highlights

Jim Crace

This web site was launched in January 2000
and has had over 65,000 visitors.

Highlights to Dec 2007 include:

Reviews of The Pesthouse, Jim Crace’s 2007 novel

“Readers will certainly note the parallels
between The Pesthouse and Cormac McCarthy’s
recent Pulitzer Prize-winning The Road,”

says Mark Luce in the San Francisco Chronicle,
but while “McCarthy may have cornered the market on blood-red prose
that captures postapocalyptic violence and horror…
Crace provides an equally intriguing vision
that seems less frenzied but not too sanguine.”
To read the review, click here.

“How surprising of British critics
to so underestimate Crace, who is not a naïve writer…
I’d imagine that what made the book so satisfying to write
was not the chance to punish America
for its sins against nature, but rather
the appeal of making the future reverse the past
in the great eastward migration that Crace charts.”

To read Francine Prose in The (members-only) New York Times, click here

“Crace’s new America,
back to front in space and time,
is completely and rigorously imagined,
a world entire of itself...entirely compelling…
The story is a gripping, harrowing adventure tale
and Crace’s language
is extraordinary…
simple, often beautiful.”

To read Peter Bradshaw’s review of The Pesthouse in the New Statesman,

click here.

“Crace builds his effects from the bottom up
with careful details…Crace’s originality
is refreshing, his voice commanding”

Toby Lichtig in the Times Literary Supplement
finds much to admire in The Pesthouse,
but is it the epic it might have been?
Read his review in the March 9 2007 edition
(online publication is usually one month behind)

Tew on Crace

Read an extract from Philip Tew’s study of Jim Crace

Jim Crace by Professor Philip Tew
is the first full-length study of the work of the
“one of the most imaginative...adventurous and challenging”
authors of the last three decades.

Philip Tew is Professor of English (Post 1900 Literature)
in the School of Arts at Brunel University, West London.
He examines Crace’s career as a novelist
from Continent (1986) to The Pesthouse (2007).

The book is published
by Manchester University Press and available from Amazon.

To read an extract on Signals of Distress, click here

“Here is the happiness that I had counted beyond reach,
sentimental, English and suburban to the core…”

Jim Crace returns to his childhood home in Enfield

Read his account for the Sunday Times here

A phantom book by Jim Crace

Jim Crace’s new novel, Useless America,
is climbing up Amazon’s sales list…
There’s only one problem: the book doesn’t exist.
Read Jim Crace’s account of his ‘phantom book’ here

A preview of Jim Crace’s new novel

“This used to be America…the safest place on earth”

Jim Crace’s new novel The Pesthouse
is set in the “medieval future” of America.

To read the first chapter click here

New novels and a new US publisher for Jim Crace

Jim Crace has agreed a new three-novel contract in the USA
with the exclusive and prestigious literary imprint Nan A Talese.
A part of the Doubleday/Random House group,
Nan Talese already publishes Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan,
Thomas Keneally, and Peter Ackroyd,
plus celebrity writers such as Mia Farrow, Helmut Newton,
and George Plimpton.

“I have followed Jim Crace ever since I read The Gift of Stones many years ago,”
Nan Talese said, “and so it is thrilling that we now have the honour
of being his publisher. The Pesthouse is a brilliant novel,
as I am certain the two books to follow will also be.”

In an interview in January 2004 Jim Crace spoke of his plans
for an “adventurous retirement” from writing,
implying that The Pesthouse might be his last book.
All readers will be delighted with the prospect
of more novels to follow The Pesthouse.

The two new projects are
The Finalist and Archipelago.
”The Finalist”, says Crace, “is, on one level only,
a thriller of action and ideas, but its overarching intention
is to be a metaphorical critique of both political individualism
and the innate complacency of Western liberal democracies…
Archipelago is an autobiography of the imagination,
with no plainly factual elements at all.”

