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    Harvest
    Harvest
    Harvest
    Audiobook8 hours

    Harvest

    Written by Jim Crace

    Narrated by John Keating

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A remote English village wakes on the morning after harvest, looking forward to enjoying a hard-earned day of rest and feasting. But two mysterious columns of smoke mar the sky, raising alarm and suspicion. The first column of smoke comes from the edge of the village land, sent as a signal by newcomers to announce their presence as per regional custom. The second smoke column is even more troubling: it comes from a blaze set in Master Kent's stables. Walter Thirsk, a relative outsider in the village, casts his eye on three local boys and blames their careless tomfoolery. The rest of the villagers, though, close ranks against the strangers rather than accuse one of their own. Two men and a woman are apprehended; their heads are shaved to mark their criminality; and the men are thrown into the stocks for a week. Justice has been served. Or has it? Meanwhile, another newcomer has been spotted in the village sporting the finer clothes and fashionable beard of a townsman. Mr. Quill, as the villagers name him, observes them closely and takes careful notes about their land, apparently at Master Kent's behest. It is his presence more than any other that will threaten the village's entire way of life. In effortless, expertly crafted prose, Jim Crace details the unraveling of bucolic life in the face of economic progress. His tale is timeless and unsettling, evoking a richly textured world you will remember long after you finish reading.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 26, 2013
    ISBN9781470347345
    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

