Clay

December 17, 2012
The alluring pull of nature unites four strangers in this overly ambitious debut. At the center of it all is young TC, a lonely nine-year-old kid with an indifferent mother, absent father, and a penchant for skipping school to spend time in a city park, a place of solace for him. There he befriends Jozef, a Polish immigrant nostalgic for life back on his family’s farm; recently widowed Sophia, who is more afraid of relying on her distant daughter than she is of her increasingly alarming heart palpitations (her husband died of a heart attack); and Sophia’s precocious granddaughter, Daisy, sheltered by an overprotective mother but intensely curious about the world. As TC’s home life unravels, he seeks a haven in the secret garden of the park, where he can live closer to nature, but an unfortunate misunderstanding brings the real world crashing down on everyone. Chapter titles named after traditional harvest feasts indicate the passing of time—the novel unfolds over the course of a year—and the pure and poetic descriptions of nature mark the changing seasons beautifully. Although Harrison’s lush images of the natural world rescue the story somewhat, they leave little room for meaningful development of the characters or any real sense of connection between them. Agent: Jenny Jewson, Rogers, Coleridge & White (U.K.).

December 1, 2012
In a small, inner-city park in England, cycles of life are marked by the turning seasons and the interactions of a handful of characters--a neglected boy, a lonely immigrant, an elderly widow. "We are the clay that grew tall," says one of the wise elders in this British writer's debut, which sets the loosening of our bonds with the natural world alongside fascinated observation of its continuity in the gaps and forgotten corners of urban life. Connections to animals and plants inspire all the principal characters, including Jozef, a Polish immigrant whose love of the rural existence he lost is transferred to the dog he rescues and the 9-year-old boy, TC, he befriends. Underfed and underloved, TC avoids school, finding comfort tracking wildlife in a blissful lost garden. Meanwhile, Sophia, in her apartment by the park, relishes the trees and plants, a passion she tries to share with her granddaughter. Harrison is at her best noting the minute details of weather, growth and decay, evocative of ancient rhythms. Less compelling are her formulaic characters and the limited plot which moves little and late. Juxtaposing often-overlooked everyday natural beauty and man-made ugliness makes for some lovely, laudable prose, but there's not enough meat here for a full-length novel.

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January 1, 2013
In this graceful and poignant debut novel, Londoner Melissa Harrison weaves together the lonely and isolated lives of four people, two adults and two children, whose lives intersect around a ragged, neglected patchwork of urban green spacea wedge of a park, an overgrown common bisected by railway tracks. We meet Sophia, the confident yet self-consciously declining grandmother, holding out in a run-down housing estate, who cares for the decrepit park while trying to inspire her granddaughter Sophia to break free from her upper-middle-class overscheduled day to appreciate the natural world; TC, a resourceful but stunted boy of nine, who retreats into his secret garden to escape the chaos of home life; and, most interestingly, Jozef, a dislocated Polish immigrant, adrift in the seedy, fast-food filled streets of London, who finds purpose and, eventually, solace in befriending TC and a neglected dog. The slow buildup of trust and dependence between Jozef and TC, culminating in a predictable brush with the law, proves to be the most fully developed and moving element here. Although Harrison's great love for nature shines in her beautiful descriptions of how even the most humble green spaces supply succor to the shamed and disconnected, these lovely and leisurely meditations occasionally disrupt the narrative flow and character development.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)