A sign from somebody, or something. Franklin Wharf, Hobart waterfront. May 2012. Being Dead by Jim Crace really is unlike any book I have read before. It begins with a straightforward, albeit shocking, image; the bodies of a middle-aged couple lying in the dunes of the seacoast where they met as students. A frenzied stranger has battered them to death them with a chunk of granite for no reason other than the few valuables they have with them. Yet this is no murder mystery. Less about murder and more about death, to be more precise. The reader is than taken on a [very] graphic account of what happens as their corpses lie undiscovered and rotting for a week. We learn of the effects of putrefaction, the role of crabs, flies, and gulls in processing decaying organic matter. The narrative then abruptly shifts backward to the [again, incredibly graphic] moment of their deaths. It’s fair to say that the opening third of the book is not for the faint hearted. The narrative then alternat...