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    Harvest
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    Harvest
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    Harvest
    Audiobook8 hours

    Harvest

    Written by Jim Crace

    Narrated by John Keating

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    As late summer steals in and the final pearls of barley are gleaned, a village comes under threat. Over the course of seven days, Walter Thirsk sees his hamlet unmade: the manor house set on fire, the harvest blackened, three new arrivals punished, and his neighbours accused of witchcraft. But something even darker is at the heart of his story, and he will be the only man left to tell it…

    Told in Jim Crace's hypnotic prose, Harvest evokes the tragedy of land pillaged and communities scattered, as England's fields are irrevocably enclosed
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateSep 1, 2013
    ISBN9781471249549
    Unavailable
    Harvest
    Author

    Jim Crace

    Jim Crace is the prize-winning author of a dozen books, including Continent (winner of the 1986 Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize), Quarantine (1998 Whitbread Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the Booker Prize), Being Dead (winner of the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award), Harvest (shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize and winner of the International Dublin Literary Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) and The Melody. He lives in Worcestershire.

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    Reviews for Harvest

    4/5

    378 ratings53 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A wonderful short novel (free copy courtesy of the writer and goodreads.com) that reminds me just how good a short novel can be. The writing is superb and magical. If you can imagine Malcolm Lowry crossed with Hilary Mantel, then you will have an idea about this writer's incredible style.
    • 4/5
      Harvest by Jim Crace - very good

      This was shortlisted for the Man Booker 2013, so when I saw the BX Bookring, I just
      had to sign up for it.

      The story is set in an unnamed English village at an unstated date in time, but must be around Tudor times/1500s - I won't say why, but something that we learn mid-way through the book would suggest that.

      The harvest is in. That same night two things happen: the Master's outbuildings catch fire and three strangers arrive and build a makeshift dwelling with a camp fire - the time honoured way of staking a claim. Ignorance and superstition rule the day and these strangers are blamed for the fire. Not really a surprise. I know other readers/reviewers questioned this, but why would an insular village where everyone is related look to find the real culprit when there are strangers who can take the blame and also be frightened away as a result.

      From there the whole village unravels. Again, I won't go into too much detail as it might spoil the book, but the whole tale is the story of isolation and fear of the future. These villagers have never been outside their village - the only exceptions are the Master and Walter Thirsk: the man who came with him when he married into the village and our narrator. When the inevitable changes come as the world progresses, they find their very existences challenged and their world comes crashing down.

      Whilst quite a bleak book, it was a pleasant change to read something that, I suspect, reflects how life really was rather than the usual bucolic idyll of rosy cheeked maids & jolly peasants. Life was short and bleak and people worked long and hard to merely survive, they would be scared of change and superstitious. Exactly as portrayed here.

      Only one thing grated, and then only slightly: as the book was about an English village I found the American spelling of words incongruous.
    • 4/5
      An English village, so small that it is only known as The Village, is the setting for this story narrated by Walter Thirsk, one of the workers on The Land. A harvest like no other has just been completed. Strangers are rare in this corner of England, but within 24 hours, three new settlers, a surveyor, and the lawful owner of the property and his servants arrive. And then there are the two fires that seem to announce that change is on the way...that "the sheaf is giving way to sheep."It takes less than a week for chaos and confusion to alter the village forever reminding the reader that nothing lasts forever. Jim Crace has a wonderful way with words and pacing that allow the story to develop so gradually, that before we know it some post-harvest mischief followed by mistrust deconstructs an entire village in a few days. Crace writes a simple story with some complex themes that drew me into this timeless scenario about the abuse of power and its disastrous results.
    • 3/5
      An enjoyable work, but not quite a classic. As it goes with period dramas, this one too, is conscious of its setting.
    • 4/5
      Excellent story. I felt the narrator was authentic, that he was real, that he was there with all the others in the story. The diction of the narrator was that of a person of his station and experience. The diction flowed easily and was pretty in a way. I didn't guess the ending.