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    • 4/5
      Great until…Set in the middle ages in an unnamed town, this story is really about man’s relationship with nature, man’s fear of anything outside the “normal” and man’s ability to totally screw up a good thing. The small village relies totally on farming of grain for substance. When nature cooperates, the harvest is plentiful, but nature doesn’t always cooperate. When newcomers arrive the same day as a mysterious fire, surely there is a connection. Things aren’t going well so it’s time for everyone to look for the reason. Pity the poor person who is the outsider, the one that doesn’t fit the normal picture. The writing in this novel is beautiful in creating an idyllic setting, but thanks to pride, greed, and fear, it becomes a burned ruin. As a reader of historical fiction, I found the story to be pure delight almost until the end when the author seems to switch focus from the events of the plot into some kind of psychological study of the narrator as he attempts to deal with those events through fermented barley and mushrooms (if alcohol doesn’t work, try drugs).
    • 3/5
      Had a very hard time rating this book. The writing is outstanding, time and place one can imagine what living here is like. and an unreliable narrator. The tone is foreboding, a little like children of the corn, but much better prose. My problem is partly the pacing, which moves so slowly, also one can only read so much about grain harvest, chaff and pigs also I am not sure I liked the ending. Anyway very atmospheric, story is good once it gets going and I loved the prose.
    • 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.
    • 4/5
      I was reluctant to pick this up but I found it a very enjoyable read. He captures the clannishness of a medieval village very well, especially a village far removed from the nearest authorities, besides the Lord of the Manor. I will definitely look for more of his books.
    • 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.
    • 4/5
      Just because a novel has been short listed for the Man-Booker prize is not enough to recommend it to everybody: British author Jim Crace is a regular on the Booker and Whitbread listings and small wonder - his writing has an across-the-board appeal because he’s just so good. Harvest is set in pre-industrial England, some undetermined time in the past, in a village so small it does not have a name – or even a church. Most of the inhabitants have been there since Adam, and view strangers with unfriendly suspicion: however they have accepted the lord of the manor Charles Kent, and his man Walter Thirsk, newcomers who married into the community. Walter Thirsk, a lettered man who left Kent’s employment when he married to work the land, is the narrator: like his former master, he is in the village but not of the village, and has a less partisan view of the world than his rural neighbours. The story starts at Harvest time, when glorious summer is drawing to an end and winter beckons with cold inevitability: although the villagers don’t yet know it, their agrarian way of life is also ending because a new master wants ‘sheaf to give way to sheep’, a far less labour-intensive and potentially more profitable [for him] way of farming. Walter rediscovers his appreciation for the pastoral beauty around him when he accompanies a chart-maker, employed to map the land for enclosures, around areas he has taken for granted. Turd and Turf, as the villagers call the wetland which they use as a latrine and a dump for dead bodies, smells foul but is full of flowers; the grizzled old oaks, the dry stone walls and the fragrant apple trees – all entrance him anew as he sees them through the urban eyes of the cartographer. Harvest is no rural idyll however; Thirsk may love the way of life but is only too aware of the hardships and uncertainty which accompany dependence on the soil and the seasons. Within a week though, change has engulfed the village completely, overturning a way of life that had continued for centuries, and causing all the old families to flee until Walter alone is left. The writing is bathed in the golden light and long shadows of a dying year, beautiful but melancholy: Walter Thirsk is pragmatic and far more emotionally restrained than those around him, but the story is none the less poignant for that, and his loneliness is palpable as he reflects on the losses of the past and the uncertainties of the future.
    • 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
      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.
    • 4/5
      The quiet existence of a rural English town at harvest time is shattered by the arrival of three--no, four--outsiders. Walter Thirsk, once an outsider himself but now, at least to some degree, a man of the town, observes these arrivals with trepidation, a feeling which turns out to be entirely justified. While a bit ponderous in places, this is an extremely well written book, with spare language (mostly) matching well the rural and isolated community it portrays. It reminded me, in certain ways, of Year of Wonders. A powerful tale set in what feels like a time far removed from our own, but which uncannily resembles contemporary events and attitudes.
    • 5/5
      I loved this novel but, as is so often the case, it lost half a star in the last quarter or so. It must be as difficult as they say it is to end a novel as well as one starts it. The first person narrator of Harvest, Walter Thirsk ("Water! Thirst!"), tells the story of a tiny early 18th century (?) village displaced by the heir who is second cousin (by marriage) to the longstanding master. An indictment of capitalist progress at the expense of humanitarian community values, it is also an exploration of belonging and displacement, guilt and redemption. The prose is beautiful. The narrator's voice is exquisite although I agree with another reviewer who commented upon Walter's flat emotion. This didn't bother me, as it felt congruent with the stoic cultural expectations of the place and time (I mean, an agrarian village in Olde England -- what emotion would we expect to hear expressed?). At one point, about halfway through, I did wish I had an e-reader so that I could do a count of the number of times the word "gleaning" had been used. The answer is: a lot. And, while I have too much respect for Jim Crace to believe this was anything but conscious, it was also distracting. From Merriam-Webster.com: '''''Full Definition of GLEANintransitive verb1: to gather grain or other produce left by reapers2: to gather information or material bit by bittransitive verb1a : to pick up after a reaperb : to strip (as a field) of the leavings of reapers2a : to gather (as information) bit by bitb : to pick over in search of relevant material''''' Okay, I get it as it relates to this novel, and "to pick up after a reaper", well, the man with the scythe may be either grim or otherwise. In Walter's case, he is both. This novel is a pleasure to read despite a somewhat odd plot and almost-magical digressions that don't quite work.
    • 5/5
