SOURCE: Arnold, Kenneth. “The Emptiness Is All.” Cross Currents 49, no. 1 (spring 1999): 140–43.

In the following excerpt, Arnold offers a positive assessment of Quarantine.

The desire for solitude seems to be strong in us, even though we humans are gregarious. There are many reasons to want to be alone; tradition suggests that seeking the divine is one of the strongest ones. Being alone is not enough, however. The word solitude brings with it a stronger meaning—isolation, separation, empty spaces. Real solitude, it seems, is to be found in deserts, where God (and the devil) are always waiting. Both of these books, one nonfiction and one fiction, fiercely engage the real in solitude. …

Jim Crace's novel is a harrowing, although beautifully written, retelling of Jesus' forty days of fasting in the desert. It vivifies the interior experience of solitary search that [Doris] Grumbach chronicles [in The Presence of Absence]. Fasting...