by Jim Crace
 (7)
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by Jim Crace
 (30)
$11.16
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Jim Crace's latest novel centres around Lix, a successful, enigmatic and extraordinarily fertile actor who has fathered six children with different women. A chapter is devoted to the conception of each of Lix's children, exploring his relationship and psychological state at the time. This series of six mini-biographies works well as a structural device and allows the reader to become a benign voyeur, able to touch and consume the most intimate details of another life. It also compels us to consider our own lives and loves and how our sexual relationships have moulded our lives - as our narrator says, 'Things never end they only stretch ahead from here.' Lix is gradually revealed by Crace's worldly-wise yet gentle authorial voice not as a thespian Casanova, but as a man unsure of himself, timid and hesitant. Having reached middle age Lix has had sex with five women, and has not felt the certainty of a passionate reciprocated love. The many descriptions of his sexual encounters and fantasies are erotic and moving in that they linger on the sensual nature of love, but also on the accompanying human psychology of giving and receiving love. Touch is described as 'a passing gift' to say that everything is OK 'that no-one's cross.... The fingertips convey no message other than the whispered tenderness of skin on skin'. Lix indulges in a fantasy of sex with an older, plain woman he has seen in a bar, they are 'invisible amongst the rocks, fettered at the ankles by their fallen clothes'. When love seems to have deserted a relationship he is touchingly described as a man without 'the self-belief to cross the room and hold his wife'. The backdrop to Lix's life is an unnamed, troubled city, whose cultural life is overshadowed by rioting, military repression, fear and activism. Our glimpses of this city add an extra dimension to Crace's tale, as Lix's sexual and emotional growth parallels that of his environment. This is a sensitive and perceptive story about love and sex and how even as adults we remain confused and unsure of how we want sexual love, desire and fantasy to shape our lives. Crace is a great writer, possessing poetry and passion aplenty. A brilliant novel! (Kirkus UK)
Product Description
In the theatres and the restaurants of the celebrated City of Kisses, timid actor Felix Dern is famous and admired...for his looks...for his voice...and for his unblemished private life. But 'Lix' feels besieged. His perfect life has been blighted since his teens...for every woman that he sleeps with bears his child. So, now it is Mouetta's turn. Their baby's due in May. Another child? To be so fertile is a curse...Raunchy, revelatory and beautifully refined, Six charts the sexual history of a loving, baffled man, the sexual emancipation of a city, and the sexual ambiguities of humankind.
See all Editorial Reviews
Jim Crace's latest novel centres around Lix, a successful, enigmatic and extraordinarily fertile actor who has fathered six children with different women. A chapter is devoted to the conception of each of Lix's children, exploring his relationship and psychological state at the time. This series of six mini-biographies works well as a structural device and allows the reader to become a benign voyeur, able to touch and consume the most intimate details of another life. It also compels us to consider our own lives and loves and how our sexual relationships have moulded our lives - as our narrator says, 'Things never end they only stretch ahead from here.' Lix is gradually revealed by Crace's worldly-wise yet gentle authorial voice not as a thespian Casanova, but as a man unsure of himself, timid and hesitant. Having reached middle age Lix has had sex with five women, and has not felt the certainty of a passionate reciprocated love. The many descriptions of his sexual encounters and fantasies are erotic and moving in that they linger on the sensual nature of love, but also on the accompanying human psychology of giving and receiving love. Touch is described as 'a passing gift' to say that everything is OK 'that no-one's cross.... The fingertips convey no message other than the whispered tenderness of skin on skin'. Lix indulges in a fantasy of sex with an older, plain woman he has seen in a bar, they are 'invisible amongst the rocks, fettered at the ankles by their fallen clothes'. When love seems to have deserted a relationship he is touchingly described as a man without 'the self-belief to cross the room and hold his wife'. The backdrop to Lix's life is an unnamed, troubled city, whose cultural life is overshadowed by rioting, military repression, fear and activism. Our glimpses of this city add an extra dimension to Crace's tale, as Lix's sexual and emotional growth parallels that of his environment. This is a sensitive and perceptive story about love and sex and how even as adults we remain confused and unsure of how we want sexual love, desire and fantasy to shape our lives. Crace is a great writer, possessing poetry and passion aplenty. A brilliant novel! (Kirkus UK)
Product Description
In the theatres and the restaurants of the celebrated City of Kisses, timid actor Felix Dern is famous and admired...for his looks...for his voice...and for his unblemished private life. But 'Lix' feels besieged. His perfect life has been blighted since his teens...for every woman that he sleeps with bears his child. So, now it is Mouetta's turn. Their baby's due in May. Another child? To be so fertile is a curse...Raunchy, revelatory and beautifully refined, Six charts the sexual history of a loving, baffled man, the sexual emancipation of a city, and the sexual ambiguities of humankind.
See all Editorial Reviews
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