      One doubt I have on the story telling: some things occurred without others knowing of them. Yet it was such a small community; and other times we are told things were overheard by nearly everyone. sometimes the narrator rambled a bit, especially in the last third of the book.
    • 5/5
      This is my fourth book by Jim Crace and probably my favourite. I loved and recommend: The Pesthouse, Quarantine and Gift of Stones. Harvest tells the story of the unraveling of a small English village in the form of a long meditation and remembrance by the central character who is a peasant farmer with close ties to the lord of the manor. Crace is one of those brilliant “nature mystics” who describe the landscape with such a keen and sensitive eye. Think Thomas Hardy and Cormac McCarthy. I think this is mature fiction by a writer who really has mastered his craft.

      The story as someone else has said before me describes a period of upheaval in England created by the Enclosure Act when lands that were previously held in common became marked, fenced and plotted. This created tremendous stress and upheaval on those at the lowest rung of society, the common labourers who depended on a close relationship with the land, not any land, but their land. The land they grew up on and knew in intimate and minute detail.

      Harvest is my favourite fiction, which is to say brilliant historical fiction that utterly transcends the genre. It was deservedly short-listed for the Booker Prize. It resembles in some ways Gift of Stones which was the first book I read by Crace that was set in a much more distant time or perhaps timeless-time is a better description.

      Read either one not for the plot, which are simple and spare but for the prose which is masterful

      I recommend Harvest as highly as I can.
    • 2/5
      small village, dark deeds
      wrought from such misery.
      Everyone's suspect.

      got to p.130 but couldn't take anymore! story goes from one ugly turn to the next. Man Booker Long-listed, 2013.
    • 5/5
      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 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.
    • 2/5
      The season of summer is slowly turning to autumn, and it it time to gather the harvest. As the peasants in the village glean the final barley corns, three visitors, two men and one woman, arrive in the village. They set up a makeshift camp, and the balance of the village is unsettled.

      And for the next seven days the village, a smoothly functioning feudal system, is unmade. The manor house is set on fire, the three arrivals are punished, accusations of witchcraft mean that villagers are held captive, animals are killed, and slowly the status quo is unravelled.

      Told through the eyes of Walter Thirst, a villager, but also an incomer himself at one point, it is a powerful tale of just how fragile the feudal systems were, and how close they were to the tipping point. The area and the village are not known, as well as the time it was set, but it feels around late 1600's. But that it not the main point of the book. It is supposed to be timeless, and could also be considered an allegory of dramatic change in a fixed society.

      Really a 2.5 star book, as the writing is lyrical and effortless, it is almost a dystopian historic novel that carries messages for our society too.
    • 3/5
      It did not take many working days before I understood that the land itself, from sod to meadow, is inflexible and stern. It is impatient, in fact. It cannot wait. There’s not a season set aside for pondering and reveries. It will not let us hesitate or rest; it does not wish us to stand back and comment on its comeliness or devise a song for it. It has no time to listen to our song. It only asks us not to tire in our hard work. It wants to see us leathery, our necks and forearms burned as black as chimney oak; it wants to leave us thin and sinewy from work. It taxes us from dawn to dusk, and torments us at night; that is the taxing that the thrush complains about. Our great task each and every year is to defend ourselves against hunger and defeat with implements and tools. The clamor deafens us. But that is how we have to live our lives.This apocalyptic novel tells the story of the last harvest of a remote English farming village. Its narrator, Walter Thirsk, is an incomer who married a village girl and adopted the rhythms of the village’s farming life. The arrival of strangers on the last day of the harvest heralds the coming changes. The biblical allusions are striking opposites. For instance, the village could be seen as the Garden of Eden from which Adam and Eve are finally exiled, yet it’s an Eden after the fall and the curse of the ground: “in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life...By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” (Gen. 3:17, 19, ESV). It’s a well-written, well-structured novel that my head appreciated, but it didn’t speak to my heart.
    • 4/5
      I am reviewing under the three subtitles, Book, Crystals, and Magic.

      Book: Quality of Writing

      This is a book which perhaps I would not have chosen to read, so I have to thank the book group that I belong to, for widening my appreciation and taste in books! I have to admit that I found the opening chapters a slow and heavy slog, almost like I myself was a member of this community where the pace of life is dictated by the unrelenting demands of the harvest. I am glad that I persevered as without doubt this is a wonderfully evocative novel. Crace’s often poetic writing carries you along, every word, sentence and metaphor seems to be perfectly sculpted. His descriptive prose is without doubt his forte. I struggled to rate this novel, but in the end I decided to give it 4 stars, as I found the characters, while good, played second fiddle to the prose.


