is quintessential Crace. Equally elegant and intriguing, Crace's novel is a testament to the uncontrollable force of sex and love in a time of police barricades, surveillance, and cattle prods. Crace promises his next novel will "about America's medieval future," in which Americans board crowded ships back to Europe. Hopefully, Crace will never grow tired of spinning his imaginary yarns.

G. Merritt

Crace's "Genesis" novel almost works. It's a great premise. The book is constructed with 6 children, 6 conceptions; and you know from the beginning that you'll hear about each one. Some of the characters are entertaining such as the fiery revolutionary feminist Freda who insists on being on top. Her Cousin Mouetta also shows some personality and spunk. And Crace authors one of my favorite single sentences I've read in a novel on page 127, "She wanted the drama of the streets relocated in between the sheets." Doesn't that sound like it ought to be a line in a popular song?

Thematically, the main character, Lix, seems at a loss about how to father. That is perhaps the great paradox of the novel, that a man who excels at fertility is so completely lacking in fatherly commitment, love and understanding. In fact, we encounter just about everything from love, lust and lumpy gravy, except for that most exceptional consequence of romantic love, the family. Whereas real life family life is one of the most character-building experiences, in Lix we find a man who lives inside his stage personas, much as some men live most fully within their heads. Thus, "Genesis" for me was a titillating modern tragedy.

That said, the book meanders to a conclusion. By the time of Lix's 6th conception, we're about as bored with his sex life as he is. Therefore, I wound up asking myself, "Do I really care?" In the end, this was an enjoyable enough reading experience, hardly riveting or one that I could not have lived without. A definite maybe.

GENESIS may not live up to Jim Crace's monumental peak of writing he reached with BEING DEAD, but I think it deserves much more examination than those who dismiss it as a work of Ego onanism. The very nature of the story of an Actor who struts the stage and movie screen but is shackled in his personal life by his inability to connect to the women with whom he finds himself is perhaps too obvious a metaphor for men today, but it is a well developed metaphorical journey none the less. The majority of the action takes place in a 'magical realism' atmosphere - The City of Kisses - which is besieged by bizarre police activities, odd floods, and bohemian eateries and bars that bounce us back and forth in time as well as place. Our Actor (Lix, to give him his name) is cursed with being hyperfertile, so much so that every women with whom he copulates becomes pregnant immediately. How Lix manages these various (six in number) affairs and marriages and the offspring that result from his curse is the line of story we follow - or try to. Were it not for the glorious word working such as 'Love is enacted by small things. Love is what you do with what you've got.' and 'No one's to blame, but passion is not intended to endure. The overture is short or else it's not the overture. Nor is marriage meant to be perfect. It has to toughen on its blemishes. It has to morph and change its shape and turn its insides out and move beyond the passion that is the architect. Falling in love is not being in love. Waiting for the perfect partner is self-sabotage.' then perhaps this book would not deserve our close attention. And I think it does.

When passages such as these are used for a moment of meditation, then GENESIS has a lot to say about how we are functioning in this discombobulated world.. And if Jim Crace does only that - makes us stop for a moment and observe the Human Comedy - then reading this book has its rewards. Let's see where he goes next.

I am confused. I just finished this book last night, but the name of the book was "Six", not "Genesis". My only experience with Crace, prior to this, was reading "Being Dead" and "Signals of Distress".
Thankfully I read "Being Dead" first. If I had read either of the others, I would never have bought another Crace book. No comparison!

What a disappointment! As a big fan of Jim Crace (particularly Being Dead), it pains me to say it, but large tracts of this book are an author on autopilot. Let's take only a couple of examples: 1) the descriptions of the physical aspects of the city Lix and co inhabit, and 2) the, at times, totalatarian behavior of the "authorities". Both were (over) employed in his earlier novel Arcadia, and, to see them re-appear here after a gap of some years suggests an author running out of ideas (or filling in space). As Crace has rightly been applauded in the past as one of the most inventive modern British authors, let's hope this is a once-off.

On about page 200 of GENESIS I realized that there would be no payoff in this novel -- nothing to take with you, to think about, to marvel at a day or week or year later. Novels are fiction, yes, but an effective novel involves the reader to such an extent that he believes what he is reading actually happened. That never happens in GENESIS because the characters are bathed in artificiality -- they resemble robots, in fact -- and the story is scarcely worth describing. The setting, a phony city, comes off as phony (although for some reason I kept thinking of Ljubljana -- not the real city, just a phony city written to sound like Ljubljana). I have dipped into contemporary literary fiction from time to time -- and I heard Crace was a rare nonironical nonpostmodernist nonsneerer -- but I have almost always been deeply disappointed. This book is no exception. Back to J.B. Priestley, P.H. Newby, Waugh and Greene. I will say that Crace has a stylistic flair: His sentences produce a pleasing, though somewhat staccato, effect, and he has a talent for the odd construction or word choice. But under no circumstances would I give this book to a friend.

GENESIS may not live up to Jim Crace's monumental peak of writing he reached with BEING DEAD, but I think it deserves much more examination than those who dismiss it as a work of Ego onanism. The very nature of the story of an Actor who struts the stage and movie screen but is shackled in his personal life by his inability to connect to the women with whom he finds himself is perhaps too obvious a metaphor for men today, but it is a well developed metaphorical journey none the less. The majority of the action takes place in a 'magical realism' atmosphere - The City of Kisses - which is besieged by bizarre police activities, odd floods, and bohemian eateries and bars that bounce us back and forth in time as well as place. Our Actor (Lix, to give him his name) is cursed with being hyperfertile, so much so that every women with whom he copulates becomes pregnant immediately. How Lix manages these various (six in number) affairs and marriages and the offspring that result from his curse is the line of story we follow - or try to. Were it not for the glorious word working such as 'Love is enacted by small things. Love is what you do with what you've got.' and 'No one's to blame, but passion is not intended to endure. The overture is short or else it's not the overture. Nor is marriage meant to be perfect. It has to toughen on its blemishes. It has to morph and change its shape and turn its insides out and move beyond the passion that is the architect. Falling in love is not being in love. Waiting for the perfect partner is self-sabotage.' then perhaps this book would not deserve our close attention. And I think it does.

When passages such as these are used for a moment of meditation, then GENESIS has a lot to say about how we are functioning in this discombobulated world.. And if Jim Crace does only that - makes us stop for a moment and observe the Human Comedy - then reading this book has its rewards. Let's see where he goes next. Grady Harp

This is the first time I've read a Crace book and I'm not inclined to repeat the experience. It involves a group of unlikeable and unadmirable characters engaged in nothing much except making children and having sex, toward which they all have pretty juvenile attitudes.

The chief character, Felix Dern, who carries the unpleasant nickname of "Lix," is a weak, timid man, especially when it comes to sex, and it is his misfortune to impregnate every women he sleeps with. Fortunately (and perhaps surprisingly), this is a limited number, especially when you consider that Lix is a rather well known actor and considered quite handsome.

All the action takes place in what I take to be a fictitious Eastern European city before the Gorbachev era, in a vaguely repressive Communist regime. This is mildly interesting, and perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book, although not sufficient reason to read it.

The book is reasonably well written, and occasionally, the reader will come across a phrase that is sufficiently felicitous to be noticed. But it is a book without rewards or deep insights, in story or character. From what I read in the other reviews here, his other books may be a good deal better. This one, however, can be skipped without loss.

I had not read the author before this volumn, but did find Genesis quite interesting, held my attention throughout. Whether it's good or bad I could relate in many ways with our hero as he reflected on his loves and relationships. Give this book a try.