To visit Nan Talese’s web site click here

May 2006

“An altogether kinder, odder, safer universe”:

Jim Crace revisits James Wilcox’ comic novel Modern Baptists

To read Jim Crace’s introduction
to the new Penguin edition of Wilcox’ book,
click here

March 2006

Doubleday Canada has signed Jim Crace to its list of internationally acclaimed novelists
including M.G. Vassanji, Mark Haddon, Margaret Atwood, and David Adams Richards,
and will publish The Pesthouse in Canada to coincide with its UK appearance from Picador.

Doubleday editor Nick Massey-Garrison said:
”We’re delighted to be Mr. Crace’s first Canadian publisher and excited
by this chance to introduce him to many new readers in Canada.
The Pesthouse is built on themes that will be familiar
from Jim Crace’s previous books, and the world he creates
is every bit as vivid, but I’d say that it takes a generous narrative direction
that will appeal to readers who may not have come to the earlier books.”

Please visit this page again soon for more details
of the upcoming publication of The Pesthouse.

Jan 22 2006

“The volunteer farmers who bare their skin throughout the night and offer their blood
to the mosquitoes of Pailin
are taking grave risks for a good reason…”

Last fall the charity Médecins Sans Frontières
commissioned Jim Crace to report
on their activities in Cambodia.

To read his account, click here

or go to the Sunday Times site
where it appears in slightly edited form

Nov 18 2005

Picador will publish The Pesthouse

Jim Crace’s new novel, in spring 2007.

Picador – publishers of John Banville and Alan Hollinghurst,
winners in 2005 and 2004 respectively
of Britain’s most important literary award, the Man Booker Prize –
have announced that they will publish Crace’s next three novels,
beginning with The Pesthouse next year.
The deal was concluded earlier this week.

On behalf of Picador, Andrew Kidd said:

‘Jim Crace’s gift for dramatic compression,
combined with his astonishing imaginative range,
makes the experience of reading his books unique and unforgettable.
He is one of the finest British writers at work today,
and we are thrilled to welcome him.’

To find out more about Picador, click here.

The Pesthouse, a novel about medieval America, is near completion.
To find out more, click here.

The Devil’s Larder wins the Best of Edinburgh award

Congratulations to Grid Iron, whose production of The Devil’s Larder has won the 2005 Best of Edinburgh award
at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
The award means Larder will now transfer to New York.

To read more on the award, please click here.

Grid Iron production of The Devil’s Larder
transfers to Edinburgh

Innovative theatrical company Grid Iron have made a number of explorations of the impact of food on human society, including Gargantua and Fermentation. Now Grid Iron have adapted Jim Crace’s novel The Devil’s Larder (2001) for performance:

“This promenade production winds a sinuous and treacherous path from narrative episode to story-telling, from installation to song, with live music performed by David Paul Jones and award-winning harpist, Catriona McKay. Grid Iron examine how food can act as a catalyst for unleashing our fears, desires and taboos.
Jim Crace’s teasingly dark novella is the basis for a journey into a culinary underworld; an uncanny, uncomfortable examination of the envy, love, revenge, hypocrisy, loss and lust which seethe beneath the false calm of the menu, the shopping list and the recipe…”

The Devil’s Larder premiered in Cork as part of the city’s
European Capital of Culture celebrations.
It will be in Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival:
Debenham’s, Princes Street (0131-228 1404), August 9-28.

To find out more, please visit Grid Iron’s site.

For more about other theatrical adaptations of Crace’s work,
please visit Quarantine on stage and Signals of Distress on stage.

“Darwinism is one of the most exciting narratives
we can encounter…I wanted
to test the Darwinian thesis of success”

- Jim Crace in conversation with James Ohearn.

To listen to an interview with Jim Crace on Six
by Canadian broadcaster James Ohearn, please click here

Jim Crace talks to online magazine Three Monkeys

about why America is the right place

to set his new novel of the ‘medieval future’

Advice for aspiring writers

“One of the rewards of being a novelist
of even limited success is that several times a week,
by phone, by email, in person, you will be approached
by complete strangers - unpublished writers -
keen to obtain your help and advice.
It would be truculent and unfriendly not to respond…”

Jim Crace’s practical advice to aspiring authors,
contained in a series of hilarious letters,
is published in the Guardian Review. Click here.

