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    All That Follows: A Novel
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    All That Follows: A Novel
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    All That Follows: A Novel
    Audiobook8 hours

    All That Follows: A Novel

    Written by Jim Crace

    Narrated by Maxwell Caulfield

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The prodigiously talented Jim Crace has returned with a new novel that explores the complexities of love and violence with a scenario that juxtaposes humor and human aspiration.

    British jazzman Leonard Lessing spent a memorable yet unsuccessful few days in Austin, Texas, trying to seduce a woman he fancied. During his stay, he became caught up in her messy life, which included a new lover, a charismatic but carelessly violent man named Maxie.

    Eighteen years later, Maxie enters Leonard's life again, but this time in England, where he is armed and holding hostages. Leonard must decide whether to sit silently by as the standoff unfolds or find the courage to go to the crime scene where he could potentially save lives. The lives of two mothers and two daughters-all strikingly independent and spirited-hang in the balance.

    Set in Texas and the suburbs of England, All That Follows is a novel in which tender, unheroic moments triumph over the more strident and aggressive facets of our age.

    It also provides moving and surprising insights into the conflict between our private and public lives and redefines heroism in this new century. It is a masterful work from one of Britain's brightest literary lights.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 20, 2010
    ISBN9780307748614
    Unavailable
    All That Follows: A Novel
    Author

    Jim Crace

    Jim Crace is the prize-winning author of a dozen books, including Continent (winner of the 1986 Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize), Quarantine (1998 Whitbread Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the Booker Prize), Being Dead (winner of the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award), Harvest (shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize and winner of the International Dublin Literary Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) and The Melody. He lives in Worcestershire.

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    Reviews for All That Follows

