And after all the quashing there remains a taleGENESIS 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
I usually find Jim Crace's writing beautiful and poetic. Not even his writing saved this story for me. This is a story about the conception of one man's children and the emotion, frame of mind (of both the man and the women) and the physical act at the time of conception. There was nothing about this story to like, the story, characters even the depth was missing any quality that would have made this a good read. Maybe the story was just to stripped of the fantasy and perceptions we as humans like to have about how we would like to think children are conceived.
What do You think about Genesis: A Novel (2004)?
I admire Jim Crace's boldness and imaginative power. But this work left me absolutely cold. The lead character is a man of inexplicable fame and fecundity in a future repressive society, and the while I think the story was meant to illuminate larger themes of love and sacrifice and relationship, it just seemed to me to go nowhere. It's too bad. There aren't many novelists who can write equally well about the Stone Age, Jesus' 40 days in the desert, and two decomposing bodies, but this novel was a bust.
—Mark
