Quarantine : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: not quite
Review: And immediately the spirit driveth him into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him. -Gospel According to Mark 1: 12-13

This novel is the latest installment in a sub-genre of literature where the central conceit is to tell a story from the point of view of the minor characters in a famous tale, with the more renowned stars of the originals taking in subordinate roles. Previous examples have included, Wide Sargasso Sea (derived from Jane Eyre), Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Hamlet), Man Friday (Robinson Crusoe), Jack Maggs (Great Expectations), and so forth. But Jim Crace has set his sights even higher than those classics; in Quarantine he tells the story of Christ's forty days in the wilderness, but with Jesus shunted to the periphery, in favor of several other pilgrims. In particular, the novel focuses on a trader, Musa--dishonest, loutish, and brutal--whom Jesus almost incidentally brings back to life from an apparently fatal illness. In turn it is only Musa, despicable as he is, who realizes that there is something extraordinary about this young man from Galillee.

The novel is only partially successful, in large measure because this structural technique falls flat. While Crace succeeds brilliantly in evoking the harsh atmosphere in which the quarantine takes place, the narrative comes to a screeching halt whenever Jesus is absent. Musa is simply too unpleasant a character for us to care what happens to him and none of the others really grab our attention. Nor can their stories hope to compete with the action we know to be taking place away from center stage.

Crace's demystification of Jesus is not very effective either. On the one hand he portrays Jesus as merely an overly pious youth, estranged from his family because of his bizarre behavior, and says of those who undertake this desert ordeal :

This was the season of the lunatics: the first new moon of spring was summoning those men--for lunatics are mostly men. They have the time and opportunity--to exorcize that part of them which sent them mad. Mad with grief, that is. Or shame. Or love. Or illness and visions. Mad enough to think that everything they did, no matter how vain or trivial, was of interest to their god. Mad enough to think that forty days of discomfort could put their world in order.

The fact that Musa turns out to be such an unsuitable candidate for resurrection, defrauding his fellow travelers and finally even raping one young woman, is probably intended to be an ironic comment on the nature of "miracles." And the torments sent by Satan to test Jesus are revealed to be nothing but petty annoyances foisted upon him by Musa.

But even with all that, the demands of Crace's own plot and very the things that drew him to this story in the first place work against this kind of debunking. The epigraph to the novel notes that a man could not live past thirty days without food and water, and yet Jesus does. The world might have been a better place without Musa, and yet Jesus did revive him. And Jesus may have been a lunatic, but his "discomforts" did indeed bring a new order to the world. There's a reason we only recall one of the folks who was in the desert for those forty days; Messiah or not, he's the one who mattered.

This then is a novel that is certainly interesting, and sometimes quite powerful and even transporting, but in trying to play up the experience while diminishing the experiencer it gets at cross purposes with itself. For me at least, it just didn't quite work.

GRADE : C

Rating:
Summary: A more inventive writer would be rare to find
Review: Having read BEING DEAD and feeling so swept away with author Jim Crace's gifts, I chose to read QUARANTINE from 1998, a book that is an earlier established prize winner. Now having read that, I am convinced that Crace is one of the more imaginative writers practicing today! Where do these bizarre threads of novel ideas originate? Like BEING DEAD, QUARANTINE takes a far-fetched yet simple story and spreads a well cast tale before us as a story/parable/spiritual journey/dream. On the surface QUARANTINE is a contemporary retelling or reevaluation of the 40 days in the wilderness that the character of Jesus spent prior to his accepting the concept that he was the promised son of god. With his spledidly atmospheric prose Crace takes this biblically alluded to tale and makes it visual, understadable, and even plausible. But I am not convinced that this superficial level is what is important in this book: Crace has populated this blustering arid wilderness with a cast of people who accompany Jesus in one way or another to manifest deeper meanings to the parable.

At some point in each of our lives we each make our trek into the desert, stuggling to discover exactly who we are beyond the shell or facade we sport, ask the bleak sky why we exist, how we are woven into the fabric of existence. Hopefully this experience results in an epiphany and helps us shed the cocoon that has shackled us and allows us to suddenly fly. This release of the spirit into the greater vastness of the cosmos we call home requires introspection, separation, a Quarantine. For this reader this is what Crace has described, and described eloquently. This could well be another version of the Everyman play. No, I don't think this is a book at odds with or in support of a biblical tale: I think this is a place for each of us to go and feel a hint of what we have done or will do to enhance our time on this planet.

Rating:
Summary: A Fable Wrapped in a Novel
Review: Quarantine is a novel of Christ's forty-day sojourn in the wilderness in which He was tempted by Satan. It resembles a fable in its construction. This tale was first told in the Bible, in the Gospels of Mark and Luke, and Matthew. Milton based Paradise Regained on Christ and His temptation. Crace's Jesus, however, is someone far different.