    3.5/5

    40 ratings10 reviews

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    • 4/5
      An interesting book juxtaposing jazz with fringe politics and family life, and plenty of insight into modern society. The future setting seems there largely to give the right distance between the two halves of the story - Crace's future Britain doesn't require any great imaginative leaps. Like everything I've read by Jim Crace, it is beautifully written too.
    • 2/5
      I own a couple of other Jim Crace books, "Being Dead" and "Quarantine," but this was my first experience reading his work. I normally enjoy reading stories that are placed in the future, but in this book, that seemed to secondary to the protagonist's identity as a jazz musician, to the point that I wondered why Crace decided to place the story in the future. I like music, but I got tired of all of the musical references. It reminded me of "Netherland" in which Joseph O'Neill seemed to go overboard re: all the references to cricket. It didn't help that I didn't find Crace's protagonist very likable or interesting. Although it's clear that Crace knows how to write, this storyline was not very engaging. If this had not been a LibraryThing Early Reviewers book, I doubt I would have finished it.
    • 3/5
      Lennie Less is an accomplished British jazz saxophonist who is about to turn 50 in October 2024, and is reasonably happy, as he is in a comfortable marriage and his music has provided him with personal satisfaction and material comfort. One day he watches a hostage drama taking place in a nearby town, and recognizes the intruder as Maxie Lermon, an American activist that he met years ago, as he was the lover of a Nadia Emmerson, a woman he also loved. He wants to be of some assistance, knowing that the man has a violent streak and might kill his hostages. He meets up with the teenage daughter of Maxie and Nadia; she concocts a risky plan to bring the hostage drama to an end. Lennie, who is cautious to a fault, has reservations about the plan, yet cannot completely distance himself from the woman he once loved, and the young girl he has become enamored with.Despite an interesting story line I found this book to be quite disappointing, as I could not empathize with any of the characters, and I found Lennie, the main character, to be selfish, wishy washy and thoroughly annoying. Fortunately this was a short novel, but it's one I would not recommend.
    • 2/5
      It was very hard for me to get through this book. Fortuately, it was not very long. I'm not a fan of books that take place in the future, for starters. Leonard, the protagonist, left me cold, as did the other characters. I did enjoy the jazz references - the music references, in general. I guess I'm grateful that such a sad, depressing book took off on a riff of it's own to such a sweet ending.
    • 3/5
      Leonard Lessing is turning fifty and the formal radical is in a rut. The passion has left his marriage, his music career is on the skids, and his stepdaughter is missing. When an old acquaintance turns up in the news after taking a suburban family hostage, Leonard has to examine what change really means and how to best bring it about.Jim Crace's novel tells an engaging, but ultimately forgettable story. This is certainly not Crace's best work, but one worth spending some time with, nonetheless.
    • 3/5
      I loved Jim Crace's earlier book, "Being Dead," and was thrilled when I discovered I had won "All That Follows" from the March ER giveaway. However, I had given up on receiving it after 2 months went by, and no book. Then a few weeks ago it arrived on my doorstep and I couldn't wait to dive in. With all that anticipation when I won it, and then the let down of not getting it, and then getting it after all, maybe my expectations were just too high. Whatever the case, I must say it took me awhile to really get caught up in this book. In the beginning I got bored with all the jazz and musician jargon and just wanted the real story to start. After it got underway, I decided I didn't really like the main character, Leonard, and found him to be weak and lacking. Maybe that altered my mind-set about the whole book.There just seemed to be too many questions in my mind that weren’t answered in the end. I couldn’t figure out why Lennie would go along with AmBush, when the only reason he was in Texas was to get back with Nadia, and there was obviously no way that was going to happen and he knew it upon his arrival. What exactly was to be accomplished by AmBush? Why was it was necessary to set the story in the near future (other than the timing of it during the Bush presidency)? Was Lennie’s little exploit in the end to make up for his cowardice at AmBush? In the end I waited for the big finale, which didn't arrive, and I felt as though nothing of significance had really happened. I will probably try another Jim Crace book, because I find his writing to be superb, but the plot of this one left me as deprived of satisfaction as Lennie's character was of appeal.
    • 4/5
      Lennie Less is a saxophonist, a well-known jazz musician in the U.K. with lots of fans and lots of credits, who is apparently afraid of everything. Jim Crace presents this quirky, bumpy portrait as its hero lives through the very eventful week in which he turns 50. The narrative contains a highly individual, detailed, and sometimes trying progress to a nevertheless rewarding denouement.The player in question is almost no player at all. He shies from everything. He has taken a sabbatical as our story opens, trying to deal with a bum shoulder that depresses him - makes him feel his age. His wife and stepdaughter have had a violent row and the stepaughter has moved out and severed contact. As a result, his dear wife has lost her sense of humor, her devotion to her husband has taken a back seat, and as Lennie waits and hopes for a renewed closeness, he watches the video news. When his past impinges on his present in the person of Maxie Lermontov, a trouble-making radical who perpetrates a hostage crisis, to protest a summit meeting. His past comes rushing back in, inconveniently, and he perversely cannot stay away from it, or tell his wife or the authorities the truth about it. Mr. Crace constructs Lennie Less of not-very-stern stuff at the outset of his story. And the character's whining and prevarication wore me down a bit. I always returned, however, to take up the story, and now I'm very glad I did. The hero becomes more sensible and more admirable as the book progresses and his family, his admirers, even his legion of fans, grows as a result. Mr. Crace has clearly gained a fan in me. His hero's multi-faceted character reflects a mature, confident author, and an extreme talent at structuring a story. Pick up "All That Follows" and meet the author and his memorable creation.
    • 5/5
      This is not the Crace we are used to. It is quite a departure and quite good.
    • 3/5
      Apparently, ineffectual middle-aged men exist in the future, too. I'm already tired of reading about the ones in the present (see Sam Lipsyte's The Ask)...Crace sets his book a couple of decades ahead, just enough to sketch a picture of a future that's not so different it will need a deep backstory, but different enough to make the reader think about what might be going on there. He dives back to 2006 as well, though, to draw out the book's political relevance.As far as political relevance goes, he does highlight a number of hot-button issues, but then the protagonist is supposed to be a frustrated (by his own inaction) activist. (Some day I should make up a hot-button issue book bingo: play as you read!) I often find this annoying in fiction, depending on how it's done, but in this case I was far more annoyed by the ineffectual middle-aged man trope. It's like an older, inverted, male version of chick lit or something. The harpy wives/girlfriends in these books make me tired. Crap, everyone's pretty ineffectual, when it comes right down to it.The plot is often obvious, which isn't a crime, but Crace has done so much better than this in the past. The writing about jazz is good, and I don't even like jazz. If you've not read any Crace previously, don't start here.
    • 3/5
      It’s 2024 and the eve of jazzman Lennie Less’ 50th birthday. Leonard is on a break from sax-playing – he has a frozen shoulder. Sitting in front of the telly, he hears about a siege in a town not so far away, then he sees a photo of the hostage-taker; it’s a figure from his past. It’s Maxie - Maxim Lermontov! What’s he to do? Leonard used to aspire to be radical like Maxie, back in their student days when Dubya was in the White House, but he never went through with it. This time, rather than ring the police and tell them about Maxie, Leonard sets off to visit the siegeand bumps into Maxie’s estranged daughter; this is the start of getting himself into some serious hot water, which is compounded by him not being truthful with his own wife Francine.Read the blurb of this novel and you’d think it was a thriller – which may make your heart sink, for esteemed literary authors don’t have a great record when they turn their hand to thrillerdom. However, All that follows only has some thriller elements, at heart it is really a novel of mid-life crisis.Leonard is very good at talking himself out of things, the only time he lets his heart really rule his head is when he’s playing sax. Like jazz hero Coltrane, he likes going off-piste in his improvisations…"These are the moments – the blacksmithing, the bleats – that most please and terrify Leonard, the moments of abandonment when he can sense the audience shifting and disbanding. He fancies he can see the flash of watches being checked. Certainly he can see how many in the audience are on the edges of their seats and how many more are slumped, looking at their fingernails or fidgeting. He knows he is offending many pairs of ears. They’ve come for those cool and moodily bluesy countermelodies that have made the quartet celebrated, not for the restless, heated, cranked-up overloads. But still he has to carry on, he has to nag at them, because he won’t be satisfied until he has lost and possibly offended himself."The rest of the time, apart from a real hardline health-food diet, he takes the path of least resistance in life, and being around all day is driving him into being very passive. It’s affecting his relationship with Francine too, which is already under pressure over the absence of her daughter Celandine. But seeing Maxie makes him want to do something spontaneous and rebellious before he’s 50 – it just doesn’t turn out quite the way he anticipated it. Having just had a certain big birthday myself, I was very pre-occupied with it looming, so I did sympathise with Leonard more than I expected to, and I did like Francine’s strength of character in particular.I’ve read two other Crace books that I really enjoyed; Arcadia and Signals of Distress are both better than this novel, that's not to say that All that follows is bad - just not quite as good as the others. (6.5/10, I received this book from the Amazon Vine programme).