Helpful Score: 3
This book was a very quick read for me. Tells the story of an older couple who are murdered in the sand dunes near where they first fell in love. Sounds like a love story gone wrong, where there will be many tears shed, right? Wrong! This book tells in minute detail the physical breakdown of the couples bodies, ie. weather, insects, crabs, flies and general decomposition of corpses. Totally not a love story...well, maybe in a sick way, as they died with the husband still clutching her leg. Good book, but definitely NOT a sweet love story.
This is a hauntingly beautiful novel that keeps popping up in my mind even though it's been a couple years since I read it. Well written and speaks to the soul.
Helpful Score: 2
It is scary to think just how long a person can be missing, decomposing and soon completely disappear before anyone notices.
Helpful Score: 2
I really liked this book, but I'm sure it isn't for everyone. The author describes the physical process of 2 human bodies as they decay after death. This description is mixed in with stories about some of the events that occurred before their death. There is a bit of a mystery for a while about how the pople died, but the basic theme seems to be that people are mistaken when they assign meaning and cause to their life's events. A very thought provoking book.
Helpful Score: 1
I was a little disappointed with this one. A little too graphic for my tastes.
Helpful Score: 1
If you're at all into forensics or what actually happens to a body once a person has died, this is an excellent book. Despite what others have said about it being slow, I really liked it. I actually read it twice. :) Its definitely morbid, but I guess thats my style. Should have been a mortician.
Helpful Score: 1
This ranks as one of the most tedious books I've ever slogged though. The characters were thoroughly unlikeable and uninteresting. I guess the best point of the book was to embody (pun intended) the randomness of life. Not to be too harsh, but it felt as though "Better Off Dead" would have been a better title. Maybe the characters will get a chance to live interesting unembittered lives next time around. Then again, Mr. Crace, please let them rest where they fell!
Great book, from a biological standpoint of death.
This book is one of my all time favorites and has stuck with me since I read it 4 or 5 years ago. It begins with a murder of a man and wife in their 50s when they return to the place they first met. The bodies go undiscovered for some time. There are chapters that deal strictly with the bodies and what is happening to them, and then every other chapter takes them back in time to when they first met and beyond, into childhood. By the time the book is finished, they feel alive again. Amazing work.
This premise is pretty cool and it's written well, but it bored the hell out of me and I couldn't finish it.
This book starts with the sudden death of a couple and then alternates chapters moving backwards and forwards in time to show the chain of events that led to their death, and the final evolution of their bodies.
Primarily, it is a love story; it is not a drama or mystery. Poetic. Very biological (a lot of time is spent throughout the book on decomposition).
Great writing, but I didn't care for it.
2 stars out of 5
Primarily, it is a love story; it is not a drama or mystery. Poetic. Very biological (a lot of time is spent throughout the book on decomposition).
Great writing, but I didn't care for it.
2 stars out of 5
It was not quite what I thought it would be, but worth the read.
Excellent, brand new condition but labeled for Book Crossing. Very interesting concept . . .
From the back cover:
On Baritone Bay, in mid afternoon, Joseph and Celice, married for almost thirty years, lie murdered on the dunes. The shocking particulars of their passing make up the arc of this courageous and haunting novel.
From the back cover:
On Baritone Bay, in mid afternoon, Joseph and Celice, married for almost thirty years, lie murdered on the dunes. The shocking particulars of their passing make up the arc of this courageous and haunting novel.
