Being Dead – Jim Crace

I can hardly object, given the title, that this should turn out to be morbidly melancholic. 
 
If you’re squeamish (I am hopelessly so), know that the stages of decomposition are meticulously described. This illustrative precision seems to be Crace’s superpower. He applies it just as impressively to the development of a house fire, not so much forensically as faithfully.
 
I might have given up on Being Dead (I find invented misery distasteful and indulgent these days), but the writing is not just competent, the lives and individuals are all so well observed in a Franzen-like way. For example:
 
The death that the mature Celice had imagined: “her tent repitched each day, a footstep nearer home.”
 
The self-important professionals, kept waiting at a meeting her husband will never chair, “equally competitive in their impatience.”
 
And “that too-close ocean smell” of a smothering home life that their daughter, Syl, left.
 
There are books I keep and books I don’t. This one’s for market day. I have some pretty good titles at 1€ a pick.