Sacred Country (edition 1992)

Gorgeous prose, affecting story. Everyone talks the same, and the ending is kind of tidy, but I was fascinated and enjoyed pretty much every scene; the claustrophobia of post-WWII Britain is conveyed very well. ( )

Having now read three or four of Rose Tremain's books I find them all very different in terms of plot, setting and characters. And all almost unbelievably well written. Her characters are so wonderfully constructed, and she also has so much compassion for each of them, irrespective of who they are or what the story is about.

There are a whole bunch of quirky and fallible characters presented to us here, mostly from the small Suffolk farming village of Swaithey. Chapters reflect the passing years, ranging from 1952 when Mary was six, up to 1980: although there are often gaps of two or three years between them. The events encompassed within this passage of time are told in some sections from the point of Mary and also her mother, Estelle, with the bulk of the book being in the third person. It could be jarring, but it isn't. It follows Mary through her awakening and growing awareness of the fact that she really is a boy, her subsequent difficulties and her slow transformation into Martin. But it is not all about Mary and Martin. The other characters are so richly drawn, and they too have their stories to tell.

For much of it, Sacred Country is a profoundly sad read. Sad, but not depressing, even though depression is certainly present throughout the book. There are moments of light, of hope, of humour, and even of happiness. As Martin says to Jeremiah out in the fields towards the end of the book: "Age isn't the only thing to creep up on us. Sometimes it's happiness."

Sacred Country is a book that will make you think . . . and also hopefully one to make you pull yourself out of that rut you've dug yourself into. ( )

This was my introduction to Rose Tremain, and she captures in "The Sacred Country" a full and unorthodox dream. This dream features people ill-suited to their bodies, people ill-suited to nurturing their families, people ill-suited to the dreams of others. Talk about unorthodox - consider a transgender woman-turned-man leaving London for Tennessee, and her brother pursuing a country singing career in Nashville. These principal characters yearn for the grand Someplace Else, and finally do find it.

This doesn't measure up the Tremain's brilliant, transcendent "The Colour," but it's well worth your time in its own right.

http://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2010/06/sacred-country-by-rose-tremain.html ( )

I wasn't completely taken by this one and felt the need to race through to the end so that I could get away from the annoying characters. ( )

Rose Tremain is a very likeable writer. The only thing missing from her work is commitment. I sometimes feel that her characters are pieces she is moving around on a chessboard. It’s very entertaining and enlivening writing with excellent plot lines and good character development. She doesn’t really put a foot wrong. Nevertheless, there is a lack of deep feeling about her characters. Maybe when you’ve written as many books as she has the act of creation is so automatic that something mechanical creeps in?
In this novel, much better than her more recent book The Colour, the story covers the years 1950 to the late 70s and concerns Mary, a little girl who has a sudden revelation, while standing in a field with her family as they hold two minutes’ silence for the death of George VI, that she is really a boy. The main story line follows her struggle to be accepted as a man, which she succeeds in doing towards the end of the book. But it also includes the story of her mother and father (very believable characters): Estelle, who is in and out of a mental institution for most of her life, and Sonny, who is a brutal man, rooted in the land, and who neither knows nor wants to know of anything but farming. In the end he fails at even that.
There are a many likeable characters, including a gay dentist, a man who lives in a converted bus in the middle of a field, and another (nephew of the above), Walter Loomis, who wants to be a Country & Western singer and eventually goes to Nashville and realises his dream. The characters are full of warmth and ambition – but there is that nagging feeling that something (perhaps not something very important) is missing. ( )