Customer Reviews

Signals Of Distress

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The excruciating detail with which Crace describes each event and each stretch of English coast are but the beginning of this book's power. His unflinching portrait of the lives of his characters leaves no corner unturned. With the smallest of observations, worlds begin to shift and characters head towards inevitable decline or ascent. Aymer Smith is an almost unbearably painful creation. He is at once utterly sympathetic and detestable. He seems to be the sum total of every self-conscious fear a modern liberal might have. We watch him with compassion and fear and horror and smugness. And those with whom he comes into contact are drawn no less sparingly. There is not one character one would hope to be, and yet we may see ourselves in pieces of each of them. This kind of writing and acuity grip the reader from the opening gale and refuse to let go as we squirm to avoid knowing the end of Aymer's story. Wonderful and terrible.

The beautiful J.M.W. Turner painting on the cover of this book really suits it--an eerie balance of cheery and grim. The setting inevitably reminds one of Dickens, and even the characters seem Dickens-inspired up to a point, with names like Alice Yapp, Palmer Dolly, and Preacher Phipps. But the language is decidedly more modern and the characters, in the end, much more complex, with the possible exception of Fidia Smith, who is so fastidious as to place a napkin over her mauled brother-in-law's feet as he is carried through her house. The brother-in-law, Aymer Smith, is the book's protagonist, and is, as the copy on the back cover states, "a foolish well-intentioned prig." He is gullible, horny, and weepy by turns, utterly scrutable in the most loveable way. He is a lonely loner whose best efforts at connection with other people always seem to be thwarted by his good intentions. He is a staunch and outspoken abolitionist, which seems to annoy everyone in this small English town, since slavery is outlawed and the general attitude is "Why the hell do you want to talk about it then?" But Smith's greatest signifying act is to secretly set free an African slave who is cargo on an American ship wrecked in the town's harbor. The African, Otto, disappears entirely from the story, except in the superstitious-racist minds of the town, who happily blame all unusual or undesirable occurrences on his appeareance in their world. The novel comes to a grinding, hair-raising halt in a whirlwind of desparation, violence, and, ultimately, eerie silence. This is a great book for any reader of fiction, whether or not you have any interest in things nautical/historical/British. Its brilliant character portraiture, quirky plot twists, ghosty morality, and many Truly Weird and Interesting Moments make it a top-notch novel that deserves a lot more attention

I was uncertain choosing this at the library. The Atlantic Monthly review of this book compared the author to "the best" literary Brits: Salman Rushdie (no interest), Ian McEwan ("ominous" writing for others, flat to me) and Martin Amis (dreary). Now I am so glad I did! This book is wonderfully atmospheric, similar to Island by Jane Rodgers but less dark, and I was hooked immediately. As the characters are introduced they are wonderfully rooted in time and place. And Aymer Smith the main character is a real achievement: a contemptibly dishonest windbag yet pathetically human and somehow sympathetic. The puzzle of what this character represented for the author and what he was going to do with him, finally wouldn't let me put the book down. Highest recommendation!

Aymer Smith is quite a creation. Painful at times to read, Crace highlights the self-deception of a man convinced his actions are all altruistic.

It's not as good as 'Quarantine', but you won't regret the read.

As one ship lands and another flounders offshore, fates are entwined in the passengers of both and those waiting on the English coast for the storm to abate. There is only one inn in Wherrytown, so the sailors and survivors are housed together, sharing cramped quarters. One passenger, Ayer Smith, stands out against the rougher denizens, choosing a couple emigrating to Canada for his companions. Smith is a partner of Hector Smith and Co., the soap manufacturer that buys kelp ashes from the inhabitants of nearby Dry Marston.

An officious busybody typical of his class and education, Ayer has come to inform the agent and kelpers that the company will no longer need their services. He plans to rectify the situation with a personal visit to each family. Espousing the philosophy of Skepticism, Smith is also an Amender; he believes that for every act of evil, he can perform a corrective act of charity. A bachelor and a virgin, Smith is so out of touch with reality that he cannot identify pragmatism. In such misplaced attentions lies chaos.

Naturally Smith gets sidetracked by the beaching of the Belle of Wellington, particularly interested in an African slave, Otto, who is saved from the wreck, and the newlywed wife who shares his private quarters with her husband. It is through Smith's meddling that Otto is released, much to the consternation of Capt. Comstock, who locked him in the tackle room. As for the Captain, "hard winds, bad luck, a bar of sand had beached his ship. His masts were down, the cattle lost, the African set loose." To add to his burden, snow has begun to fall and "every half-wit in the land" is staying at the only inn.

