The Pesthouse

by JimCrace (Author)

New
Paperback
2008
$7.37

`The Pesthouse finds the author not just on his own best form, but arguably the best form any English writer has shown in the last couple of years' Spectator
A devastated America exists in an imagined future. Its technologies are forgotten, its communities have splintered and its refugees, reversing the course of history, travel eastwards in search of safety and a new start. Among them are Franklin and Margaret, young, bereft, forced together by circumstance; but finding that love, courage and determination can endure even as a country breaks slowly apart.
`Evoking the cracked terrain of a depleted America, Crace proves himself a fine stylist, sensitive to the cadence of every sentence' Financial Times
`Entirely compelling. The story is a gripping, harrowing adventure tale and Crace's language is extraordinary . . . The Pesthouse resonates like an unresolved chord' New Statesman
`Gripping, exciting and oddly romantic' Daily Mail

Synopsis

`The Pesthouse finds the author not just on his own best form, but arguably the best form any English writer has shown in the last couple of years' Spectator

A devastated America exists in an imagined future. Its technologies are forgotten, its communities have splintered and its refugees, reversing the course of history, travel eastwards in search of safety and a new start. Among them are Franklin and Margaret, young, bereft, forced together by circumstance; but finding that love, courage and determination can endure even as a country breaks slowly apart.

`Evoking the cracked terrain of a depleted America, Crace proves himself a fine stylist, sensitive to the cadence of every sentence' Financial Times

`Entirely compelling. The story is a gripping, harrowing adventure tale and Crace's language is extraordinary . . . The Pesthouse resonates like an unresolved chord' New Statesman

`Gripping, exciting and oddly romantic' Daily Mail

$7.37

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Publisher: Picador
Published: 04 Jan 2008
ISBN 10: 0330456903
ISBN 13: 9780330456906

Media Reviews

The Pesthouse exudes a kind of eerie charm. -- Time Out
A book that I read hungrily for what it might have to say about the fix we are all in on this planet. . . . Crace's distinctive marked rhythms, just one draft away from blank verse, are at odds with satire. He can't quite extinguish the joy that percolates through all his writing, and The Pesthouse ends up being a lovely literary cipher in the way that Crace's work always is. --Joan Thomas, The Globe and Mail
Crace brings his unsentimental but unflagging imagination to the ruined landscape and battered scavenger societies of this new America. . . . He is especially good at documenting the bodily toll that unrelenting life on the road exacts. . . . Franklin's and Margaret's journey, as brutal and hopeless as it often seems, transforms into a kind of allegory for the human capacity for loyalty, love, humour and imagination. -- Toronto Star
[Crace] takes us straight to the heart of what it means to be human. . . . He has always exhibited an uncanny gift for tapping into the horrors that wake us, heart pounding, in the middle of the night. . . . It's a tribute to Crace's skills that we so rapidly get our bearings in a radically altered landscape. --Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review
Crace has built a loyal following for the old-fashioned reason that he produces consistently dazzling work, matching sublime language with conceptual daring and an insistence on tackling the big themes head-on. -- The Gazette
AS Byatt has described [Crace] as the most significant writer in English fiction of the past 10 years and in The Pesthouse he continues to build his self-contained worlds that, inmirroring our own in crucial, though subtle ways, offer up universal insights. -- Scotland on Sunday
Entirely compelling. The story is a gripping, harrowing adventure tale and Crace's language is extraordinary: he has immersed himself in his own kind of variant American idiom . . . which is simple, often beautiful, as touch and workable as leather. . . . The Pesthouse resonates like an unresolved chord. -- New Statesman
While the plots and settings vary, Crace's unerringly stunning style doesn't. Even the most mundane of his characters beguile readers with their emotional authenticity and detailed psychologies. His prose carries the contours of a Donatello sculpture as Crace chisels gracefully flowing sentences with eloquence, precision and the occasional cheeky hint of the impish. The San Francisco Chronicle
At its heart, The Pesthouse is a meditation on deep questions about America: the costs of relentless expansion, the fate of a wasteful industrial society. -- Los Angeles Times
Crace's America lies not in the future but in our uneasy consciences. What's remarkable is the fortitude, grace and patience he grants to the wary people who must make a life there, must remember and love, against all odds. -- Washington Post
A writer of hallucinatory skill.
--John Updike
[Crace] has an almost uncanny ability to nail down a dramatic situation, and the characters to enact it, in one or two sentences. . .one of the best writers around.
-- Toronto Star

From the Hardcover edition.

A GLOBE & MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2007
The Pesthouse exudes a kind of eerie charm. -- Time Out
A book that I read hungrily for what it might have to say about the fix we are all in on this planet. . . . Crace's distinctive marked rhythms, just one draft away from blank verse, are at odds with satire. He can't quite extinguish the joy that percolates through all his writing, and The Pesthouse ends up being a lovely literary cipher in the way that Crace's work always is. --Joan Thomas, The Globe and Mail
Crace brings his unsentimental but unflagging imagination to the ruined landscape and battered scavenger societies of this new America. . . . He is especially good at documenting the bodily toll that unrelenting life on the road exacts. . . . Franklin's and Margaret's journey, as brutal and hopeless as it often seems, transforms into a kind of allegory for the human capacity for loyalty, love, humour and imagination. -- Toronto Star
[Crace] takes us straight to the heart of what it means to be human. . . . He has always exhibited an uncanny gift for tapping into the horrors that wake us, heart pounding, in the middle of the night. . . . It's a tribute to Crace's skills that we so rapidly get our bearings in a radically altered landscape. --Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review
Crace has built a loyal following for the old-fashioned reason that he produces consistently dazzling work, matching sublime language with conceptual daring and an insistence on tackling the big themes head-on. -- The Gazette
AS Byatt has described [Crace] as the most significant writer in English fiction of the past 10 years and in The Pesthouse he continues to buildhis self-contained worlds that, in mirroring our own in crucial, though subtle ways, offer up universal insights. -- Scotland on Sunday
Entirely compelling. The story is a gripping, harrowing adventure tale and Crace's language is extraordinary: he has immersed himself in his own kind of variant American idiom . . . which is simple, often beautiful, as touch and workable as leather. . . . The Pesthouse resonates like an unresolved chord. -- New Statesman
While the plots and settings vary, Crace's unerringly stunning style doesn't. Even the most mundane of his characters beguile readers with their emotional authenticity and detailed psychologies. His prose carries the contours of a Donatello sculpture as Crace chisels gracefully flowing sentences with eloquence, precision and the occasional cheeky hint of the impish. The San Francisco Chronicle
At its heart, The Pesthouse is a meditation on deep questions about America: the costs of relentless expansion, the fate of a wasteful industrial society. -- Los Angeles Times
Crace's America lies not in the future but in our uneasy consciences. What's remarkable is the fortitude, grace and patience he grants to the wary people who must make a life there, must remember and love, against all odds. -- Washington Post
A writer of hallucinatory skill.
--John Updike
[Crace] has an almost uncanny ability to nail down a dramatic situation, and the characters to enact it, in one or two sentences. . .one of the best writers around.
-- Toronto Star

From the Hardcover edition.

Author Bio

Jim Crace is the prize-winning author of several books, including Continent (winner of the 1986 Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize), Quarantine (1998 Whitbread Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the Booker Prize), Being Dead (winner of the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award) and Harvest (shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize and winner of the International Dublin Literary Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize). He lives in Worcestershire.