SOURCE: Irwin, Robert. “Hiveward-Winging.” London Review of Books (3 July 1997): 21.

In the following review of Quarantine, Irwin commends Crace's literary skill and ingenuous imagination, but finds faults in the novel's self-contained and enigmatic significance.

‘I'll just explain the central situation. Six people are trapped in a lift between two floors of a skyscraper—a musician, a surgeon, a char-woman, a conjuror and his female assistant, and a hunchback carrying a small suitcase.’

‘Containing some sandwiches, I hope,’ chuckled the local curate. ‘They're bound to get hungry before long.’

‘You can fill in the details for yourself,’ said Froulish, not realising that the man imagined himself to be joking. ‘Where was I? Yes there are six in the lift. Part of the book consists of a series of flashbacks … over the previous life of each of them. Not their physical lives, just the psychic currents that flowed through them. It's...