SOURCE: Parks, Tim. “On the Rocks.” Spectator (3 September 1994): 36–37.

In the following review, Parks offers a negative assessment of Signals of Distress.

Literary novelists seem obsessed with history these days—Byatt, Ackroyd, Amis, Phillips, McEwan, Ondaatje, De Bernières—so many books about the last century, the last war. No doubt somebody is studying the phenomenon. Inevitably the blurbs tell us that the themes are as pertinent today as they have ever been. In the case of Crace's Signals of Distress this means the vexed question of our attitude to other people's poverty, the gap between holding the ‘right’ views and doing the ‘right’ things. Urgent matters.

It all starts so well. A storm off the south-west English coast surprises two ships. We are in the 1830s. The modern steampacket makes it unscathed into Wherrytown harbour, bringing with it Aymer Smith, brother of a soap magnate, come to this...