Harvest

Well this is the third book I've read by Jim Crace and the first two got 4 stars but both have lived on in my imagination so this one gets five in anticipation. It is very intense - so much so that I found it hard to pick up at times. I find that for me his poetic voice settles me into the times and places he writes about and the combination of suspense and dread, and wonder and dark humour make a great book. Reading other people's reviews I was struck by how many read it as an allegory. So my thoughts are that any book this rich could be read as an allegory.... but that doesn't make it one. I also think it would make a great book to study as it obviously has layers and layers that you don't notice at first reading - one reviewer points show more out the many 'pairs' that he presents - starting with the two smokes - and I bet there are many others - possibly the play with colours. Yet you don't need any conscious awareness of any of that to appreciate the richness. show less

I listened to this is audiobook format.

This feudal allegory is about a farming village with two sets of unwanted visitors: a poor family seeking refuge and a new lord who wants to modernize the whole village for profit. The narrator is perfectly situated, as a relative newcomer himself, to perceive the situation as it unfolds and relay it to the reader. The story is a thinly veiled tale modern social satire, with themes of xenophobia, capitalist profiteering, NIMBYism, resistance to change, and savior complex. The writing is clever and full of bawdy humor, made all the more funny by the audiobook narrator's deadpan posh British accent.

I perhaps came to Harvest with the wrong idea, doing pretty much what Crace said in his Guardian interview he was afraid readers might do, i.e. judging it on its merits as an historical novel. Which, it has to be said, are few. Because he obviously wants to avoid making either the place or the time where the story is set too specific, he leaves a lot of information vague and contradictory. In theory, I can see the point of this approach, but while I was actually reading the book I found it made it difficult for me to engage properly with the story and characters, because they simply didn't fit.

This is a story about a village whose landowner is planning to enclose the common land for sheep. That is a very familiar and specific meme in show more left-wing British historical writing, and there are hundreds of novels, poems, paintings and non-fiction accounts of burning cottages, greedy landowners, and starving, landless peasants trudging off to get the boat to America. Probably the most famous single example is Oliver Goldsmith's "The deserted village" (1770), which most of us will have read at school. So, whatever Crace refuses to say, we still expect to be somewhere between the mid-18th and the mid-19th century. For lots of good reasons, the story would have to do a lot of special pleading to be anywhere near plausible in any other historical period, so why not just put it where it belongs?

The big casualty of this refusal to commit is the first-person narrator, Walter Thirsk. He tells the story in the historic present tense, which is fine for a 21st century novel, but looks very strange when you're trying to imagine him writing 250 years ago, when narrators simply didn't do that. It doesn't help that the narration is in a vaguely old-fashioned, somewhat pedantic and over-lyrical style, which doesn't really fit with Walter's background as an uneducated manservant/cottager. Fine if he were meant to be a retired natural history teacher (or even Oliver Goldsmith!), but he's clearly someone who's never been to school. I can easily understand why Crace didn't want to give him a fake rustic voice, something that's almost bound to get you into trouble, but surely it would have been far simpler to side-step the whole problem and have a third-person narrator? As it is, he just isn't plausible as a narrator at all.

The other problem with Walter is that he is too limited a person to have any real insight into any of the other characters, as a result of which they all come across as mere generic types, the sort of thing that would work in a simplistic YA novel but doesn't really have any place in a serious book for grown-ups.

This all leaves the politics - which ought to be the added value its 21st century perspective should give the book over "The deserted village" - looking rather thin and predictable. The villagers have allowed their xenophobia and suspicion of incomers to distract them from the real economic threat facing them. OK, lesson learnt. Now what? Sorry - that's where the book stops, Crace isn't going to help us any further...

Judging by what other reviewers say, this might be a book that works well for you if you come to it without any preconceived historical ideas about enclosures and English social history. But if you are constantly trying to fit it in with what you know, it keeps tripping you up, and you end up frustrated and disappointed. show less

“What starts with fire will end with ash.”
This is a beautifully-written meditation on belonging, set over a short but shocking week, in an isolated English village a few hundred years ago. Life is lived by the seasons. Nothing else changes.

