SOURCE: Tayler, Christopher. “Perfect Monday Soup.” Times Literary Supplement (7 September 2001): 8.

In the following positive review of The Devil's Larder, Tayler considers the unique and imaginative nature of Crace's short fiction.

Despite prizes, admiring reviews, respectable sales and translations into twenty languages, Jim Crace has somehow managed to reach his present eminence without losing a vague outsider status. Fashion, satire, brand names, knowingness, New York, London, fancy first-person prose—none of these plays much of a part in any of Crace's books. At least three are historical novels of sorts, but none of them discovers a redemptive human drama against the backdrop of the First or Second World War. His characters don't come of age in the recent past or take part in the comedy of contemporary urban manners. Nor do they suffer from mid-life crises, literary rivalries or problems concerning cultural identity. In a recent interview, Crace used...