In Quarantine, Christ seems to be more of an unlearned carpenter than someone divine; someone whose parents have reprimanded Him for His habit of piety and who has fled to the desert of Judea in a search for God and truth.

Christ is not alone in the Judean wilderness; there are other quarantiners, each with his own purpose and each on his own quest. Some are determined to be cured of blindness or barrenness, while others are simply searching. Jesus chooses one of the most uncomfortable caves in the area in which to spend His forty days, and He is determined to spend them without food or water. In contrast, the wealthy merchant Musa, though suffering from an apparently terminal illness, spends his day with his pregnant wife in a lavish tent.

Crace, a master at integrating his setting into the very fabric of his story, describes the desert in minute detail. This detail, which covers the flora and the fauna, the geography and the geology, is so minute, however, that many readers, (I was one) will need to keep a dictionary handy. If there are words you can't find, don't worry; this is Jim Crace writing and, just as in Being Dead, another five-star novel, words, and worlds, often exist only in the author's imagination. And ours.

The story continues along the lines of a classic fable, but we feel as though we are lost in a dreamworld, in a hallucination perhaps, as the characters of Musa, his wife Miri, and her contemplative friend, Marta become symbols for the Biblical story with which most of us are familiar.

Crace is a writer's writer, a true original, and this book, like his others, is never predictable. This is an author who is strange, creative and original, but always wonderful. Never a political writer, Crace is more concerned with giving us a world within a world, with detailing the landscape and the culture. In Quarantine, there is the almost obsessive description of the desert; in Arcadia, it was a produce market; in Signals of Distress, nautical matters and life in an early Victorian seaport; in Being Dead, it was, of course, death. Or rather, the process of death.

Crace eschews political and topical themes and instead focuses his attention on the beginnings and endings of lives and of worlds: the remnants of the stone people, the dispossessed greengrocers, the quarantined. He writes with what Iris Murdoch calls "crystalline" construction; a novel that is really more like a poem, introspective and artistic and thematic. He very much resembles William Golding and Signals of Distress is very reminiscent of Golding's novel, The Spire.

Crace is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. But for those looking for something a little different, something that will make them think, something that is quietly profound, Crace may be just perfect.

Rating:
Summary: Quarantine
Review: "Quarantine" is a fascinating exercise that promises more than it actually delivers. The descriptions of the desert setting and the effects of fasting are both exquisite and horrifying, and the facts about human relationships in the ancient world ring true. Ultimately, however, the only character who seems to be explored in any depth is Crace's devil stand-in, Musa. While Jesus can be left a mystery, there is too much left undeveloped or unresolved in the other characters, including the women Marta and Miri. I was left not caring too much about anyone in this novel or the questions it raises, and wonder if Crace's real accomplishment is to make his wonderful writing a smokescreen for a basically shallow concept. What good is a mystery if it fails to engage?

Rating:
Summary: As dry as the landscape it depicts
Review: I enjoy intelligent, philosophical writing, which is why I was eager to read this novel. But I found the writing to be as arid as the desert landscape it describes. I forced my way through it, hoping for something allegorical or thought-provoking. The characters were well-differentiated but shallow, and the entire thing read as if it had been outlined and then filled in. I wasn't bothered by the lack of plot, but I finished the book wondering what was the point of it all?

Rating:
Summary: Astounding. Bizarre. Upsetting.
Review: Jim Crace is one of the finest writers working in English today--each of his rather brief books manages to fashion vivid, tangible worlds in the sparest, most succint prose. Aside from his most recent work, the miraculous "Being Dead", this is his best effort, a hallucinatory trip to the wind-swept, barren wilderness of ancient Palestine. Though each of the seven human characters here is compelling and fully developed in his or her own right, it is the landscape--bleak, timeless, deadly--that is the star of this show. Crace has so fully researched and imagined this place that we come away feeling as if we, too, have been there, suffered through a most grueling and unusual quarantine that begins and ends with a miracle and is rife with dangers--seen and unseen--throughout. Much has been made of the portrayal of Jesus here. To be sure, this is not the sort of book that fundamenalist Christians will be clambering to buy. What we get is a young, naive, incredibly obstinate man who suffers unnecessarily (or so it seems), dies a gruesome death and then, in the book's final, deeply unsettling pages, walks away from the desert, even as his husk of a body lies in a tomb. What exactly is going on here? It's hard to tell--Crace is not a big one on spelling things out for the reader--but one can draw the conclusion that Jesus had to die in the desert both spiritually (as in the Gospels) AND physically before he could begin his mission. There are serious implications for theologians in all of this, but this general reader was more haunted by the imagery than troubled by Crace's unorthodox and truly weird tampering with tradition. Among the supporting cast, the most interesting characters are the two women--the infertile, intelligent Marta and the subserviant, pregnant Miri who, we are lead to believe, might become the famous Martha and Mary of St. John's Lazarus story (something to keep in mind while reading this book, I think.) The warm, deeply human bond that brings these women together is touching indeed, and adds context to the mystical, dream-like passages that leave the reader off-balance, in a world that's as unfamiliar to us as it is real. Crace is a genius, what more can one say, and this strange, upsetting, beautiful little novel deserves the attention of all serious readers.