      Crystals: Lightness and Darkness

      Crace evokes a long lost village during the time period of the enclosure act somewhere between 1750 and 1860. He creates a sense of belonging, of families with long allegiances, and a deep rooted suspicion of newcomers, and change. When the master’s dovecotes are burnt down, it is evident who the perpetrators are, yet it is a family of outsiders who are blamed. The main character in the novel, the narrator, Walter Thirsk, realises that they are innocent, but the community doesn’t want to blame their own, they are happy to accept these unwelcome outsiders as a scapegoat. From this duplicity, this harsh and unfair behaviour, a disastrous chain of events will follow with terrible consequences for all of the community. This is a moral tale, a tale of the economic power of landowners over their subordinates, a tale in which change is coming, unwelcome change, that will strike at the core of the villagers’ life.

      The narrator’s character left a lasting impression on me. He seems well intentioned, but never has the courage of his convictions to stand up and speak for what is right. I can’t quite picture him, he seems a shadowy figure, living amongst the community but not accepted into the heart of it. This lack of detail has been judged by some reviewers to be a negative aspect of the novel. It is my impression that it was probably Crace’s intention to depict Thirsk in this way. Quite a brave move, but for me I think it works. This lack of courage is also true of Thirsk's Master, Master Kent, a kind but weak man. Mr. Earle, a newcomer, invited into the community by Master Kent, shows more pluck and courage than the other characters. He is given several names by the local inhabitants of the village, and the newcomers blamed for the fire, are also given a name that is not their own, suggesting that all newcomers are viewed with suspicion. Superstitions abound, and suspicion and superstition go hand in hand, in this land of rituals, and harvests.

      Humour and sexual innuendo are used to enliven the prose. Insight into life in rural England under the rule of unscrupulous landowners is characterised in the arrival of Master Kent’s cousin, a punitive, cold hearted man. This is a novel of loss, human weakness, destruction of a way of life, and engrained ties to the land.

      There is a heady mix of lightness in the rituals of the harvest, the crowning of the Gleaning Queen, followed by the darkness of all that happens thereafter.

