Harvest

Starred review from December 3, 2012
In his previous 10 novels, the versatile Crace has been heralded for his firmly rooted, painstakingly detailed impressions of time and place, and his latest work is no exception. In fact, the setting—an isolated English farming village, in an unspecified past, with its “planched and thicketed” inhabitants—is so imaginatively described that it stands as the book’s richest character. Over the course of seven days following the harvest, the hamlet is alight with sudden change. A mysterious fire has set Master Kent’s manor stables and dovecote ablaze. Three newcomers—two men and an ominously alluring woman—who arrived that same night are hastily blamed for the fire. All three have their heads shaved as punishment, and the men are shackled for a week to a pillory. When one of them dies and the master’s favorite horse is later found bludgeoned to death, accusations of witchcraft erupt from within the townsfolk’s ranks and nothing, not even the secretive Master Kent’s halfhearted attempt at rooting out the truth and delivering justice, can quell the thirst for revenge that rattles the once principled town to its foundation. Walter Thirsk plays the perfect unreliable narrator; his deliberations about Master Kent’s true intentions, his neighbors’ guilt, and his own role in the events deepen an already resonant story. Crace’s signature measured delivery and deliberate focus create unforgettably poetic passages that quiver with beauty. An electrifying return to form after All That Follows. Agent: David Godwin, DGA, U.K.

Starred review from December 15, 2012
Rarely does language so plainspoken and elemental tell a story so richly open to interpretation on so many different levels. Is this a religious allegory? An apocalyptic fable? A mystery? A meditation on the human condition? With economy and grace, the award-winning Crace (The Pesthouse, 2007, etc.) gives his work a simplicity and symmetry that belie the disturbances beneath the consciousness of its narrator. It's a narrative without specifics of time or place, in the countryside of the author's native England, following a harvest that will prove different than any the villagers have ever experienced, in a locale where, explains the narrator, "We do not even have a title for the village. It is just The Village. And it's surrounded by The Land." In the beginning, the narrator speaks for the community, "bounded by common ditches and collective hopes," yet one where "[t]heir suspicion of anyone who was not born within these boundaries is unwavering." The "they" proves crucial, as the narrator who initially speaks for the collective "we" reveals that he is in fact an outsider, brought to the village 12 years earlier by the man who is the master of the manor, and that he is someone who has become a part of the community, yet remains apart from it. There has been a fire following the harvest, disrupting the seasonal cycle, and although evidence points to three young men within the community, blame falls on two men and a woman who have recently camped on the outskirts. There is also someone making charts of the land and an issue of succession of ownership. There is a sense that this harvest may be the last one for these people, that the land may be converted to different use. "[P]lowing is our sacrament, our solemn oath, the way we grace and consecrate our land," yet that way of life may soon be over. "There isn't one of us--no, them--who's safe," declares the narrator, who must ultimately come to terms with the depths of his solitude. Crace continues to occupy a singular place in contemporary literature.

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September 15, 2012

Multiaward winner Crace (Being Dead) creates astonishing worlds, and he's set to do it again. In an isolated English village one frosty morning, smoke is seen drifting skyward, one column signaling that strangers are approaching, as custom dictates, another that Master Kent's stables are ablaze. The strangers are blamed for the stable fire, even as the odd Mr. Quill carefully observes the villagers' lands, apparently at the request of Kent. Change is coming, and Crace limns the foreboding.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2012
The order and calm of a preindustrial village in England is upset by a mysterious fire and the simultaneous appearance of three strangers. The insular community strikes out against the newcomers but turns on itself in a fit, literally, of witch hunting. As slowly paced as the feudal England in which it is set, this latest by the highly acclaimed Crace, winner of the Man Booker Prize for Quarantine (1998), is a tour de force written in the precise but simpleindeed, medievallanguage of its resident narrator, Walter Thirsk. His eye is keen, his observations insightful, and his fundamental compassion evident as he experiences the passing of his and his community's pastoral quiet. This is a spare, disquieting, unique, and ultimately haunting and memorable little novel. Its limited accessibility may restrict its audience, but followers of literary fiction will be reading and talking about it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)