November 2004:

Crossing Borders is an extremely interesting and exciting new scheme developed by the British Council, Lancaster University, and a range of partners in Africa.
Professional novelists and poets act as mentors to African writers using email and the Internet to share their work and comment on it. Crossing Borders aims to break the isolation of young African writers, promoting writing development, library usage, cultural exchange and a greater knowledge of contemporary literature in English. It also aims to support writers in the UK who work as mentors on the scheme, enriching their literary and cultural experience.

To find out more, click here.

Jim Crace is one of the programme’s “Writers on Writing” contributors. The site contains
a link to his short story “The Prospect from the Silver Hill”, an analysis of his technique and an account of the writers who have inspired him – London, Coleridge, Frost, Calvino, and others. From the home page, follow the “Writers on Writing” link.

“The winners are likely to be
adventurous writers prepared to take the greatest risks.
Much better to have aimed high and fallen short
than to have produced a spotless story
that offered you no challenges…”

Congratulations to Dorene O’Brien, Janey Runci,
Emma Darwin and the other winners
of the prestigious Bridport prize for 2004,
judged by Jim Crace.

To read his report on the competition, click here.

“I’ve been told Six is my woman’s book…
I’m telling women things that men under 40 don’t want them to know”

Jim Crace interviewed in Ink magazine

In the January 2004 issue of Ink, a magazine
for fiction, movies, sport, and other entertainments,
Jim Crace talks to Scott Anthony about mixed reviews,
Birmingham, and his plans for an adventurous retirement.

Unfortunately Ink is no longer available on the Web and has ceased publishing.

“When I’m with friends I never talk about books —
if someone raises the issue of my writing

I almost rudely snuff the subject out…
I don’t seem able to escape the Pilgrim Estate
where I was mostly brought up, where I was the grammar-school boy

who was too nervous to mention books.

All of these rational and irrational things are telling me,

‘Don’t talk about your novels to anybody.’ ”

Jim Crace opens up in The Art of Fiction
interview for The Paris Review

The fiftieth anniversary issue of The Paris Review
carries a long-awaited interview by Adam Begley,
Books Editor of The New York Observer,
with Jim Crace.

To read an extract from this interview,

click here.
This will take you to The Paris Review site.

I hope to bring you the full text of this absorbing interview
once I’ve checked any copyright issues.
But – with Paul Auster, new fiction,
reviews and poetry, and founding editor George Plimpton’s
look back over fifty years – it’s well worth buying.

Jim Crace on holidays (hellish and heavenly)

and the champions of 2003

“Customers who bought Six also bought Genesis…”

A difference of opinion between publishers
led to Jim Crace’s new novel being published under different titles
on different sides of the Atlantic.
To read more, click here

Jim Crace’s new book Six
(ISBN 0670881163)
was published by Viking
in hardcover on September 5,
price £16.99.

To order Six from amazon, click here.

July:

For details of Jim Crace’s upcoming appearances

please click here

The new novel by Jim Crace, Six, will be published in September.

I’ve had the privilege of reading the novel in proof and it is excellent.
The writing is quite concentrated, with strong dialogue and lots of Cracean observations
and ‘original proverbs’. The story is set in the
“once-famous ‘City of Kisses’, with its deep parks,
its balconies, and its prolific and disrupting river”,
a place at once fully specified, familiar and unsettling.
The main character, the actor Dern,
seems as hemmed in by the people he has brought to life
in countless plays and movies as he is by the children
he has unwittingly fathered,
whether or not he even meets them.
And the women he loves are very sharp, alive, and believable,
both in their passion for Dern and in their sometimes prickly individuality.

I will be posting selected reviews to the site when Six is published.