      .... rain or shine, the earth abides, the land endures, the soil will persevere for ever and a day.That quote from Jim Crace's latest book Harvest might lull you into thinking this novel is a homage to the timeless quality of the countryside. It isn't any more than it is a sentimentalised evocation of England's green and pleasant land or even a tribute to the symbiotic relationship between the land and the generations of dwellers for whom the land has provided a means of existence.Instead it's a deeply thoughtful story that examines the human consequences of a rupture in a traditional way of life resulting from a pursuit of "Profit, Progress, Enterprise".The setting is a small rural English community known simply as The Village where life follows the ceaseless cycle of sowing,planting and harvesting required to eke out even the barest of subsistence living. The Village exists in a bubble where the regular routine is seldom troubled by anything beyond the ancient oaks and dry stone walls that mark the reaches of the settlement.Even if the inhabitants are not fully aware of it, this is a way of life that is threatened. As the novel opens, smoke wisps are still rising from the ruins of a stable at the local manor house, – the result, the villagers believe, of an arson attack. Barely have they recovered from that shock when there is a further signal of a disturbing nature. New comers have arrived, taking advantage of a law that gives them the right to settle within the village's boundaries as long as they can put up a rudimentary shelter and send up smoke before they are caught. The events become conflated in the minds of the villagers fearful that the year's disastrous harvest will have to stretch even further.What the villagers do not know is that there is an more profound change on the horizon. The manor lord Master Kent has always taken a paternalistic attitude towards his tenant but now his claim to the estate has been revoked. The new lord intends to enclose all the fields, turning them from crop growing to the more profitable venture of sheep grazing. The villagers who have tended these fields for generations will be forced out when the land they farm in common is enclosed for sheep. When he arrives to take stock of his new estate complete with his entourage of strong- arm men, aggression, violence and death soon ensue.Our guide to these events is one Walter Thirsk, an old boyhood friend and former servant of Master Kent. Although he's lived in the village for a dozen years or so after marrying one of the villagers, they still view him as an outsider. Walter has a deep and abiding affection for the fields and oaks around him, viewing them as a form of Eden. But he has no illusions about the way nature can be inflexible and stern, presenting hardships for those who make their living from the land. He is a realist who knows that the world around him is changing and that it will be to the detriment of his community. For all the new master's talk of a new order "to all our advantages" and the prospect of a life without hard work and where uncertain grain harvests will be swapped for the predictability of sheep farming, The effects of enclosure for him will be "to throw a halter around our neck."Walter sees the economic and human consequences of enclosure. But he also sees it as a rupture of man's connection to his past.We're used to looking out and seeing what's preceded us, and what will also outlive us. ... Those woods that linked us to eternity will be removed... That grizzled oak which we believe is so old it must have come from Eden to our fields will be felled and routed out. That drystone wall put up before our grandpa's time .... will be brought down entirely ....until there is no trace of it. We'll look across these fields and say, 'This land is so much younger than ourselves."Crace relates this story in language that at times borders on poetry. There is a close attention to detail - we get many names of hedgerow plants for example which might enable some experts to actually pinpoint the location or even the era. And some wonderfully evocative phrases such as the Turd and Turf, an area which does double duty as both latrine and burial ground. Crace has a real feel for the landscape - its shape, its sounds and its smells - but even more powerfully rendered his is appreciation for man's relation to the land.My VerdictA superb novel, one of the best I've read all year. Immediately on finishing it, I wanted to start it all over again which makes it very disappointing it didn't get to be the winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize.
    • 5/5
      The essential handbook for change managers. Devastating and heartbreaking.
    • 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.
    • 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).
    • 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.
    • 4/5
      "I think I'm thrilled in some strange way. The plowing's done. The seed is spread. Then weather is reminding me that, rain or shine, the earth abides, the land endures, the soil will persevere forever and a day. Its smell is pungent and high-seasoned. This is happiness." (176)The inhabitants of a remote English village awaken the day after harvest in anticipation of a well-earned day of rest and a day of feasting at the table of landowner, Charles Kent. As is custom, the village will choose its young Gleaning Queen this day; and music and dancing will round out the day’s festive enjoyment. But the celebration is marred by a fire in one of the Master’s outbuildings and by the arrival of unwelcome newcomers, with whom several of the village men will have an unpleasant confrontation. Too, another newcomer, a chart-maker, has recently appeared in the village – drawing detailed maps and charts of the Kent lands. This Mr. Quill, as the villagers name him, is employed by he who will be their new Master. Edmund Jordan has plans for “Progress and Prosperity” (75) which will threaten the tranquil life of residents and cause their pastoral idyll to be sacrificed for economic progress. William Thirsk, a childhood friend and serving man of Charles Kent, come village labourer, is the perfect unreliable narrator. Crace, more of whose work I will explore, writes in lovely, evocative prose. His celebration of the pastoral and the agrarian is reminiscent of Thomas Hardy, another favourite of mine. Harvest is well-deserving of its 2013 Booker nomination. Highly recommended."But first – to earn my bread and ale, it seems – they ask for my account of what happened in the village yesterday. Has anyone remained, they want to know. Did anybody speak of their return? And when my answer to both questions is no, Master Jordan claps his hands, his signature for being pleased, and laughs out loud." (139)
    • 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
      I did not think I would make it through Harvest . I really struggled with the opening of the book; the language, the narrator, the setting - they all put me off. And now, over a month later, I cannot figure out why I struggled so much. I loved the concept of the book, had heard glowing reviews, and was duly primed for an awesome reading experience and I just really, really struggled.Read the rest of this review at The Lost Entwife on Jan. 25, 2014.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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
      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
      Hauntingly beautiful book about economic and social change; the uses and abuses of power; and the importance and function of community. Crace uses rather sparse language to create a vivid and memorable sense of place. He also does a fabulous job of showing how humans have been motivated by the same forces throughout history.
    • 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
      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
      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.
    • 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.
    • 5/5
      Not normally a fan (at all) of historical novels, but this one had me hooked. Great writing.
    • 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.