Almost every paragraph in the first few pages speaks of community, continuity, and beauty, but silently suggests doom. It opens:
“Two twists of smoke at a time of year too warm for cottage fires surprise us at first light… Our land is topped and tailed with flames. Beyond the frontier ditches of our fields and in the shelter of our woods, on common ground, where yesterday there wasn’t anyone who could give rise to smoke, some newcomers… Their first smoke has given them the right to stay. show more We’ll see.”

There is a fire in the Master’s stables. Maybe arson.

Image: Smouldering wood and ash (Source)

Next morning:
“The village is aflame, but not with fire.”
Suspicion and rumour fan the flames. Everything changes, dramatically and irrevocably. Mistress Bedlam seems aptly nicknamed.

It is evocative, warm, sad, and spookily unsettling, without anything supernatural - despite rumours of witchery. The ending perfectly balances tragedy and triumph, justice and injustice, laced with tentative hope.

Maps

I love maps and aerial views, but I sometimes take them for granted. Imagine the shock of seeing your first map as an adult, when you’d never been higher than a couple of storeys!

Master Kent has invited Philip Earle, nicknamed Mr Quill, to map the estate. The cottagers are slightly suspicious, but Walter is entranced:
“I’ve never before had a true sense of how our estate is shaped… or what those hawks and kestrels see.”

He’s also unsettled and critical:
“He’s coloured and he’s flattened us. No shadows and no shade… There are no climbs or slopes. The land is effortless: a lie. He hasn’t captured time: how long a walk might take… They complicate to simplify. I have translated them.”

Maps use - or assign - labels and names. The village doesn’t have a name, and Mr Quill is disappointed by how prosaic the other names are: West Field, The Warren etc.

Image: Badminton Estate map from 1587, only a few years before this is probably set (Source)

Boundaries

Maps delineate and define boundaries in literal and deeper ways. They signify and cement change. Many boundaries are mentioned in these pages. There’s the annual tradition of villagers Beating the bounds to confirm and embed their sense of place and belonging. There are also people who cross geographical and behavioural boundaries.

“I have reached our village bounds… It has always seemed too precarious a place; on our side of the stone there can be no trespassing… One further step beyond, however, and everything you have is left behind. You are disowned.”

Reflection

Walter Thirsk, the narrator, came to the village a dozen years ago, when the current Master inherited. He married a cottager, Cecily, and is now a bereft widower. He has a little education and has experienced other places, which gives him a broader perspective for telling the story - including many aspects he reports as hearsay: “As I imagine it…”. But he is a shrewd judge of character

None of the cottagers have a mirror:
“We in this village walk around in blinded ignorance… We know our hands and knees but not our eyes and teeth.”
Mistress Kent had one, but when she died, her husband smashed it and buried it with her, in accordance with local custom.

The events of the week expose divided loyalties:
“There isn’t one of us - no, them - who’s safe.”
Pronouns can be powerful.
“I’m not a product of these commons, but just a visitor who stayed.”

Ripples become waves, dominoes fall, there are more fires, and metaphors in this sentence are not the only things that become mixed.

Image: Dominoes falling (Source)

Folk religion

“We are a heathen company, more devoted to the customs and the Holy days than to the Holiness itself.”
The churchyard is filled with the dead, but there’s no church, let alone a priest. There’s just a cross that’s occasionally used as a pillory and as the place where Master Kent conducts ceremonies, such as marriages. There is a deep sense of spirituality, but not so much of religion.The land is the true master, so they thank the soil, more than God:
“You do not eat before you cook… Ploughing is our sacrament.”

Walter references mummers’ shows as well as Eden, and you don’t need much Bible knowledge to know the depth of symbolism embedded in:
“The sheaf is giving way to the sheep.”

Quotes

• “Each darkling cloud reminded us how nothing in our fields was guaranteed.”

• “The harvest teamwork allows us to be lewd. Our humour ripens as the barley falls.”

• “These newcomers, these funguses that seek to feed on us” will discover “how thin - and dangerous - our welcome is.”

• “Secrets are like pregnancies hereabouts. You can hide them for a while but then they will start screaming.”

