Rating: 
Summary: Being A Dead Christ
Review: All through this book, I was rooting for Jesus to get up from his fast and heal again. Instead, he slips into a coma and dies, but not before he establishes himself as a pitiful, scared little do-gooder with a medieval penchant for masochism.
What a let-down.
I could have lived with this, I suppose. But to elevate the man whom he healed (a snake oil salesman) to the position of having started the whole Christian movement was a bit much, even for me.
This book is obviously an experiment, in the same vein of The Last Temptation of Christ (much more rewarding, and more blasphemous). I've read many such works, even Matthew Lewis' The Monk. Ironically, both Kazantzakis and Lewis wrote novels that passionately railed against the institution of organized religion.
Crace's work is different. He writes exclusively in the naturalist tradition, pure and true enough to make Isak Dinesen proud. There is a kind of scientific detachment to the narrative, almost clinical in its design. And the premise is shockingly simple: What better way to debunk the whole mystery of Christianity than by killing off Jesus before his career as a rabbi ever began?
The approach is certainly original, but there are limits to what one can endure. Crace weaves a fantastically mundane tale with thousands of different shades, from gray to black, but there is very little in the way of color. Charles Darwin put more humor and spontaniety into his Origin of Species.
After reading Quarantine, I felt as if I, myself, had been left for dead, out in the desert. Ironically, the book did have an afterlife, though. I think perhaps what gave it a haunting quality after I set it down, was the subtlety with which Crace undermines Jesus' legacy.
Normally, this kind of afterlife is a good thing. It means the novel is "alive," at least enough to linger in one's consciousness. However, in this case, it stuck around like a glass of curdled milk on the night table.
If Satan were real, he would certainly applaud Quarantine as a tour de force of human intellect that has the power to lead people away from the love and healing power of God and his most beloved messenger/rabbi.
In this sense, it is, perhaps, one of the greatest trimphs to come out of the anti-christ tradition. Its strength lies in its subtlety, forcing the reader to creep along through the hot sand, page by page.
True to form, the plot speaks with a forked tongue. I found myself not believing, but hoping in vain that Jesus the teenager would pass his test of quarantine and emerge into manhood, as the fullfillment of prophecy.
Instead, our relunctant hero dies in a mass of undignified blisters and puss, only to be dragged out of his cave and buried in some unmarked cairn, where no one will ever find him again.
And that's the way it was, at least according to Quarantine. Two thousand years of Christian faith . . . over before it even began . . . not with a bang but a whimper.
In this light, I suppose you could say that Crace's novel is a kind of false prophet, itself, leading people away from the outstretched arms of a Divine Comforter into the frigid embrace of naturalism, where things are--ho-hum, yawn--exactly as they seem.
Rating: 
Summary: A Favourite
Review: Every time I read this novel (and I have several times), I discover something new. A twist of words. Subtle symbolism, a previously undetected metaphor.
Jim Crace is an uncanny storyteller, both in terms of plot and sentence structure: he twists the English language into unexpected convolutions like no other writer. His lyrical, muscular prose takes the reader on a phenomenal journey into the Judean desert and into the minds of a motley crew of vagabonds, including a very human and flawed Jesus. At times beautiful, at times macabre and humorous, all of the characters are caked with desert sand and camel dung. No Judeo-Christian ethic at work here, no morality plays, nor preaching.
This is not for fundamentalists! Evangelicals beware!
But curiously, although Crace is an admitted 'ethical atheist', he gives us a risen (ghost?) of Jesus, dead after forty days in the desert, seen at a distance by the snarly Musa. I'm sure the reappearance even surprised Crace, the omnipotent God of the piece. Overall, the novel is like one continuous, shimmering hallucination, the dream within a nightmare. Very little happens outside the mind.
What impresses me most is Crace's writing: the almost poetic imagery, the inherent rhythm of his prose, and variations in sentence length. No extra words, nothing cut short. He challenges the reader to follow him to dizzying realms of imagination, and dares us to try and escape.
Completely unique, and arguably one of Crace's best.
Rating: 
Summary: A Little Disappointing
Review: "Quarantine" is described as a retelling of Christ's forty-day fast in the desert. I was a little disappointed because the book focused, not so much on Christ, as on several other pilgrims who, for reasons of their own, were also fasting in the desert.The real protagonist of the book is Miri, the pregnant wife of the abusive merchant, Musa. While Miri and Musa were interesting, they weren't interesting enough to hold my full attention when Christ was in a cave close by. Worse yet, none of the "quarantiners" seems to be greatly affected by Christ's presence among them other than harboring a mild curiosity. Only Musa recognizes Christ and his interest seems to be interest for his own gain. Although Miri is changed by her experience in the desert, her change comes about through the intervention of another female quarantiner, not Christ. Crace's writing is beautiful. His descriptions of the desert landscape are mesmerizing and almost make up for what I found lacking the this book's plot. The characters are also well-drawn and very believable but other than Miri, I really wasn't able to sympathize or identify with any of them. "Quarantine" will probably delight any Crace fan and readers of literary fiction may like it as well. Be aware, though, that the book isn't really "about Christ" and that even his influence on the other characters is minimal. This is one I read for the gorgeous writing more than for the story.
Rating:
Summary: yet another interesting offer from Crace
Review: Quarantine takes as its basis the story of Jesus� forty days in the desert. But rather than focusing only on Jesus, Crace introduces other characters into the picture � Musa the conniving merchant and his put-upon, pregnant wife Miri; Aphas, an old man suffering from cancer who has gone into the desert as a last resort attempt at a cure; Marta, an infertile woman who is undertaking the quarantine in an attempt to prove her worthiness to bear a child; Shim, a wannabe aesthete who is perhaps not as above the worries of the secular world as he would like; and a mysterious Badu, a (perhaps) mad tribesman. Quarantine uses these characters to explore themes of belief and the interactions between humans when they are outside of their normal element. As with other Crace writing, the prose in this novel is terrific, and he manages just as well with descriptions of the landscape as he does his characters. This is a small ensemble for such an intense novel, but it works well � we see society at large explored in this small microcosm. Unlike some modern-day tales based on stories from the Bible, Crace has not attempted to �modernise� his story too much (unlike a past story I read which managed to have Judas as a paedophile, Mary suffering from breast cancer, and various gay and disabled characters to give it a more �realistic� feel). He has managed to explore age-old themes in an ancient setting, yet bring a modern feel to the work. If you take your Bible to be the word of God, and don�t like reinterpretations, I would suggest that you don�t attempt this book � you will probably throw it away in disgust. But for the rest of us, there is a great reading experience waiting in yet another offering from one of today�s most eclectic and versatile authors.
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