      Magic: My Conclusion

      I would say that I found the second half of the novel more gripping, and magical, than the first half. Reviewers have used the terms “hallucinatory” and “hypnotic” to describe Harvest, I believe that Harvest is worthy of these two terms, depicting a bygone age, when time came and went by slowly with each harvest, and customs and rituals were held in great esteem. If this is indeed going to be Crace’s last book, he should be proud that he has ended his long standing career on such a deserved note, with high acclaim, and a place on the Man Booker shortlist. I would recommend this to readers who enjoy the detail of thoughtful literary and historical fiction. Perhaps it will be a book I will return to, it seems worthy of a second reading.
    • 5/5
      Harvest by Jim Crace is not an easy book to review. The novel seems fraught with meaning and mystery that drives the critical reader mad. Harvest is a relatively short novel, but its sparseness in number of words merely means that almost every sentence bears on the story. The language of the book is often archaic, at times very precise, and at times vague, oddly poetic with suggestive metaphore and similes. Scattered throughout the book, the story provides an enormous amout of detail, which gives the reader the impression that careful reading or rereading may solve the riddle, but the enigmas in the book remain unsolved. It is obvious the writer likes teasing the reader, for instance with the names of characters. A critical reader will soon assume that the name Walter Thirsk might contain a clue as the name could hide the words "Water" and "Thirst" and the author throws this suggestion at the reader. Likewise, it is suggested that the name Philip Earle is suggestive of the "Erlking" suggesting this character is shady or unreliable. The novel is built around numerous dichotomies, old versus new, young versus old, blond versus dark, inside versus outside, etc. Numbers seem to play an important role, 12 years since Walter came to the village, seven days in which the story unfolds, three widowers and three bachelors. There is no historical reference for the choice of a "Gleaning Queen" and names such as "Mistress Beldam" and Willowjack seem to draw on readers subconscious cultural knowledge that might be accurate of not. Similarly, the reader is teased with the idea as to whether horses sleep while standing or lying down.In its treatment the novel is more like an allegory than an historical novel. Set in the late-Sixteenth Century, the community is described as small, and remote enough to have escaped the great modernization of its time sofar. The feudal community consists of some 60 serfs to the lord of the manor, a peaceful pastoral community that lives in medieval tradition of plowing the land, livelyhood dependent on harvest but guaranteed by the benign lord of the manor. This lord, Master Kent, is described as unusually mild and benign. Thus, this small rural community seems to exist is a bubble, ill-prepared for reality and modern progress.The action of the novel is apparently set in train by the arrival of three strangers, but as becomes clear towards the end of the novel, these three refugees are as much victims of the modernization that is sweeping through the country as the community members who are driven out upon their arrival. The backdrop of the story is the Agricultural Revolution, and specifically the introduction of the Enclosure Acts, which took away the commons, and the transition from cropping to raising sheep. The production of wool and cloth, being more profitable and more stable, depending less on the fortunes of the weather, but also requiring less labour revolutionized the countryside, displacing small farmers. The three strangers are the victims of the same phenomenon elsewhere, and the villagers driven out awaits the same fate as theirs.Readers are closely searching for clues in the book to see who within the community has perpetrated the evil acts which so much upset the community , the killing of the doves, arson of the stables, and the killing of the horse, all apparently against the lord of the manor. Suspicion falls on the three strangers, but as is clearly shown, they cannot be the culprits. In fact, the only villains capable of such cruelty and violence seem to the the men brought in by the young Master Jordan, heir to the estate. It is he who wants to push for modernization, who wants to to replace the old master.Most emblematic about Walter Thirsk is his injury sustained at the beginning of the novel, establishing that he could not "have a hand" in any of the main actions of the story, as there is also much emphasis on his alibi. This creates as aura of innocense which is, of course, deceptive. As a close associate of Master Kent, Thirsk is "in" on the whole scheme from the beginning. Long before the serfs, he knows what fate is going to befall the community, and while he may not be an agent in the unfolding of the action, neither is he one of the victims. In fact, after the masters Kent and Jordan have left, Thirsk remains to literary "oversee" the winding up of the story from the manor, his high point a turret of the manor, "Master Jordan's trusted winter man" (p. 268).
    • 5/5
      The Inclosure Acts and their consequences fictionalised in great writing. Taken right there in time and place by the central chracater and narrator.
    • 4/5
      Some impish force has come out of the forest...causing turmoil in a tranquil place"By sally tarbox on 2 November 2017Format: Kindle EditionSet in some unspecified time in a remote English village; an era of lowly peasant farmers and the lord of the manor; witchcraft, brutal punishments, a vulnerable and superstitious working class...Taking place over a week or so, this is narrated by widower Walter Thirsk, an unknowable character. He's an outsider to the village despite living here some years; he's not 'one of them.' The story opens on a positive note- the harvest's in, the (fairly) mild mannered lord is sponsoring a celebratory meal, they're crowning the 'Gleaning Queen.' But dark clouds are gathering- three strangers have set up camp nearby. The lord is thinking of raising sheep instead of barley; his clerk is surveying the fields -this could be a massive change to their life. There's random acts of frustration against him; and then his relative, who stands to inherit, arrives...I didn't think I was going to like this but you get caught up in the poetic writing and the fast-moving events. Thirsk never really reveals himself; he's always 'going to' do the right thing but repeatedly fails to. Is he on the villagers' side or the lord's?There's a lot of interpretations of the text that occurred to me as i read. The ordinary folk who stood by, full of excuses, as some group was persecuted?Pretty good read.
    • 3/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      (Fiction)Harvest focuses on the inhabitants of a remote English village at an undetermined time in what is likely the past.The village is well-established and the routine of the people remains fixed year after year. But two changes occur that unsettle the village: a group of strangers sets up camp at the edge of the village land; and a surveyor sent by the master is taking notes and measurements about the land and village, setting off rumours that their fields of grain will be converted to meadows for grazing sheep.This book will take you by surprise: while nothing seems to happen, an entire civilization (in miniature) will unravel within a week. It was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. 4 stars
    • 4/5
      This is a simple fable-like story set in what seem to be Medieval times. On harvest morning, strangers appear on a feudal estate of about 60 villagers, and after that nothing is the same.I'm a big fan of Jim Crace, and this book was no exception. This allegorical tale reminded me a lot of some of William Golding's works. Highly recommended.4 stars
    • 4/5
      Harvest is a poetic, beautiful read. This book is dense with alluring prose sprinkled with very little dialogue. It feels like a much longer read that it really is, and I can't say it's an easy read, but it is definitely gorgeous.

