The Pesthouse
Ratings1
Average rating4
15
Ratings1
Average rating4
Jim Crace is a writer of spectacular originality and a command of language that moves a reader effortlessly into the world of his imagination. In The Pesthouse he imagines an America of the future where a man and a woman trek across a devastated and dangerous landscape, finding strength in each other and an unexpected love.Once the safest, most prosperous place on earth, the United States is now a lawless, scantly populated wasteland. The machines have stopped. The government has collapsed. Farmlands lie fallow and the soil is contaminated by toxins. Across the country, families have packed up their belongings to travel eastward toward the one hope left: passage on a ship to Europe.Franklin Lopez and his brother, Jackson, are only days away from the ocean when Franklin, nearly crippled by an inflamed knee, is forced to stop. In the woods near his temporary refuge, Franklin comes upon an isolated stone building. Inside he finds Margaret, a woman with a deadly infection and confined to the Pesthouse to sweat out her fever. Tentatively, the two join forces and make their way through the ruins of old America. Confronted by bandits rounding up men for slavery, finding refuge in the Ark, a religious community that makes bizarre demands on those they shelter, Franklin and Margaret find their wariness of each other replaced by deep trust and an intimacy neither one has ever experienced before.The Pesthouse is Jim Crace's most compelling novel to date. Rich in its understanding of America's history and ethos, it is a paean to the human spirit.
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Having read quite a few post-apocalyptic stories I can say that there is nothing new here. A land ravaged by something devastating (we never really find out what), communities who mistrust strangers, disease, bandits, religious zeal and a promised land (but no cannibals). Sound familiar to anyone. The plot is like The Road and the scenery is borrowed from The Postman but the prose is all the author's own. That, for me, is what makes it stand out. Jim Crace knows how to turn a phrase. This is only the second book I have read by the author, the first was The Harvest where I found his way of writing more of a hindrance than a help - I decided after that, that I wouldn't rush to read any of his other books. I'm glad I did eventually pick this one up. I would recommend it to those who like a trip through post-apocalyptic America but for whom The Road was too bleak.