The cast of characters is Dickensian, written with particular attention to their connections with the land from which they eke their livings, some well, many meager: Walter Howells, the agent who has his fingerprints on every transaction that occurs in Wherrytown, busy with the events of late ("Everyone would earn a decent crust. High tide, high times!); mother and daughter Rosie and Miggy Bowe, kelpers soon to be out of work, although Miggy has set her sights on one of the American sailors, Ralph Parkiss, though already courted by a local, Palmer Dolly; and the innkeeper, Mrs. Yapp.

With the impetus of the priggish Aymer Smith, a series of events is set in motion, events that would serve as high comedy were they not so tragic. Referred none too kindly to as "old spindleshanks", Aymer realizes his flaws, determined to be more reticent, less interfering: "He would be reckless in his reticence, a pleasing paradox." The passengers of the recovered ship sail off to what they hope will be a happy future, Ayer left watching. With one final, clumsy action, he takes his leave, returning to the world from whence he came, none the wiser for his adventures.

Crace has written a comedy of errors with Ayer Smith the central player, a dangerous fool under the best of circumstances, confronted by the real world of Neo-Industrial England, where life is lived on the edge of the ocean in all its splendor and random brutality. Blissfully unaware, Ayer is adamant, "There was a calm to maintain between oneself and one's behavior". Luan Gaines/ 2005.

Jim Crace again proves his storytelling abilities with moral tale. While not my favorite of his novels, this definitely worthwhile and probably his funniest book to date. He has a flare for language and vulgarity that are uncomparable to any writer I can think of. Very satisfying indeed.

Jim Crace's novel, Signals of Distress, tells of a sailing vessel grounded in 1830 off the cost of Wherrytown, England, and the interactions between its passengers and crew and the local townsfolk. The central character of the novel is Aymer Smith, a well-meaning but officious man who has taken it upon himself to go to Wherrytown to inform its inhabitants, in person, that the Smith soap-making firm will no longer be needing potash, a staple of the local economy. Smith, while well-meaning, is unable to communicate with anyone, and leaves much anger and confusion in his wake. One person on the shipwrecked boat is a black man bound for slavery in North America. Did Smith take it upon himself to free this man and let him wander the winter shores of Wherrytown? If so, did the freed but shivering former captive find his death by exposure? Crace tells an engaging story, and both his characters and settings ring true to life.

I'm cold and wet. I'm tired and hungry. And, I'm sitting comfortably at home. Crace uses words to paint pictures. He uses words to awaken all your senses. I've just left the England of a century and a half ago.

To get the full effect of this book you have to have lived in a small town, as I do. City folk should realize these are real people and their counterparts exist even in today's small town America (as I'm sure they do elsewhere in the world). I can put local names to many of the characters. It's hard to explain the relationships and dependencies that can bring disparate people together - or push them apart. Crace understands this and presents it amazingly well.

If you haven't read any of Jim Crace's books, this is a good one to start with. Great fun!

Crace is one of my favorite authors and I'm almost done reading his entire oeuvre. This 1995 novel has a surfeit of signals of distress and a singularly irritating protagonist. It's hard not to agree with the good people of Wherrytown about Aymer Smith: he is a naïve, self-centered and pompous prig. It is Crace's skill that we know what Smith is thinking and we learn what others are thinking of him. His adventures in this small fishing village exacerbate a difficult situation when a ship runs aground, a local industry is closed and an African slave escapes. The only problem Aymer is not responsible for is the storm on the sea. Yet, by the end of the book, we're ready to give him a benefit of the doubt. We also come to know the hard-scrabble life of the townspeople; as he did in The Gift of Stones, a bygone lifestyle and historic industry is recaptured and made real.

Aymer Smith is a fussy, pretentious, absurd, lonely little man. It's impossible to like him, so he he has no friends, but it is possible to admire him by the time this lyrically beautiful tale ends. Aymer is a bourgeois liberal. The depth of his empathy for enslaved Africans and for struggling English laborers is difficult to discern, yet he does suffer physical hardship and severe injury for his beliefs. Life for this novel's sailors, fisher folk and kelpers is, indeed, "nasty, brutish and short." Aymer talks the good fight and does as much as he easily can to alleviate their distress -- how many of us do better than that? Crace's prose is luminous, a joy to read.