All That Follows Crace, Jim

Critically acclaimed author Jim Crace returns with a masterful and tender new novel that explores the improvisational power of jazz and the complexities of love and violence.
Leonard Lessing is a British jazz musician whose life has become largely predictable and stagnant. While watching the news one night he recognizes a man who is holding four hostages. The man is Maxie, a former acquaintance who he met eighteen years previously in Austin, Texas. When he meets up with Maxie''s daughter Lucy, Lennie must decide whether to sit silently, as he has so many times, or find the courage to go to the crime scene and potentially save lives. A moving and insightful novel, "All That Follows" proves once again that Jim Crace is one of our most talented and dynamic storytellers.

From the Publisher:
Critically acclaimed author Jim Crace returns with a masterful and tender new novel that explores the improvisational power of jazz and the complexities of love and violence.

Leonard Lessing is a British jazz musician whose life has become largely predictable and stagnant. While watching the news one night he recognizes a man who is holding four hostages. The man is Maxie, a former acquaintance who he met eighteen years previously in Austin, Texas. When he meets up with Maxie's daughter Lucy, Lennie must decide whether to sit silently, as he has so many times, or find the courage to go to the crime scene and potentially save lives. A moving and insightful novel, All That Follows proves once again that Jim Crace is one of our most talented and dynamic storytellers.

Annotation:
A philosophical thought-experiment of a novel from the ever-inventive Jim Crace (BEING DEAD), ALL THAT FOLLOWS stars a milquetoast jazz saxophonist named Lennie Lessing who is thrust into the middle of a terrorist thriller plot in the year 2024. Unable to play his sax due to an injury, the middle-aged Lennie sits at home watching TV and listening to a recording of his musical apex, an inspired and bold performance that first won him the love of his wife. When he sees the image of a terrorist on television he recognizes him as Maxie Lermontov, a Russian political firebrand and idealist that Lennie briefly conspired with in 2006. Crace isn't subtle with his conceptual conceit: it's Lessing versus Maxie, less versus more, and at the heart of this cerebral thriller is a rhetorical battle between how one should live one's life--rashly or tentatively. Lessing's self-doubt leads to a kind of cowardice, but Maxie's wild certainty leads to crime. As he ping-pongs through the thriller plot, Lennie struggles to find the perfect balance between freedom and conformity--or, in other words, to strike the right note between improvisation and refrain.

Author Bio

Jim Crace

In addition to writing novels and stories, Jim Crace has written for television, radio, and the press. He has also traveled widely. According to Crace (in a Bookforum interview, Fall 2001), he has led a blessed life: "a happy childhood, a long and loving marriage, great children and friends, good health."

Praise

"Crace['s]...best is unsurpassed by any living British writer....With ALL THAT FOLLOWS, he has tried his hand at a small, essentially realistic novel...There is quite a lot to like in it, but it doesn't really suit him....The writing, though it has its moments, seems to struggle as well. Only in passages evoking the lost wildness of Leonard's saxophone improvising does it achieve the visionary immediacy of Crace's distinctive strength." - Richard Eder 04/18/2010

"ALL THAT FOLLOWS is a perplexing novel only when considered in the light of its author's previous work. Judged in isolation, it appears skilled and intelligent but unremarkable....This affinity with the mainstream is...mystifying. The distinctiveness of Crace's voice has announced itself on every page of his previous books, yet here its idiosyncrasies have been systematically effaced. ALL THAT FOLLOWS fascinates because it seems such a peculiar exercise in the negation of a long-established unique writing style." - Edmund Gordon 04/16/2010

"[T]he book is not without its unexpected accents--a sinuous evocation of the saxophone, futuristic touches such as dementia-preventing cigarettes, and a tender portrait of Len's faltering marriage--and eventually the antihero's frantic improvisations begin to sound like music." 05/10/2010

Product Attributes

Book Format:		Paperback
Number of Pages:		0223
Publisher:		Vintage Books

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