Author: Jim Crace
Translator: Seok-hee Kim
Publisher: Yeollinchaekdeul
222 pages | 188*120mm
| Important! Please read before you order! |
| >>>This book is written in Korean only. |
About This Book
Lying in the sand dunes of Baritone Bay are the bodies of a middle-aged couple.
Celice and Joseph, in their mid-50s and married for more than 30 years, are
returning to the seacoast where they met as students. Instead, they are battered
to death by a thief with a chunk of granite. Their corpses lie undiscovered and
rotting for a week, prey to sand crabs, flies, and gulls. Yet there remains
something touching about the scene, with Joseph's hand curving lightly around
his wife's leg, "quietly resting; flesh on flesh; dead, but not departed yet."
"Their bodies had expired, but anyone could tell—just look at them—that Joseph
and Celice were still devoted. For while his hand was touching her, curved round
her shin, the couple seemed to have achieved that peace the world denies, a
period of grace, defying even murder. Anyone who found them there, so wickedly
disfigured, would nevertheless be bound to see that something of their love had
survived the death of cells. The corpses were surrendered to the weather and the
earth, but they were still a man and wife, quietly resting; flesh on flesh;
dead, but not departed yet."
From that moment forward, Being Dead becomes less about murder and more about
death. Alternating chapters move back in time from the murder in hourly and
two-hourly increments. As the narrative moves backward, we see Celice and Joseph
make the small decisions about their day that will lead them inexorably towards
their own deaths. In other chapters the narrative moves forward. Celice and
Joseph are on vacation and nobody misses them until they do not return. Thus, it
is six days before their bodies are found. Crace describes in minute detail
their gradual return to the land with the help of crabs, birds, and the numerous
insects that attack the body and gently and not so gently prepare it for the
dust-to-dust phase of death.
Availability: Usually ships in 5~10 business days.
 | |||||||||
 |
| ||||||||
Can't
find what you're looking for?
