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All Among the Barley

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A masterful evocation of the rhythms of the natural world and pastoral life, All Among the Barley is also a powerful and timely novel about influence, the lessons of history and the dangers of nostalgia. Though they don’t appear to be affiliated with one of the big conglomerates and declare themselves to be an independent publisher, they *are* a big outfit with lots of trustees etc! For me this raised so many questions around our understanding of mental health issues at that time and the flaws (well documented and commented on) of 'care in the community' as a supportive route for anyone.

She undoubtedly sees rural Britain through rose-tinted spectacles and, as time goes on, we realise that there is a political edge to her which underpins that uncritical view. It is this political shadow that darkens Harrison’s new novel, All Among the Barley, set in East Anglia in 1933.As few of the characters are clearly drawn I struggled to become involved although a number of hints indicating dramatic change or that people were not as they seemed kept me reading. I read quite a lot of literature that was written in the 1930s and ’40s, and the period detail in this novel seems very authentic. All the same, it’s a submerged strand in this book which, in the foreground, is concerned with the coming-of-age of 14 year old Edie, our narrator, against a beautifully-described rural landscape. 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.

This is no sentimental idyll, as there are also sinister political undercurrents at play, and it is impossible not to see the parallels Harrison makes with the febrile atmosphere around Brexit and the populist right.We should have proper import controls to protect our native English formers – it’s the only way…’ (p.

For her, it is the present that matters and she chronicles it as Connie claims to seek to do, in all its tiny particulars. But in this idyllic setting there are darker dramas afoot, a hint that one war has past leaving its scars on people, while we are aware of another just around the corner. As the author explains in a closing historical note, a complex set of fragmented groups all drawing from “a murky broth of nationalism, anti-Semitism, nativism, protectionism, anti-immigration sentiment, economic autarky, secessionism, militarism, anti-Europeanism, rural revivalism, nature worship, organicism, landscape mysticism and distrust of big business – particularly international finance”.There is no reason, of course, why those who like the taste of Melissa’s “murky broth” (hopefully without the anti-Semitism) should necessarily graduate to the odious belief system which led to the Nazi Holocaust. However, the gradually revealed pressure combined with distrust of change, and the entry of worldly affairs gave an interesting viewpoint of the times. There are many areas of sadness in this book from the harsh words of Edie's father to the death of Edmund the corncrake but maybe the saddest of all was the incarceration of Edie into the mental institute, abandoned by her family. However, as the novel progresses we see that the wholesome vision that Connie presents to her readers does not reflect the real conditions experienced by the villagers and also how her writings and views could be used for more sinister purposes. Although I did not know her well yet, I felt more real, more interesting even, when I saw myself through Constance’s eyes.

I recoiled from it at first and wished that it might have wrapped up differently or at least, at a more measured pace. Both a commentary on our world and a reminder of where similar sentiments ended before – with fascism across Europe, WW2 and the Holocaust – this is a book which dramatizes both the insidious pull of repellent politics and the extent to which they depend on skewed storytelling and invented mythologies. Even the farmers amongst us did not warm to either the characters or the storyline - the characters being one dimensional and the storyline uninspiring. The angle which seems to have been given the greatest (and compared to its treatment in the book disproportionate) coverage in press reviews and interviews, is an examination of 1930s rural themed fascism (my term). Edie is a beguiling narrator, reminiscent of Cassandra Mortmain from I Capture the Castle, but not enough happens to her to keep the pace from stumbling.Melissa Harrison has built a world for us, and peopled it, making it solid and real, and all the time making one aware of an awesome fragility - of human minds and bodies, of farmers under politicians and under nature, of ideas that might transform lives or might destroy them.

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