      The storyline is a relatively simple one: The calm order of a remote, pre-industrial English village and the estate upon which it depends is disrupted by a number of events, including the arrival of four mysterious strangers who come into conflict with the villagers. The estate's precarious equilibrium is also threatened by a new owner, whose entrance is a result of history and economic development. This unfolds through the eyes of Walter Thirsk, himself an interloper in the village, having arrived 12 years earlier. His is an ironic perspective, one narrated at once through the eyes of an outsider and through the eyes of a friend. (Much of rural Britain is still like this. I have a missionary friend that serves in rural southwest England, and is still viewed as an outsider after having lived there almost 20 years.)

      Crace weaves the characters and the events into the text effortlessly, encouraging the reader to explore fundamental questions about our world is perceived. In this, Harvest could be viewed as an allegory, as the Tudors moved England into a tariff protection regime in order to build the wool industry, laying the foundation for Britain’s wealth for centuries. This move, while economically sound, had a huge negative impact on the people of the land. The storyline shows this impact on a handful of rural people that get caught up in momentous events outside of their control. A blank portrait of the manor and village serves as a metaphor at both the beginning and end of the tale.

      Crace's description of the low land of the estate, known among the locals as the “Turd and Turf”, is simply outstanding. Through Thirsk's eyes, we see the village's natural latrine through bawdy vision juxtaposed with the beauty of the plants that grow in and around the marshland. Throughout the book, the description of the rural life, the details of the natural world, and the relationships between the villagers are depicted in rich, poetic prose.

      The only drawback is the ending, which leaves the reader with many unanswered questions. The ending wasn’t a conclusion; it just sort of trailed off, like watching a fire slowly burn itself out. It was very anticlimactic, but somehow even that worked with the overall atmosphere of the book.
    • 4/5
      Halfway through this novel it dawned on me that this could be interpreted as a deeply allegorical story (I'm slow on the uptake). Despite being set in olde England, when witchery and pillorys were believed in (when convenient), it could be a story of politics and class in America today. Behaviours don't change over the centuries - every generation starts afresh and tries to figure it out on their own. The one thing we are remarkably adept at is rationalising away our moral shortcomings--a skill quickly evidenced by the first-person narrator in this story. It's a remarkable tale of the emotions, behaviours and dependent interactions of the inhabitants of a small village, their fates foretold by their class and economic status.
      Cruelty and power are the ways of entropy to which life naturally drifts.

