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A review by joshsharp
The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams
4.0
What a strange book. 3.5 rounded up?
This is a book that reflects on death and our relationship with it, in various guises — the elderly waiting for the end in nursing homes, the suicidal, those who kill for sport, those who seem to be a little unmoored from life, and even those who have died and yet persist. Plus, of course, the people who are still "quick". Carter's wife Ginger died in an accident and still haunts his bedroom each evening. Is he seeing visions or is she really there? His daughter Annabel has made friends with two other teenage girls, Corvus and Alice; together they are all motherless, each with their own relationship to it. There's also a precocious 8-year-old who likes pouring sand in her hair, a slimy pianist guy who pretends he's much younger, and a man who's had a stroke and now feels he lives with an angry monkey occupying his brain.
The surreal feeling of the book is one I enjoyed immensely, and I highlighted many passages and clever turns of phrase. Things happen that are not quite real, and even the plausible has an air of unreality. Still, this is the sort of book where not a lot happens, it's mostly a vehicle for musing on life and death. To me, the book asks, what is life and what are we doing with it? What's the point of living, only to end up dead? Isn't everything a bit silly? And I think this is done quite well across the various characters and circumstances. The author's voice is witty and sardonic and her outlook is not particularly upbeat.
"All souls lonely, but what did it matter? Couldn't matter less that all souls were lonely. Was in a soul's nature never to be satisfied until infusion achieved with all. Price was obliteration, which was unacceptable. Though only on one level; on another level, perfectly okay. The stillness to which all returns, this is reality, objective reality being nothing. No wonder everything is so nonsensical."
The characters were mostly strongly portrayed as individuals, and speaking with their own voices even if those voices said ridiculous, precocious things. Bad things happened to them, plots were advanced, but also not a lot really happened. Mostly that was okay but at times it dragged, which is the main reason it's not a full four stars.
Still, the writing was excellent, and I want to read more from the author.
This is a book that reflects on death and our relationship with it, in various guises — the elderly waiting for the end in nursing homes, the suicidal, those who kill for sport, those who seem to be a little unmoored from life, and even those who have died and yet persist. Plus, of course, the people who are still "quick". Carter's wife Ginger died in an accident and still haunts his bedroom each evening. Is he seeing visions or is she really there? His daughter Annabel has made friends with two other teenage girls, Corvus and Alice; together they are all motherless, each with their own relationship to it. There's also a precocious 8-year-old who likes pouring sand in her hair, a slimy pianist guy who pretends he's much younger, and a man who's had a stroke and now feels he lives with an angry monkey occupying his brain.
The surreal feeling of the book is one I enjoyed immensely, and I highlighted many passages and clever turns of phrase. Things happen that are not quite real, and even the plausible has an air of unreality. Still, this is the sort of book where not a lot happens, it's mostly a vehicle for musing on life and death. To me, the book asks, what is life and what are we doing with it? What's the point of living, only to end up dead? Isn't everything a bit silly? And I think this is done quite well across the various characters and circumstances. The author's voice is witty and sardonic and her outlook is not particularly upbeat.
"All souls lonely, but what did it matter? Couldn't matter less that all souls were lonely. Was in a soul's nature never to be satisfied until infusion achieved with all. Price was obliteration, which was unacceptable. Though only on one level; on another level, perfectly okay. The stillness to which all returns, this is reality, objective reality being nothing. No wonder everything is so nonsensical."
The characters were mostly strongly portrayed as individuals, and speaking with their own voices even if those voices said ridiculous, precocious things. Bad things happened to them, plots were advanced, but also not a lot really happened. Mostly that was okay but at times it dragged, which is the main reason it's not a full four stars.
Still, the writing was excellent, and I want to read more from the author.