In the meantime, if you haven’t already sampled
the first chapter, of Six, follow the links below…

Moved to tears

To read Crace on Ian McEwan, click here

May 2003

An uncollected short story by Jim Crace

“I used to be wild once, for a year or two.
But I lost the habit, going after love.
I sometimes pick on those birds who can’t decide what they are,
wild or domestic…”

‘Helter Skelter, Hang Sorrow, Care’ll Kill A Cat’,

by Jim Crace,
was first published in 1975 in The New Review.
Click here to read it.

‘Helter Skelter…’ completes the web site’s project
of making Crace’s uncollected short fiction easily available.
For more of Crace’s writing outside his published books,
follow the links from Other Writings

April 2003

Jim Crace’s forthcoming novel
to be called Six in the UK
and Genesis in the US

The work is now with publishers Viking in the UK
and FSG in the US

“To be so fertile is a curse…”

In the novel a man recalls the settings and the details
of the conceptions of his seven children.
Six/Genesis will be published lather this year.

To read chapter 1, click here.

To see a preview of the cover, click here.

Congratulations

to Jakub Stemporowski,
recently awarded his Masters
by Nicolas Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland,
for his thesis on Jim Crace’s novel Arcadia.
Jakub draws on theories of culture and society to locate Arcadia
in the pastoral tradition,
as a post-modern fiction,
and as a novel of Birmingham.

To read ‘The City and the Country, the Myth and the Reality
in Jim Crace’s Novel Arcadia’, click here.

(It’s a substantial – 80 page – paper, so be prepared to wait while it opens.)

With thanks to Jakub Stemperowski.

Adam Begley makes a pilgrimage to Craceland

“We started to talk about specific novels — something he claims he just wouldn’t do
if it weren’t for journalists who ask him questions.
‘I’m not introspective about the things that I write,’ he said…
I remember asking him about how the death of his father, whom he loved,
could have inspired Being Dead, in which death descends with exceptional brutality.
Crace looked at me, a bit startled, and said
‘I wasn’t thinking about my father when I was writing,
I was dealing with the prose on the page.’ ”

This excellent review-cum-interview by Adam Begley
(Books editor of The New York Observer)
appeared in Southwest Review.
I am grateful to the editors for permission to reprint the article here.

Southwest Review is one of the longest-running literary periodicals
in the United States and publishes fiction and poetry as well as essays.
You can sample the Review (and request a subscription) by clicking here.

“To be so fertile is a curse…”

In Jim Crace’s forthcoming novel Genesis
a man recalls the settings and the details
of the conceptions of his seven children.
Genesis will be published in 2003.

To read chapter 1 of the new work, click here.

Jim Crace awarded Doctorate
by the University of Birmingham

“For Jim Crace the writing of fiction is a decidedly moral business –
not in the crude sense of telling his readers how to live their lives
but in the more ambitious and more difficult task
of convincing them of their own richness as finite human beings
in a world deprived of transcendental consolation…”

To read the full text of the Oration by Professor Michael Butler, click here

“Modest, lovely and resourceful”, with a “versatile and winning cast”, the Flying Machine’s adaptation of Signals of Distress has been well-received

Scripted and directed by Joshua Carlebach, the play “re-imagines Crace’s chilling and hilarious vision of good intentions gone awry” when the survivors of a shipwreck are forced to take refuge with the inhabitants of a coastal town in nineteenth-century England.
A UK tour of this innovative production is under consideration…

To read the New York Times review click here

To find out more about Signals of Distress (the play):
click here

To find out more about Signals of Distress (the novel):
click here

“The trick is to place yourself in an imaginative and testing environment where unusual events are likely to occur and then to be responsive to any idea that offers itself”

Click here to read a new interview with Jim Crace.

On October 3 Jim Crace was onstage and ‘in discussion’
with Nick Hornby
in support of the proposed
National Academy of Writing (NAW).

To find out more about the NAW, which numbers Jim Crace,
Matthew Kneale, Doris Lessing, Philip Pullman,
and many other leading writers among its patrons, visit
http://www.writingacademy.org .

Click here for other appearances, readings, and workshops

Philip Tew, author of a critical study of English novelist
B.S. Johnson, is preparing a book-length study
of Jim Crace’s works

Dr Tew has confirmed that he is in discussion with Manchester University Press
about this project. I hope to have more information soon.

