SOURCE: Jones, Tobias. “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness.” Spectator (14 June 1997): 39–40.

In the following review, Jones offers a positive assessment of Quarantine.

It's hard to imagine who will dislike Jim Crace's startling, beguiling novel more: atheists who resent his thick symbolism and deific narration, or Christians offended by his arm's-length, cynical rendering of Jesus's 40 days in the wilderness, his ‘quarantine.’ Using a simple plot and the barest characterisation, it is a primitive and jocular book of big themes: about suspect saviours, the possible pointlessness of spirituality, and so the constant nag of evil.

With Quarantine, Crace has returned to the vaguely historicised writing which makes him such a sure story-teller. After the sparsity of Arcadia and Continent, it seems even broader in ambition, a parable for our anno domini. Miri and her trader-husband Musa have been left in the desert by the caravan because the latter is thought...