Beginning and Ending with Death

Being Dead by Jim Crace and The Flood by Maggie Gee are two original and unputdownable reads that gracefully incorporate death as a motive. Being Dead starts with a double murder but isn't a detective novel, The Flood ends with a drowning that isn't sad. Both are beautifully written, subtle works that draw the reader into 'not quite real' worlds. Is Being Dead set in a small coastal town in America and is London in the near future the city of The Flood? Whatever the reader concludes, both stories resonate with contemporary as well as universal issues and concerns.

Being Dead has an unremitting calm focus on the murdered couple, how they came to meet random, violent deaths and what happened to them afterwards. Jim Crace manages to make horrific accounts of decay lyrical and oddly comforting by setting his story within an ecological, timeless context. Descriptions of relationships and the impact of the central event are honest and recognizable.

The Flood considers urban existence, power of nature, mismanagement of natural resources and political corruption. A complex and diverse group of people that have featured in earlier works by Maggie Gee are brought together in this ultimate story, and suffer fates that seem to have varying degrees of predictability and justice. The book contains a sequence of unusual and unanticipated twists; the reader's acceptance of the surprise ending is a tribute to Maggie Gee's skill.

Both books are hugely enjoyable, successfully dealing with tough, ugly, or simply revolting subjects while incorporating beauty and optimism within delicate and poetic prose.

Jim Crace, Being Dead, first published by Viking 1999 and by Penguin 2000.

Maggie Gee, The Flood , published by Saqi 2004.

Being Dead

The Flood