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Title: All That Follows
Subtitle: A Novel
Author: Jim Crace
Narrator: Maxwell Caulfield
Format: Unabridged
Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
Language: English
Release date: 04-20-10
Publisher: Random House Audio
Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 6 votes
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
The prodigiously talented Jim Crace returns with a powerful new novel that juxtaposes the complexities of love and violence with the same brilliance that garnered major critical acclaim for The Pesthouse. 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.
British jazzman Leonard Lessing has 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, as only someone who knows Maxie can. The lives of two mothers and two daughters, all strikingly independent and spirited, hang in the balance.
All That Follows 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 England's brightest literary lights.
Critic Reviews:
"The writing is excellent, and the story moves along with a seductive force. Another fine work from [Crace]." (Library Journal)
"Crace sensitively depicts a middle-aged man coming to terms with the choices he has made, missed opportunities and all." (Booklist)
Members Reviews:
From the sidelines
Leonard Lessing - stage name Lennie Less - is a saxophone player who has lost his zest for playing, lost the zest in his marriage, and lost the zest for engagement. So he's taking a break. An extended one that has his wife increasingly impatient with him, and he knows it. He also knows she is right. Then one day, Lennie sees a face on the news (he's a news and media junkie) that is straight out of the past, and he's jarred. Back in the day....
Well, I should say the novel takes place in a future world, but one not unrecognizable, not too far into the future: 2024. An odd, but interesting choice. That world, 14 years on from our own, hasn't changed all that much, except in subtle ways. Personal freedoms seem to have been reduced, but not so that most people recognize that fact. If the loss of personal freedoms is a creeping loss, then this is what it would look like. "Security" and the forces that keep us "safe" seem to have grown, in the same creeping way. We've (they) have accepted it as the price necessary.
So. Back in the day is 2006, and Lennie had spent some time in Austin, Texas with Max and his girlfriend Nadia in that year. Max had befriended Nadia in England and had his own designs on her, but upon arrival in Austin, he found her living with Max. The three of them were political activists: Max of the radical and confrontational kind, Lennie of the more muted variety, with ""Red" Nadia somewhere between the two. When Max had left Austin (not on the best of terms with either of them), he had not seen them since. But now there was Max on the television, right in the middle of a hostage taking. He decides to go to the scene of the crisis (Max had not yet been identified).
On the way there in his car, he listens to an old concert of his.