Jim Crace: summer reading

At this time of year the papers are full of summer reading lists compiled by the good and the great. Jim Crace is looking forward to a mixture of “duty and pleasure: I’ll be rereading all of Nick Hornby’s books as we’re on stage and ‘in conversation’ in October in support of the proposed National Academy of Writing in Birmingham. His novels have all the tenderness and plot confidence that mine lack. Otherwise I’m looking forward to new novels by writers I’ve encountered and enjoyed before: Birmingham’s Alan Mahar (After The Man Before, Methuen) and New Zealand’s Damien Wilkins (Chemistry, published in September by Granta). I’ll also be indulging a personal fantasy with Matt Rendell’s Kings of the Mountain (Aurum Press), the story of how Colombia’s cycling heroes changed their nation’s history.” For other lists and recommendations see The Guardian, 29 June.

Click here to take part in the new site survey…

Revealed: the real Mondazy?
Jim Crace kicks off a ‘baton story’ to raise money
for writers’ scholarships

Jim Crace has contributed the first chapter of a ‘baton story’ (that is, a story in which different authors write successive chapters, ‘passing the baton’ to one another) called “The Moving Finger” and featuring a certain Felix Mondazy, novelist, playwright, poet, and translator. Is this the Mondazy of Being Dead and The Devil’s Larder? The story was published online at www.hayfestival.co.uk. It will soon come out in print, with profits going to fund writers’ bursaries at next year’s Hay-on-Wye Festival.

To coincide with Jim Crace’s tour of Hungary,
a paper by Karoly Rozsa of the University of Debrecen.

In May Jim Crace took part in a conference on British Literary Studies in Budapest and lectured at the University of Debrecen. In June the prize-winning Hungarian publishers Ulpius-Ház will issue Being Dead. As far as I know this is Crace’s first book publication in Hungary. According to András Kepets, director of Ulpius-Ház, “Jim Crace is not yet well-known in Hungary…we want to give him the place he deserves.”
An edition of Quarantine will follow.

Karoly Rozsa, a graduate of the University of Debrecen in English and Hungarian linguistics, has kindly allowed this site to publish his perceptive reading of Jim Crace’s The Gift of Stones. Rozsa’s close reading of the text of the novel identifies patterns of imagery associated with the stonemasons’ village and the heath beyond and suggests that ‘what is indispensable for the birth of storytelling is the clash between two antagonistic forces (two opposing worlds)…the subject who suffers the outcome…and who is sensitive enough to realise its significance, that is the storyteller.’

To read Karoly Rozsa’s paper ‘The Gift of Stories’ click here.

To view this site’s page for The Gift of Stones click here.

Click here to read ‘Refugees’, a Crace story from 1977

and find out what John Fowles and Terry Eagleton had to say about Crace’s work

I’m pleased to be able to ‘re-issue’ this early, uncollected story of Africa to visitors to the site.

Though supportive of what he called “a great festival”, Jim Crace nevertheless decided to withdraw from Hay
in protest over Nestlé sponsorship of the event

Citing their concern over Nestlé’s marketing of powdered baby milk in the Third World,
Jim Crace and Germaine Greer this week announced
that they were cancelling their appearances at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival,
which has accepted sponsorship from Nestlé.

Crace, who was to appear on Saturday June 1, said that
Nestlé’s failure to observe the World Health Organisation’s code on

“so-called breast substitute milk has been ignored for a long time...It’s a great shame.

The festival has a wonderful programme and I would hate to see it damaged by this.

But the organisers must have known Nestlé has been the subject of a boycott

for a long time and that the creative community would be likely to feel uneasy

about this association. They have only got themselves to blame.”

For a list of Jim Crace’s upcoming appearances, click here

To coincide with Jim Crace’s tour of Hungary,
a paper by Karoly Rozsa of the University of Debrecen.

To read Karoly Rozsa’s paper ‘The Gift of Stories’ click here.

