Signals of Distress: A Novel - Hardcover

Crace, Jim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374263795 ISBN 13: 9780374263799

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995

Synopsis

Signals of Distress tells the story of an American emigration vessel grounded off the coast of England in the 1830's. While the Belle of Wilmington waits to be refloated, the isolated community of Wherrytown offers what hospitality it can to the crew, but the Americans prove to be a disturbing presence. A brilliantly imagined historical fiction about emigration, dislocation, and the price of liberty, this novel confirms Crace's reputation as a writer who is gifted almost beyond belief.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"Signals of Distress is an engrossing book...Crace is a genius at making round and really human characters, and his characters make his novel superb."--Newsday

November, 1836. A fierce gale beaches an American sail ship off the English coast, injuring an African slave below decks and eventually disgorging 300 head of cattle and rowdy American sailors into a hardscrabble fishing village. The same storm drives into port a steamer, bearing one Aymer Smith, the foolish well-intentioned prig who will deprive the town of its livelihood, free the African slave, and set into motion a whole series of unforeseeable, tragicomic events. One of the most seductive and surprising novelist at work today, once again creates a richly strange and believable world, uncannily familiar to our own.

"One of the brightest lights in contemporary British fiction. With beguiling narrative ease and prose lyric enough to invest the most ordinary events with mystery, Mr. Crace...lays bare the commonplace events-always unrecorded-that crystallize later as 'history.'"-- Charles Johnson, The New York Times Book Review
"Crace weaves a progressive magic into this mythic plot with masterful detail, luminous prose and haunting characterization."--The Boston Globe

JIM CRACE is the author of seven other novels, including Being Dead, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, and, most recently, Genesis. He lives in Birmingham, England.

About the Author:

Jim Crace is the author of seven other novels, including Being Dead, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, and, most recently, Genesis. He lives in Birmingham, England.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0374263795
• ISBN 13: 9780374263799
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 275