      This is longlisted for the Booker, and will be a good contender for the shortlist.
    • 5/5
      The immediate challenge in a Crace novel is to ascertain if he is writing apocalyptical a la Cormac McCarthy or indeed in his own The Pesthouse, or is this offering a period piece. I chose to label Harvest in the latter category. We are taken into the realm of landed gentry and arable serfs working and living off the land at the master’s good grace. As the title surmises it is harvest time, the barley has been scythed and gathered and the new Gleaning Queen is to be crowned.
      The morning of the celebrations is blighted by two fires, one whose smoke “hardly bends or thins” as it leaves a thin black trace trailing over the forest from damp wood and the second pale and distant, smelling of ancient wood, perhaps the manor house itself. Further exploration leads to the discovery that one of Master Kent’s hay lofts and barn is aflame.
      To Walter Thirsk, our narrator, it is obvious from the reaction of a few of the simple-minded buffoons that the incestuous relationship from the two or three families that made up the small village of sixty or so souls have spawned with the event of second or third cousins marrying, that the consumption of magic caps, the hallucinatory mushrooms growing in the nearby fields helped bring on the accidental fire they now had to extinguish.
      Master Kent, a recent widower was never one for strong disciplinary action but this did not prevent the village turning his eye to the secondary fire set my newcomers attempting to lay claim to a spot of land. A fire gave them tribal rights but whether they stayed after being shunned or worse by the families who had been there for generations would be another story. As so it was that the newcomers took the blame for the fire and found themselves in the pillory. Little did the villagers know but newcomers to their little place on earth would be their downfall, as it would be not just these trouble makers but the limping figure of the map maker sent by distant relatives, by marriage, to Master Kent to lay claim to the lands and to bring sheep to graze, extinguishing the crops and forests and laying off the workers.
      Thirsk, himself a stranger to the group, albeit years before when he had married into their clan, finds himself on the outs with the villagers once again; after all he too was a widower now and he had a prior working relationship with Master Kent. When the new landowner arrives, Master Kent’s horse is brutally killed; rumors of sorcery and witches circulate and when one of the strangers, imprisoned in the pillory, dies a witch-hunt tears close knit families apart as accusation after accusation destroys what scores of years have built up.
      Crace builds the suspense, clearly and precisely, drawing the reader in to an astonishing closing. The biggest chill that runs up your spine however is the thrill of reading such fine prose, the lyrical stylistics of a master writer, a modern day scribe, in the mold of his contemporaries Luis Alberto Urrea and Chris Albani all of whom are read first for the language and secondly for the stories that pour forth from their quills.
    • 4/5
      as common with JIm Crace, fascinating glimpse into a historical time rarely visited, this time a mid-evil village transiting from agriculture to sheep raising and the change in ownership and power in the village. I did not think the characters were as well developed as some of his other novels. Still would recommend. always fascinating author.
    • 4/5
      Harvest - Jim Crace ****What is it about?A bit of a strange book this. We follow the life of a village over seven days as it begins the difficult transition period from crop growing to sheep farming. The story is relayed through the eyes of a villager (Walter Thirsk) who became part of the community some twelve years previous, yet despite this is still seen by many as an 'outsider'. One day 3 new travellers show up on the land boundary with a view to joining the villagers, unfortunately this coincides with a fire that breaks out. What unfolds over the next few hundred pages is a lesson in humanity and the human condition, with characteristics that seemingly have remained unaltered throughout the generations. We encounter bravery, cowardice, superstition and bullying. We see the best in man and the worst, in Harvest, Crace has created a soap opera for the middle ages. Times are changing, the old ways of life are being pushed to one side and new farming methods are being introduced, uncertainty is rife and when the landowners cousin makes an appearance no ones future is safe.What did I like?For a start the novel seems incredibly well researched, it has numerous facts and details that a reader with even a slight interest in history will be enthralled by. Crace has created a realistic world where many things that we take for granted today are just simply unobtainable to the villagers. For instance I had never really thought about how people of old perceived the way the presented themselves, with mirrors a rarity and only a fleeting glimpse of a reflection in a dirty puddle did they wonder how they had aged or how they looked to their loved ones? This is a time when even a small injury could become life threatening or make a man unable to complete his daily chores, and no detail is omitted. It's a time when a bad winter or a poor spring could spell starvation for villagers reliant on natures bounty and by using Thirsk as his vessel we feel each smart and indignation as they are delivered. The author writes prose that is almost poetry, and it reminded me more than a little of Cormac McCarthy (with punctuation), the landscape descriptions are vividly painted and the daily activities are given in minute detail.What didn't I like?I love many different kinds of books, from Stephen King to Charles Dickens, I am willing to try almost any genre, but there has to be a storyline to keep me fully hooked. And this is where Harvest lost a star for me. At times I felt the storyline became impacted by the vast amount of descriptive writing. The indecisiveness of the narrator dragged a little too much and I just kept thinking at times 'Please do something... anything'. This may sound a little harsh and I have to admit I still loved Harvest, but it kept a very good book from turning into an exceptional book.Would I recommend?Definitely. This is the first time I have encountered the author, and I believe he has said he will not be writing any further novels, but I will be checking out his back catalogue.
