All Among the Barley

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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. 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.

It is this political shadow that darkens Harrison’s new novel, All Among the Barley, set in East Anglia in 1933. The story of the novel is one of coming-of-age in this transitional age, with side currents of misguided urban condescension, the rise of fascism, the breakdown of the international trade regime, and the slowly-effacing repression of women in social life. Then the sound of the cornfields would alter: dry, they would susurrate, whispering to Father and John that it was nearly time. With each step my unlaced boots sunk into the depthless mud beneath me and at last I flung out my arms for balance, water arcing from them, so that I wouldn’t fall. 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.There’s the depression after all, and he’s one of those typical men of his time who bottles up his feelings, resulting in sudden rages. The characters meanwhile have their own more immediate issues creating so much strain that things seem set to boil over. Melissa Harrison's knowledge of the old ways and traditional words had me reaching for the dictionary many times.

Harrison cleverly makes Connie attractive and only gradually allows the insinuating creep of her nasty ideologies to permeate the narrative. I loved the appearance of Edmund, the corncrake, a species which has been endangered due to the loss of habitat brought about by changes in farming methods. 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. I have been looking forward to reading this one since seeing the initial reviews last year, but for various reasons it has only just reached the top of the to read list.

The landrail becomes Edie’s pet whom she names Edmund, and given the number of farm cats, a constant source of worry. Her second novel, the Costa-shortlisted At Hawthorn Time, presented a determinedly modern portrait of rural life that, while full of wonder, could also be bleak and brutal. 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. All of these things appeared to be particularly daunting to Edie, as a teenager, facing a future which seemed quite bleak, even though she was told that she was bright and different and could take a different path to her mother. I recoiled from it at first and wished that it might have wrapped up differently or at least, at a more measured pace.