Arcadia

There is a baroque painting by Guercino: amidst lush vegetation, a young shepherd and a shepherdess are eyeing a skull lying on a tombstone. The painting is called Et in Arcadia ego – Even in Arcadia, there am I. So even in Arcadia – the garden of earthly delights – there is death. The novel is writt......more

It’s difficult to review a book by Jim Crace because his novels have topics so diverse and little related, one to another. It’s a strange thing reading him when you live in Chile with a Chilean wife because we have read four or five novels by him but what’s available in Spanish isn’t what I’ve read......more

This work of fiction by the contemporary English Author, Jim Crace is definitely different. It is set in an unnamed place and is told by an unnamed journalist who tells the story of an aging millionaire’s quest to build a commercial center that will embrace the pastoral idyll. The beginning introduc......more

How many of us have seen organic experiences commodified and ruined? Crace does a masterful job, with his usual excellent writing, of making the transition of a messy public space to a glitzy controlled one feel unbearably sad, while still leaving room for the vitality of cities to have value. And t......more

I've read a few of his books now. Love his descriptions of place - puts you in his world effortlessly. His use of language is poetic. Lots of sentences which you read and then think, yes that is what it feels / looks / sounds like.......more