The Pesthouse

Reviews

"A writer of hallucinatory skill." —John Updike“Crace is one of Britain’s most remarkable writers.” —Richard Eder, The New York Times“One will watch with eagerness, and bated breath, the progress of this strong, inventive, and above all courageous novelist.” —John Banville, The New York Review of Books“[Crace] has always exhibited an uncanny gift for tapping into the horrors that wake us, heart pounding, in the middle of the night. He is fascinated by the extremes of existence, and he knows our demons by name…. It’s a tribute to Crace’s skill that we so rapidly get our bearings in [The Pesthouse’s] radically altered landscape…. Crace can write amazingly well…. When he’s on…he’s stellar.”–Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review “[Crace’s] 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.”–San Francisco Chronicle“Jim Crace is a writer about plain things, but he writes about them in a way that’s both startling and subtle, a shimmering surface over still depths.”–Washington Post Book World "At one level, The Pesthouse is a suspenseful road novel...but at its heart, it is a meditation on deep questions about America: the costs of relentless expansion, the fate of a wasteful industrial society."–Los Angeles Times“The Pesthouse is a moving tale, a tour de force of imagination and ingenuity, written in a language that even the best poets would admire.”–World Literature Today“Tumescence, finely suggested in the author’s stately, faintly archaic prose, pulses this strange story and stops the heart as no consummation would…. Mr. Crace is the coldest of writers, and the tenderest.”–Richard Eder, The New York Times“Mr. Crace’s phantom America is a rich and strange creation.”–The New York Sun“A powerful but subtly rendered novel about the choices people make when there seem to be no choices…. Issues of family (blood or formed), religious faith, fate and the refusal to submit to it enrich an engrossing novel that may be the richest and most ambitious of the renowned author’s career.”–Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “At its core, The Pesthouse is a love story, albeit one played out in a landscape of calamity. Indeed, in its own way, it is a tender book, quiet and interior, and exploration of the heart...”–Bookforum Expand reviews