To view this site’s page for The Gift of Stones click here.

Jim Crace in Oz

“I imagined writing a didactic political fiction
that would change the hearts and minds of men and women,
but I didn't know what the next sentence was.
When I discovered the magical realism I would write,
I immediately could tell you what the next three books were.”

To read an interview with Michelle Griffin of the Melbourne Age, conducted during Jim Crace’s recent tour of Australia, click here.

The structure and craft of Being Dead

Kate Mayfield, who is completing her MFA in Creative Writing
at the University of Arizona,
has mapped the “fluid plot structure” of Being Dead
in a chart which shows “how certain themes,
especially sex and death, interact throughout”.
To see her chart click here.

There is a discussion devoted to Being Dead at ConstantReader.
To take part, follow the link to the ConstantReader homepage,
go to the WebBoard, where you will need to register,
and then to the Reading List. Here you will find a choice of titles, and plenty of discerning readers.

http://www.constantreader.com/

BookMuse.com is also well worth a visit.
Although targeted at book discussion groups, with features such as
‘Leaders tips’ and ‘Topics for Discussion’,
the site is a great resource for lone readers too!
Click here for the extended response to Jim Crace’s
National Book Critics’ Circle award-winning novel

If you can’t make it to one of Jim Crace’s appearances, you can still hear and see
the author discuss The Devil’s Larder via a ‘Bookwrap’.
Bookwraps are a new Web-based promotional tool coming soon to sites like Amazon and on-line library catalogues. This one is brought to you courtesy of Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, Jim Crace’s US publisher (and therefore relates to the American edition of the book).
It is based on an interview prepared by Charles Halpin.
To view the Bookwrap for The Devil’s Larder click here.

‘A book that changed me’

Jim Crace has several times (most recently at Readerville.com) referred to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ novel In Evil Hour as a book that changed him and helped him to find his own voice. Visitors may now read what Crace wrote in his original review of the novel by clicking here.

December 2001:

Click here to read ‘Refugees’, a Crace story from 1977

and find out what John Fowles and Terry Eagleton had to say about Crace’s work

I’m pleased to be able to ‘re-issue’ this early, uncollected story of Africa to visitors to the site.

Jim Crace on the unwritten legacy of activist Alice Howells,
who died in September this year

and on The Talmud and the Internet, his choice for Book of the Year

Click here to read these and other occasional pieces on a range of personal and literary subjects.

Jim Crace discusses his working methods, ‘honesty’ in fiction,
the difference between English and American readers and editors, and many other topics with friends from Readerville.com

To read the discussion, click here

November 2001:

The North American reception of The Devil’s Larder has been extremely positive.

In Toronto, where Crace recently appeared
at the Harbourfront International Festival,
the critics had this to say about The Devil’s Larder:

James Grainger, Toronto Star (Oct 21, 2001): "Fit for a king…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."

Kevin Connolly, Eye (18 Oct 2001): "the tone moves from the morbid to the tender, the dark to the whimsical…it reads like a classic." This article contains extracts from a new interview with Crace in which he discusses his "European" ambitions in writing The Devil’s Larder, his commitment to "traditional" story-telling as opposed to the "very recent" idea of realism, and why he "would not be seen dead" reading the UK edition of The Devil’s Larder, with its "sexy" cover, in public. Well worth reading: click here.

My thanks to E.P. Hewitt for forwarding these reviews.

October 2001:

The Devil’s Larder published in the US

"Crace is a a great writer of whimsical, fastidious, poetic prose," says Adam Phillips in The New York Times. "Even by Crace’s standards, The Devil's Larder is an extraordinary book…"
To read the review, click here (you may need to register)

"Jim Crace is one of the best novelists in Britain," says Brooke Allan in The Atlantic. "His work doesn’t clamor for attention, nor does it draw one in with conventional, reader-friendly narratives…On the contrary, its muted rhythms require a certain engagement from the reader, a willingness to read more slowly, to listen harder. Those who do so will be rewarded with fiction that is thoughtful, harmonic, and original. Crace never squanders a word or an image." To read the review, click here.

