Finished Crace's
Harvest - brilliant. It has been described as
dense, resonant, mythic, allusive and yet also earthy, which captures the feel of the language nicely. So much going on here - Crace's rural landscape is lush yet dangerous - there's almost a whiff of
Wicker Man wafting about. The harvest is a bitter one and I'm reminded of William Blake's "worm in the bud". Crace also looks at what happens to the land and communities when the business of agriculture passes into the hands of town-based owners only interested in profit through mono-culture. We are, of course, reaping the whirlwind of that approach today as a result, in the form of climate change.
Puzzled by a comment somewhere that it's set around the 18th century enclosures. Crace gives no concrete indication of the period, but those of social standing in this novel wear doublets and high hats which sound like
copotains - I'd put it earlier, perhaps Tudor, when enclosures began to really bite into the ancient medieval way of rural life.