• “We continue not irreligiously, but independent, choosing not to remind ourselves too frequently that there’s a Heaven and a Hell and that much of what we count as everyday is indeed a Sin.”

• “The mood has changed… We were liquid; now we’re stones. The night is closing on a broken note.”

• “Midnight rain, the sort that in the darkness has no form until it reaches you, until it strikes with the cold and keen insistence of a silver-worker’s mallet.”

• “Despite the sweating soil and the enamelling of puddles from the midnight storm, the land itself is harvest-worn.”

• “There is a silent ripeness to the air, so mellow and sappy that we want to breathe it shallowly, to sip it richly like a cordial.”

• “This was precisely what I most liked about this village life, the way we had to press our cheeks and chests against a living, fickle world.”

• “I have the sense my cousin is taking pleasure from sowing these anxieties, in the same way we take pleasure in the sowing of our seed… I fear his harvesting. I think he means to shear us all, then turn us into mutton.”

• “This land… has always been much older than ourselves… Not any more.”

• “Our fields are medicine. All days prove good to those that love the open air.”

See also

• The mystic air of a small rural community reminded me of Max Porter’s Lanny, which has a contemporary setting. See my review HERE.

• Maps can be realistic: Reif Larsen’s The Selected Works of TS Spivet is about a boy obsessed with map-making. See my review HERE.

• Maps can be almost magical: see Alix E Harrow’s The Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half-Savage, which I reviewed HERE. show less

This novel takes place in an isolated village in pre-Industrial Age England, whose residents have just finished collecting a modest harvest for Master Kent, the benign and fair landowner who employs and befriends them. What should be a day of celebration is interrupted by the appearance of two tufts of smoke; one comes from a hut at the edge of the village recently built by three outsiders, but the other comes from Master Kent's dovecote and manor house, which suffers substantial damage as a result. Despite evidence to the contrary, the outsiders are accused of setting the fire and are punished for it.

Soon afterward the villagers learn that a new owner, Master Jordan, will replace Master Kent. His plan for redeveloping the land causes show more great consternation amongst them, and within hours the social fabric of the village begins to quickly unravel, as neighbors turn against longstanding neighbors, the new owner and his staff, and the outsiders. Walter Thirsk, a villager who is the narrator of this novel, also comes under intense scrutiny, as he is Master Kent's closest confidant and appears to be aligned with the new landowner. The villagers become progressively more agitated, which leads to violence that threatens to destroy the community and everyone in it.

I viewed Master Jordan as a pre-Industrial Era version of Carl Icahn, the corporate raider who is known for his hostile takeovers of failing or marginally successful companies, which is followed by severe cutbacks to the established work force and a near complete change in its business goals and operations, as the previous CEO/COO (Master Kent) is rendered all but powerless. And the villagers seemed akin to late 20th century factory workers with limited education and skill sets, and even more limited ability to have a vote or voice concerns about the workplace, who must adapt to rapid change or find themselves marginalized or unemployed.

Harvest is a beautifully written and compelling novel about the imbalance of power, revenge and the effect of sudden change on a formerly peaceful village, whose theme of forced adaptation to rapid change is both universal and timeless. I expect that it will be chosen for this year's Booker Prize shortlist, and I look forward to reading it again and exploring it further. show less

