SOURCE: Field, Michele. “Jim Crace: Moral Activist, Conservative Romantic.” Publishers Weekly (2 October 1995): 49–50.

In the following essay, Field provides an overview of Crace's literary career and publishing history, and reports Crace's comments on his life, editorial associations, and writings.

One wonders how a writer as successful as Jim Crace can remain so boy-next-doorish. He has almost made an art of talking himself down, making an extraordinarily levelheaded appraisal of his work while remaining flushed with enthusiasm for everything he has written and wants to write. Signals of Distress is his fourth novel. He published his first nine years ago.

Crace admits that while writing is a wonderful career, books are not the be-all and end-all they once were for him. “When I was a teenager, I would go out and buy books which caught my imagination and then borrow the same books from the library because I couldn't bear...