Rating:
Summary: How to place this book?
Review: My mother sent me this bizarre book as she is wont to ("it looked interesting" or "I read this and wanted to see what you thought"), and I am still unsure how to review it. On the back cover it says: "Quarantine is an imaginative and powerful re-telling of Christ's fabled forty-day fast in the desert." Well, it is imaginative. The actual story has a good deal more to do with the oddball group of people that Jesus meets as he enters the desert for his forty day fast. We meet Jesus briefly toward the beginning of the tale and then again at the very end, but the bulk of the story revolves around an abusive, greedy trader and his dutiful wife, a young headstrong man from outside of the region, an older Jewish man, a young 'barren' Jewish women, and a strange tribal "badu" from the deserts of the south. These self-exiled oddballs confront, anger, and assist each other during their periods of exile - Jesus playing a role only as the shadow existence of a potential prophet (he is a mystery to them and they are alternately awed and angered by him because he will not allow them to engage him.) If these characters were supposed to represent the various forms the devil might have taken in the wilderness - the various forms of evil were certainly not all represented, in fact, with the exception of the trader, these characters were rather benign and even 'good'. In any case, this book would make an excellent selection for a book club, due in large part, because it would lend itself to a good deal of interesting discussion.

Rating:
Summary: A strange work
Review: I didn't really know what to expect when I purchased this book, only that the subject (Jesus's 40 day sojourn in the desert) intrigued me. Having read this strange, disquieting little book, I'm not quite sure how to respond to it. Well-written it certainly is, but I'm not quite sure that I got the point of it, or if there even is a point to get! The enigmatic ending alone was enough to make me think that I probably missed the author's intent throughout the work. If you enjoy well-written books with believeable characters, read this work: if you like your tales to at least appear to have some rhyme or reason to them, stay away from this one.

Rating:
Summary: An original perspective on Jesus in the desert
Review: Although Jesus is not the main character in 'Quarantine', his presence imbues the narrative and propels, in a subtle yet powerful way, the actions of all the other characters in the novel. His presence, however, is all too human, and his so-called temptations are mostly the product of his fertile religious fantasizing and more prosaic causes. 'Quarantine' thus provides a different and original perspective on Jesus in the desert, one that is thoroughly believable and enjoyble because of the ironies involved.

To me, the truly commanding figure in 'Quarantine' is Musa, an unscrupulous merchant with a twisted Midas touch. His abusiveness, greediness, and manipulations let the other characters--his submissive wife, an ailing Jewish old man, an arrogant Greek is search of enlightment, a barren woman in search of fertily, and a simpleton--manifest themselves in their hopes and disappointments. Moreover, he is the one who, in his own obsession (a product of a serendipitous act), constantly tempts Jesus with comfort and food. In other words, Musa is the necessary evil through which the lives of the other characters, and the 'holiness' of Jesus, acquire meaning.

The language of the entire novel is superb and effortless, giving a sense of fluidity that at times hides the intricacies of the interactions among the characters and their inner life. The desert is also beautifully described, in all its barrenness and cruelty. I have rarely encountered such compelling language in other novels, and I absolutely enjoyed it.

'Quarantine', in short, is an interesting novel to read. It leaves the reader thinking about the moral issues raised for a long time, making him or her go back to re-read certain passages. I thoroughly recommend it. I'm sure that it would generate a wealth of fruitful ideas for debate on the meaning and nature of the religious experience.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting exercise of Biblical imagination
Review: This book is fascinating - and in an odd way in the line of the Ignatian Exercises of the Jesuits which encourage one to enter into the Biblical scene with your imagination. Jim Crace has picked a small piece of the Biblical Gospel narrative - the 40 days in the desert - and developed it into an imaginative book length narrative. This is not an attempt to recreate the story of Christ - rather Jesus dies in the desert in this reconstruction. However, the book is a reflection on humanity - the other 4 in quarantine and a trader and his wife - coping with pain, disappointment, injustice ... It is also a reflection on religious fanaticism that tests rather than trusts God. The book is well written with the description of landscape reinforcing the emotional thread of the story.

This book is well worth your time.