Fear and loathing of the “other” forms a conspicuous subplot in the history of a modern world divided by borders, walls and fences. We come by it honestly. One could argue that suspicion of the outsider has played a formative role in shaping all of human history. In Jim Crace’s award-winning novel Harvest, for the inhabitants of an isolated farming village somewhere in pre-industrial England, the world beyond the border is indeed something to be feared. Walter Thirsk is our narrator, a man who is himself an outsider. Walter arrived in the village 12 years previously and proved himself trustworthy by working hard, not causing trouble and marrying a local. Widowed now, his integrity and intelligence have made him a confidante of show more Master Kent, a sincere man of authority who truly cares for the people living in the village, and whose role requires him to resolve conflicts and oversee official events and activities. Kent is in every respect the apparent lord of the land, except that he holds no actual title to it. Ownership resides in the hands of Kent’s unsentimental and fiscally ambitious cousin Jordan, who has dreamed up a scheme to make his land more profitable by replacing agriculture with sheep herding, in order to produce wool to feed an emerging textile industry. The story begins with a family of vagabonds taking refuge at the margins of the village: a husband and wife and older man who is the woman’s father, who have themselves been displaced by “progress.” This event alone causes sufficient upset and anxiety. But then Kent’s cousin arrives with his entourage of brutes, and the villagers begin to realize that their way of life is under threat. Suspicion breeds hostility. There are confrontations. People are injured. Soon there is no going back. All of this is inevitable, because what we are witnessing is a classic confrontation: entrenched custom resisting change imposed from on high and for obscure reasons. Harvest is a novel heavy with foreboding, containing some levity but little humour. Walter Thirsk is a perceptive narrator with an urgent tale to tell, and though his story takes a while to gain momentum, the prose is graceful, rich in period detail and convincingly "medieval" turns of phrase. Early in the novel, Crace’s narrative evokes a naïve, pastoral, superstitious rural setting: one that is aware of a looming outside world that, for the moment, is being held at a safe distance. Later in the book, the innocent pastoral setting has receded from view, and we're in a place where all kinds of unknown dangers lurk among the shadows and people are being pushed to extremes in order to survive. It all makes for a tense and disquieting reading experience. If Jim Crace intended to construct an allegory for the world in which we currently find ourselves, he could not have been more prescient. show less

Around this time of year (October) I often dig out an old Thomas Hardy novel to wade through. The language and atmosphere of his writing seems to fit well into late autumn days. This year Harvest by Jim Crace has slaked that thirst. It's a modern novel written in an old language and set long ago in a time of political and social upheaval.

The Enclosure Acts were passed in the UK in the time period from 1750 to 1860. These acts removed the grazing and cultivation rights that were the sustenance of the common people. They favored wealthy landowners giving them rights to enclose open fields and common land to use as they chose, which was often for the grazing of sheep. The result was displacement, poverty, starvation, and emigration of show more those on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. The implementation of the Enclosure Acts is the background for this novel.

The story starts with two fires on the day the villagers are to rest and celebrate after completion of the communal barley harvest the previous day. One fire is the Master's dovecot, the other is the fire of outsiders who have set up camp at the edge of Master Kent's land.

Walter Thirsk, the narrator, is also an outsider to the village. Formerly the servant of Charles Kent, the benevolent land owner who became the master through marriage to his now deceased wife. Walter elected to leave the Master's service to marry one of the local women 12 years ago. His wife is also recently deceased, leaving him childless and less connected a village that values blood kinship above all else. (Two grieving men....see the Thomas Hardy connection?)

Another outsider is Philip Earle (Mr. Quill) who has come at the invitation of Charles Kent to survey the land. He has a handicap which immobilizes the left upper quarter of his body.

The final, and consummate outsider is Edmund Jordan who through the laws of primogeniture has come to seize the holdings of Charles Kent. Edmund Jordan is the cousin of Charles Kent's deceased wife and the eldest surviving male family member.

When things go wrong, the tendency to blame the outsider is manifest. The dovecot fire is blamed on the campers at the edge of the land, though the villagers know that it was the work of three of their high spirited sons. Edmund Jordan arrives on the scene and is able to manipulate the foment of the dovecot fire and the naivete' of the villagers to his advantage. His desire is to clear the land of people to install sheep.

Crace has managed to take a piece of history and through archetypal characters guide the reader through many of the fears and insecurities of today's class wars. Names are important and suggestive of the archetypes: Walter Thirsk...water, thirst. And the vagrant campers are dubbed with the surname Beldam....which I couldn't help but read as bedlam.

One of my favorite passages from Walter Thirsk is near the end of the book:
"Am I to be the only one to witness and know it all, the only one to wonder what this pageant represents?......Today I'm seeing Privilege, in its high hat. Then comes Suffering: the Guilty and the Innocent, including beasts. Then Malice follows, wielding its great stick. And, afterward, invisibly, Despair is riding its lame horse."

Loved the language and the story line, though it is dark and unsettling. show less