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REVERSE MANIFEST DESTINY

Jim Crace rewards his readers with his newest offering "The Pesthouse"

Date published: 5/13/2007

IF YOU READ only one book this year what's wrong with you? You should read lots of books this year, and Jim Crace's "The Pesthouse" is worthy of consideration. It is the ninth novel for England's Crace and probably his most ambitious. Unfortunately, that ambition and a novel based in a future post-apocalyptic America may dissuade some readers on this side of the Atlantic.

Crace sets the tone from his opening sentence, "Everybody died at night," and asks the reader to indulge an author in a novel that threatens to be devoid of "everybody" from the outset. One fears that it may be a book about Kafka's Gregor Samsa and his cockroach friends, writ large.

Fortunately, not everybody has died in that night and Franklin and Margaret find each other and set out on a quest to escape the barren landscape that now is America. Cities, metal and technology are remnants of a distant past.

Crace ultimately rewards the reader's initial patience with a compelling adventure of the reverse Manifest Destiny trek to the East and, for those fortunate enough to gain passage on the tall sailing ships, back across the ocean and, presumably, to a Europe full of the hope and promise that once existed in America.

The novel is ripe with symbols and evokes stories as disparate as "Candide" and Buck Rogers. There are many layers to explore in "The Pesthouse" but the writing and storytelling are so crisp that there isn't much occasion to pause along the way and consider the depth. "The Pesthouse" is likely to make it to college campuses in fantasy and science fiction literature courses and will lend itself to extended dissection. But it would be a disservice to relegate the book to the science fiction shelf or even tab it as a love story, which it ultimately proves to be.

Crace has won a Whitbread Prize and has had two books shortlisted for The Booker Prize. He is generally regarded by other authors as one of the best contemporary authors around, but "The Pesthouse" is evidence that he is still willing to take chances and risks as a writer.

There is a refrain throughout "The Pesthouse": "Yes that was the wisdom of the road: you had to be crazy enough to take the risks, because the risks were unavoidable." For such an accomplished author, a tale of a lost America bathed in unflattering allegory is a risk that was avoidable but one that, when taken, is refreshing in its scope and ambition.

Drew Gallagher is a freelance writer in Spotsylvania.

THE PESTHOUSE By Jim Crace (Nan A. Talese, $24.95)

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Date published: 5/13/2007