Quarantine – Jim Crace

The OED, in its third definition for quarantine, gives ‘any period of forty days’ and in Croce’s book it refers to a period of that length traditionally spent in the biblical desert by seekers of truth, miracles or god.

Four such pilgrims are making their individual way to the mountain top, following a well-worn path to caves frequented for this purpose. Some way behind them a fifth, a young man from Galilee named Jesus, is also en route to the site where he will choose (as ever) a more difficult path, down a precipice to a more exposed cave, the better to test his resolve and prove his faith.

Already on the mountain is a dying merchant left in his tent, by the rest of the caravan whose business won’t wait, in the care of his much abused wife whose immediate task is to find and prepare his grave among the stony scrubland.

It is her absence that Jesus arrives and seeks alms at the tent. Finding only a fever-ridden man there he helps himself to a dab of water and as an afterthought spreads a little on the merchant’s face and lips while wishing him well and departing to begin his fast.

When the wife returns she finds her husband indeed well - a disappointment to her and not good news for the pilgrims as he immediately sets out to create profits from their needs and vulnerabilities. And yet he is haunted by the feverish memory of the blessing of the Galilean, an inaccessible presence down the precipice.

So the scene is set, and as the forty days count down, relationships within the thrown together group develop, with a shared purpose of survival and a growing belief in the mystic powers of the reclusive and slowly starving Jesus.

The prose is simple and powerful in its down to earth telling of the pilgrims’ plight in the unforgiving wilderness, which is the main narrative; Jesus and his spiritual quest are there, but peripherally – it is his effect on the group that is more central. And the merchant is most affected as he tries to reconcile this brush with God with a life so firmly based on Mammon.

It’s a very good book that examines how faith and belief stack up against more prosaic needs and motives; there is ambiguity, imagery a plenty, and allegorical references to unpick if you are so minded, but they don’t overwhelm the story which is economically covered in less than 250 pages.

One to be read and discussed; ideal fodder for reading groups.