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The Pesthouse.
Crace, Jim (author).
May 2007. 272p. Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, hardcover, $24.95 (0-385-52075-1).
REVIEW.
First published May 1, 2007 (Booklist).
Crace’s latest novel takes place at some indeterminate point in the future in which America has been reduced to a wasteland. It is never explained whether this is the result of some apocalyptic event or simply the decline of a degenerate civilization, but the result is the same: a lawless, technologically bereft society amid a poisoned land. Embattled survivors are trickling east, following rumor of ships that will take them, in a reversal of America’s long lost promise, across the sea to a brighter future. Two such travelers, Margaret and Franklin, meet in sickness, endure nightmarish perils, and fall in love on their journey to the shore. Crace shines when depicting scenes of desolation—the opener, in which a heavy rainstorm sets off a chain reaction that kills an entire town in its sleep, is particularly haunting—but strangely this winds up more an innocuous love story than a revelatory survival saga. Inevitable comparisons to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road will arise, and although this is less potent, it offers no less portent.
— Ian Chipman
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