"Crace’s fictions rise up and unfold in a beautiful, unhurried way, like the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales," writes Richard Wallace in The Seattle Times. To read the review, click here.

Interview on ABC Tales

"A medium British seaport, turned on its side and relocated on the Med,
but peopled by a bunch of citizens whose dominant gene is mischievous…"
is the description Andrew Pack elicits from Jim Crace
of the setting of his stories in an excellent interview on ABC Tales.
The interview is especially good for what it reveals about Jim Crace’s working methods
and contains some advice to aspiring authors.

To read it click here.

September 2001:

Critical acclaim for The Devil’s Larder.

Some highlights from the reception of Jim Crace’s new book:

"In his novel Quarantine, Crace explored the temptation of Christ in the desert and the effects of starvation on the mind, body and spirit. Though The Devil’s Larder is not a sequel, the two books are different sides of the same coin. To fast is to remove oneself from the daily rhythms of food preparation and consumption. To feast is to heighten those rhythms, and raise them to glory." To read Helen Dunmore’s review in The Times (1 September) click here.

"Perched intimately alongside sex and death, Crace celebrates the imaginative sustenance of unknown ingredients." To read David Vincent’s review of The Devil’s Larder in The Observer (2 September) click here.

"Crace is a writer of ‘exactitude’ – Italo Calvino’s term – in that he evokes big themes by concentrating on the minute definition of empirical detail," writes Christopher Tayler in The Times Literary Supplement ("Perfect Monday soup", September 7, p. 8). After a discussion of The Devil’s Larder in the context of the sources and style of Crace’s fiction thus far, Tayler concludes that the new book is "more entertaining and in some ways more adventurous" than previous works.
This article is well worth reading – unfortunately I’m not able to offer a link to it until it is archived on the TLS site in approximately six months’ time.

"I write books about questions to which I want answers," Crace says. "So with Being Dead there is a narrative of comfort about death which will serve atheists as well as Christians. With The Devil’s Larder, recognising how central food was to my imagination, to our culture and sense of self, I wanted to find out what I would discover about the place of food in our lives."
To read Dominic Bradbury’s interview with Jim Crace in The Times (September 5), click here.

Will The Pest House be Jim Crace’s last book?

"I’m eager for adventures of a different kind…" he tells Ong Sor Fern,
Books Editor of the Singapore Straits Times.
To read the text of this interview,
find out about the genesis of The Devil’s Larder
and what Jim Crace feels about cyberspace,
please click here.

August 2001:

"There are no bitter fruits in Heaven nor is there honey in the Devil’s larder."

Visitations IV.3

Jim Crace’s new book The Devil’s Larder
(ISBN 0670881457)
is published by Viking
in hardcover on September 6,
price £12.99.

In an interview with Robert Birnbaum conducted last year, Jim Crace described The Devil’s Larder:

"The quotation that introduces it—and I invent everything including the epigrams—is from that non-existent famous book of the Bible, Visitations, Chapter IV, verse 3, ‘There are no bitter fruits in Heaven nor is there honey in the Devil's larder.’ This book goes into the Devil’s larder and takes the different foods that are in the larder and makes fictions out of them. In the same way that Calvino makes fictions out of different towns in Invisible Cities or Primo Levi makes fictions of all the items in the periodic table from his book Periodic Table. So they are a hundred short fictions about food. Not about cooking, not about eating and not about restaurants and not about taste. It’s the last taboo subject that not enough people deal with in literature. Food is a subject so central to our sense of selves: our mortality, the shapes of our bodies, our intimate relationship with our own insides. Sexuality, all of those things...this thing is a cumulative book about food and it’s very playful and it’s a lot of fun and it’s very dark also. I have to admit it’s dark, I can’t stop my books being dark."

To read the full text of this excellent, engrossing and revealing interview, click here.

To read extracts from The Devil’s Larder, click here.

To order a copy from amazon.co.uk, click here.

July 2001: