Genesis: A Novel (Crace, Jim) (Hardcover)

by Jim Crace (Author) "EVERY WOMAN he dares to sleep with bears his child..." (more)
Key Phrases: Marin Scholla, Debit Bar, Navigation Island (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The protean British writer, whose time and place settings have ranged from the Stone Age (The Gift of Stones) and 40 days in the Judean desert (Quarantine) to the past lives of two decomposing bodies in present-day England (Being Dead), here creates a world very much like ours but different in subtle ways calculated to unnerve the reader. The protagonist is an actor named Felix Dern, aka Lix, and the unnamed country in which he lives is a menacing place. The army and police have put down bank riots and quashed a popular uprising; the ancient medieval city, once called the City of Kisses, is zoned, with restrictions on travel. Yet Lix lives a charmed life. Despite the innate caution-approaching timidity-of his personality, he's had a brilliant career. Now middle-aged and embarked on his second marriage, he's drawn into a dangerous revolutionary plot by a former lover, the mother of one of his children. Lix's most vexing problem, revealed in the book's first sentence, is fecundity: "Every woman he dares to sleep with bears his child." The book's chapters are numbered from one to six to designate Lix's children, some of whom are unknown to him. Sex pervades his thoughts and the narrative, as Lix ruminates about sexual desire and infidelity. Mirroring his protagonist's detached personality, Crace's tone throughout is cool and nonjudgmental. His characters' foibles elicit witty aphorisms: "Chatter is the cheapest contraceptive"; "It isn't love that's blind, it's alcohol." The inescapable results of Lix's determination to avoid any kind of heroic behavior, countered by his inadvertent success at fathering new lives, create a slightly surreal atmosphere of simmering suspense. Though the effect is somewhat muted by the essentially one-note theme, in the end, the reader's realization that Lix is an exemplar of the common man (the narrative, indeed, is all about "love and love-making,... children, marriages and lives") is what gives the narrative its memorable metaphorical impact.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
Lix, an actor, is so virile that he impregnates every woman he beds; unfortunately, the story he inhabits is a sterile exercise. Lix's propagation problem—in the book's opening chapter, his sixth child is accidentally conceived on the front seat of a car—is the kind of premise that might have fuelled an amusing magic-realist novel. Crace's agenda, however, is to deglamorize the act of procreation, and to tutor his readers about the emotional dislocations that divide men and women even as their bodies conjoin. Lix's erotic life is no fun: his partners criticize his lovemaking skills and demand intimacy that he cannot provide. His sexual history is recounted not as a comic picaresque but as a pompous lecture, full of strained aphorisms ("It isn't love that's blind, it's alcohol" "Chatter is the cheapest contraceptive") and meandering vignettes about mismatched desire.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (November 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374227306
• ISBN-13: 978-0374227302
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,476,203 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Unfathomable Character, January 15, 2004

By	Timothy Haugh (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crace's book of Genesis., December 13, 2003

By	G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Love, Lust & Lumpy Gravy, April 26, 2004

By	Lee Armstrong (Winterville, NC United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.