Genesis
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A bittersweet tale of a man blessed with irresistible charm and cursed by uncontrollable fertility, from the award-winning author of Being Dead
Felix Dern, a timid yet celebrated actor, leads an unblemished life untainted by the trappings of Hollywood fame. Admired for his looks, voice, and pristine reputation, "Lix" has become a darling of both the left and right—a twisting weathervane of popularity. But beneath the perfect veneer lies a blight that has shadowed him since his teenage years: every woman he sleeps with bears his child.
Now, as Mouetta's due date approaches, Lix feels increasingly besieged by the curse of his own fertility. In Genesis, Jim Crace, winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award and the Whitbread Novel of the Year, deftly navigates the sexual history of a loving, baffled man against the backdrop of a city's sexual awakening and the ambiguities of human desire. A poignant exploration of paternity, sexuality, and the complexities of the human heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A starred or boxed review indicates a book of outstanding quality. A review with a blue-tinted title indicates a book of unusual commercial interest that hasn't received a starred or boxed review.GENESISJim Crace. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23 (256p) The protean British writer, whose time and place settings have ranged from the Stone Age (The Gift of Stones) and 40 days in the Judean desert (Quarantine) to the past lives of two decomposing bodies in present-day England (Being Dead), here creates a world very much like ours but different in subtle ways calculated to unnerve the reader. The protagonist is an actor named Felix Dern, aka Lix, and the unnamed country in which he lives is a menacing place. The army and police have put down bank riots and quashed a popular uprising; the ancient medieval city, once called the City of Kisses, is zoned, with restrictions on travel. Yet Lix lives a charmed life. Despite the innate caution approaching timidity of his personality, he's had a brilliant career. Now middle-aged and embarked on his second marriage, he's drawn into a dangerous revolutionary plot by a former lover, the mother of one of his children. Lix's most vexing problem, revealed in the book's first sentence, is fecundity: "Every woman he dares to sleep with bears his child." The book's chapters are numbered from one to six to designate Lix's children, some of whom are unknown to him. Sex pervades his thoughts and the narrative, as Lix ruminates about sexual desire and infidelity. Mirroring his protagonist's detached personality, Crace's tone throughout is cool and nonjudgmental. His characters' foibles elicit witty aphorisms: "Chatter is the cheapest contraceptive"; "It isn't love that's blind, it's alcohol." The inescapable results of Lix's determination to avoid any kind of heroic behavior, countered by his inadvertent success at fathering new lives, create a slightly surreal atmosphere of simmering suspense. Though the effect is somewhat muted by the essentially one-note theme, in the end, the reader's realization that Lix is an exemplar of the common man (the narrative, indeed, is all about "love and love-making,... children, marriages and lives") is what gives the narrative its memorable metaphorical impact.
