Jim Crace’s tenth book, All That Follows, is quite a surprise, but not because of its habit of skipping about in time or its attempts to imagine a society of the future. Crace’s aptitude with such tactics was amply proved both in Being Dead (1999), which slowly wound back the clock on a murder as the victims’ bodies cooled in a sand dune, and in The Pesthouse (2007), a dreamlike scramble through a ruined future America. What surprises in All That Follows, despite the promise of its presentation, is the novel’s deep unadventurousness. It’s a book about a political coward that itself demonstrates a distinct lack of nerve.

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