    • 3/5
      A well written story of a medieval village about to lose its very existence to changing economic circumstances and the laws of inheritance. The writer does an excellent job of portraying the time and place of the novel. Unfortunately, none of the characters grabbed me...I found it hard to identify with any of them, even when they had to make moral choices with universal themes: compassion, protecting one's own, loyatly.
    • 5/5
      An excellent and involving tale of a week in a medieval village just at the point in English history when sheep and the wool trade were to change the face of rural England and the way of life for tenant farmers forever. The story is narrated through Walter Thirsk, an outsider to the village despite having lived there for many years. Multi layered and absorbing read.
    • 3/5
      I quite enjoyed this one. I can't fault the writing style, or the storytelling, but all the way through, I felt as though I was waiting for something to happen, but it never did. An interesting insight into the land laws and ownership at the time. A depressing insight into human character.
    • 4/5
      In Harvest, in a Medieval village too small to name, the villagers bring in their crops, unaware that this will be their last harvest. Soon they learn that enclosure is on its way. The change coincides with the arrival of strangers. Remote from law, without even a church, as the unease of the villagers grows, the strangers are easy scapegoats. Walter Thirsk, the narrator, is not an outsider but nor does he quite belong. He is connected to the village only by marriage. He is a former servant, and still a confidant, of the master. He does not join in the maltreatment of the outsiders, but nor does he intervene, conscious of his own uneasy position. As events escalate, the consequences of change are felt by everyone. The tension builds. No one is safe. Walter will have to make a moral choice – to act or to stand by.Then, inexplicably, about a third from the end, the plot turns and the author allows much of the tension to dissipate, so that when Walter does finally choose, the consequences are not so great either way. Historical fiction is generally about the monarchy, the aristocracy, those who have power and wealth. In Harvest, Crace brings to life the invisible people who make their lives possible, and suffer the consequences of their actions. His trademark stylish prose is much in evidence (though the sing-song rhythm can grate a little at times). He vividly evokes the shifting power and loyalties in a small, closed community, the daily hardship and occasional joy of subsistence agriculture.It’s almost a great book. It’s just a shame that the story fizzled out towards the end.
    • 4/5
      Fitting that I finished this 2013 Booker-shortlisted novel the day the 2014 longlist was announced. Harvest is a fairly short and simple novel set in a rustic village in an unnamed part of England at some point in, probably, the 17th century – the time period also goes unmentioned, but several characters are still using longbows although the medieval age seems to be over, or at least passing. The peace of the village is interrupted by the smoke signals of newcomers camped at the edge of their land, and the escalating series of conflict and violence is only the harbinger of a much more devastating change which is about to be wrought on their land.Crace has a decent writing style and a particularly good voice in this book; the narrator, Walter Thirsk, speaks not exactly in an historic cadence but not in a modern one either. The concept at the core of the novel – the earth, the harvest, the back-breaking yet honest world of agricultural labour – is tonally pitch perfect. You can smell the soil and feel the dirt on your hands. It’s a shame, then, that this solid writing supports an indifferent plot; a symbolic artifice which comes to a predictable conclusion.I have no doubt that Harvest is an objectively good book, but it certainly didn’t reach the wonderful level I expect from a Booker-standard novel. (And maybe it’s my expectations that are at fault, because, really, very few short-listed novels or even winners reach the same heights as, say, Life of Pi or Disgrace.) Harvest didn’t exactly leave me cold, but neither did it warm me up.
    • 4/5
      This book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize this year and I can see why. It is set in a farming village in an unspecified time period, but seemed to be 1800s or before based on the technology they used. It's a first person narrative by one of the workers who arrived a couple of decades ago with the current owner. He is still viewed in many ways as a outsider and this "otherness" is a theme in the book as 3 strangers arrive in the community at the opening of the novel. The novel also explores the deterioration of this community as a new owner arrives and takes over the farm, basically destroying the community and their way of life in one short week.I thought the themes and writing in this book were very interesting and well done, however I thought the last quarter of the book kind of lost its way. I would have preferred a little more tying up of loose ends. I also felt that, though the theme of destruction may have been the reason for this, the absolute chaos at the end was a little too implausible for me.Overall, an interesting book and well worth the time to read it.
    • 2/5
      Got about half-way through and gave up. I could see it was well written but my god! the style was totally monotone. The central character was flat, everyone else was barely sketched, and the story (such as it was) was desperately dull.
    • 5/5
      Not normally a fan (at all) of historical novels, but this one had me hooked. Great writing.