All Among the Barley

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Deeply evocative of a historical moment - rural England between the wars, before mechanisation - it is also, unmistakably, about questions that press hard on us now, above all the dangers of nationalism, and how easily a love of place can be corrupted into something dark and exclusionary. I’m a city girl but when I spend time in the country, it’s like eating chocolate - I can’t stop thinking about it and I want more of it! There is plenty of foreshadowing a tragic denouement, and no absence of hints about Connie’s toxic effect on Edie and the neighbourhood. Then the sound of the cornfields would alter: dry, they would susurrate, whispering to Father and John that it was nearly time. Wi

Harrison drawing on her nature writing beautifully captures the rhythms of rural life – both the natural rhythm of flora and fauna, as well as the rhythms that man has imposed on the landscape to make a marginal living from it. From the empty pews at the church to the tools left idle in barns to the poorly stacked ricks due to a lack of skilled men, these silent absences are deeply felt. Also living at the estate to help with the farm work are Edie’s brother, Frank, their paternal grandfather and two farmhands, John and Doble.She sees a “murky broth” of nationalism, “anti-Semitism, nativism, protectionism, anti-immigration sentiment, economic autarky . I have something else from Handheld coming up which will definitely qualify for your indies extravaganza, without a doubt!

Yes, the 1930s setting was a big part of the draw for for me – that and Melissa Harrison’s writing which is just so evocative and beautifully judged.WWI and its aftermath, especially the Great Depression (which was preceded by a precipitous agricultural downturn in the 1920s), combined with agricultural modernization to threaten the rural folkways that made rural England special. At Hawthorn Time was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, while Rain: Four Walks in English Weather was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize. It’s very much in the space you’ve described above, the sense of lives intersecting in ways that give rise to significant, unintended consequences. We catch glimpses of the rhythms of the natural world, farming practices, the differences in the lives of the men and women folk, pastoral life and the air of depression and unrest that gripped the country and its citizens.

Our barley was well along now, flaxen from a distance and with the beards tipping over almost as we watched. The autumn of 1933 is the most beautiful Edie Mather can remember, though the Great War still casts a shadow over the cornfields of her beloved home, Wych Farm.Into Edie’s life comes Constance FitzAllen, a forthright, engaging young woman from the city who has come to document the countryside’s age-old traditions to aid with their preservation. While Connie tries to idealise a rural England of bread-making, cheerful peasants and pastoral idealism, real farmers like the narrator’s father are struggling with absentee landlords, debts and confusion over whether they want government subsidies and import tariffs, or free trade. They may not be refined, but here there is good, wholesome food such as may be found on every English farm where butter is churned by hand, cheese is made, and bread is daily baked. In fact, it could be seen as a political novel disguised as a coming-of-age story, albeit it in a very nuanced way!