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Harvest A Novel Jim Crace 9780385520775 Books

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Harvest A Novel Jim Crace 9780385520775 Books

Totally loved this book. Saw it on a "best books of the year" or some such list, and chanced it.

The writing is excellent and gorgeously captured the scenery and atmosphere of a rural England that I like to think is still alive. It certainly was when I was a boy.

"From the lane, looking down towards the tracery of willows on the brook, the top end of our barley meadow, bristling and shivering on the breeze, showed us at last its ochres and its cadmiums, its ambers and its chromes. And the smells which for so long in this slow summer were faint and damp, became nutlike and sugary. They promised winter ales and porridges."

I was almost overcome with emotion when I read that. And i re-read it at least twice, before I put the book down for the night and just enjoyed the familiar scene from my childhood that Jim Crace had just given me a good look at.

This really is a beautiful book and you know that time has been spent constructing a narrative that is a joy to read.


Tags : Harvest: A Novel [Jim Crace] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b>SHORT-LISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE</b> On the morning after harvest, the inhabitants of a remote English village awaken looking forward to a hard-earned day of rest and feasting at their landowner's table. But the sky is marred by two conspicuous columns of smoke,Jim Crace,Harvest: A Novel,Nan A. Talese,0385520778,Historical - General,Villages;England;Fiction.,CRACE, JIM - PROSE & CRITICISM,ENGLISH HISTORICAL FICTION,England,FICTION Historical General,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction Historical,Fiction Literary,Fiction-Historical,GENERAL,General Adult,Great BritainBritish Isles,Literary,United States,Villages

Harvest A Novel Jim Crace 9780385520775 Books Reviews

Harvest is an exquisitely-written tale of the dispossessed impoverished indentured farmers are flung off ancestral lands as a wealthy landlord transforms his feudal holdings into more profitable grazing land for sheep. The story is set in a medieval time that is never specified, and in a village too small to possess a name, a church, or even an awareness of life in the next parish; the village’s boundaries are delineated by stones against which parents symbolically butt their children’s heads, a warning to the next generation of the limits of both geography and role that they must never traverse.

Walther Thirsk arrived in the village 12 years earlier as the servant of Master Kent, a kindly and generous lord. He fell in love with Cecily, a local girl, but even his marriage and subsequent widowing did not earn him the status of a trusted insider. His separateness is emphasized by the contrast between his dark hair and the blond hair of his intermarried neighbors. Subsequent events only serve to sharpen that divide.

Long-standing traditions are upended by two events that occur as Walter and his neighbors harvest what turns out to be their last crop of barley the arrival of a family of squatters— themselves thrown off land that is being turned into pastureland for sheep, who are quickly blamed for a fire in the stable; and the childless Master Kent’s disinheritance of the village and manor house to his late wife’s cousin, the cruel and rapacious Master Jordan. Master Jordan has already hired the enigmatic Mr. Quill to survey his new lands, the maps providing Walter with a bird’s-eye view of the village and its tininess in comparison to the wider world into which he must soon venture.

My only quibble is that the ending was too drawn out. The last twenty percent of the book comprises more of a mental journey than a physical one, although that journey is rendered in language so evocative one feels the profound upheaval the villagers—and Walter—suffer.

Fans of Andrew Michael Hurley will love this book.
I wanted to give this more than 3 stars because Jim Crace is such a skillful writer. He writes in an elevated, classic style -- Elizabethan, almost, with sentences often composed rhythmically, in iambic pantameter, a terribly difficult thing to pull off. He does this gorgeously well. But 4 stars seemed too many for me, because in the end I wasn't satisfied. The story is lacking, I think, though Crace's ear and talent for this particular style is stunning. It's very difficult to write characters with such an intimately self-conscious, interior point of view. There's something fascinating in this rendering of a man who reveals himself to be morally blinded by his need for self-preservation, and by the narrow confines of his world. It's an allegory of sorts. I respect Crace a great deal for his talent in this rendering, but in the end just didn't love this sliver of a book.
This is a novel of paradoxes. The writing is, at times, quaint but always edgy, pastoral yet menacing, short but will take time to read. The language and plot are simple, yet the story is sophisticated, ambiguous, and full of unknowns. Descriptions are detailed and realistic while also always on the edge of being surreal. It’s as if this book is a peaceful lake, beautiful and breathtaking, with frightful monsters lurking just under the surface of the water.

Set in a time when agriculture is giving away to other industries, this is the story of Walter Thirsk, an outsider in a peaceful, rural English village that becomes transformed over the course of a week.

My favorite part of the book was the vivid, poetic language. The descriptions are narcotic, as if I was reading a realistic version of a drug-induced vision. I’m not saying that the prose itself is dream-like. On the contrary, the narrative is dense with grounded details. Rather, it’s as if the descriptions are a product of a hyper-realistic, paranoid, visionary trip. I was never sure what would happen next nor what to truly believe.

This is a Great Book and should be read far and wide. This will withstand multiple readings. However, this book is demanding and will ask more of the reader than most current fiction.

One of my book clubs tackled this book, and the discussion was intense and illuminating. Many people did not like the book because it lacks any empathy, especially for the main character, nor does the book have a packaged ending, issues that can turn off a lot of readers. But the book provided plenty of depth for a good discussion, a sign of a worthwhile read.

My example quote from the book comes from page 45 when Walter is walking around the village at night “But other gentler odors too. The acrid smell-exaggerated by the rain-of elder trees. The bread-and-biscuit smell of rotting wood. The piss-and-honey tang of apple trees. I navigate my midnight village as a blind man would, by nose and ears and touch and by the vaguest, blackest forms.”

I have trouble recommending this to casual readers—this is not a beach read. I do recommend this wholeheartedly to serious book clubs. Not everyone will like the book, but everyone will like the discussion. I also strongly recommend it to any readers who want a substantial novel that challenges them.
Totally loved this book. Saw it on a "best books of the year" or some such list, and chanced it.

The writing is excellent and gorgeously captured the scenery and atmosphere of a rural England that I like to think is still alive. It certainly was when I was a boy.

"From the lane, looking down towards the tracery of willows on the brook, the top end of our barley meadow, bristling and shivering on the breeze, showed us at last its ochres and its cadmiums, its ambers and its chromes. And the smells which for so long in this slow summer were faint and damp, became nutlike and sugary. They promised winter ales and porridges."

I was almost overcome with emotion when I read that. And i re-read it at least twice, before I put the book down for the night and just enjoyed the familiar scene from my childhood that Jim Crace had just given me a good look at.

This really is a beautiful book and you know that time has been spent constructing a narrative that is a joy to read.