Edie Mather lives on her family's farm in the Suffolk countryside in the interwar period. This year's farming cycle is different - enter Connie, a stranger to the area who has come to document local customs. With Connie's arrival, other things begin to change - shifts in opinions and politics, Edie's journey towards adulthood and a power that Edie identifies as witchcraft.

A beautifully descriptive story, capturing the Suffolk countryside. I loved it as much for this - coming from Suffolk - as for the story. Very much recommended.

"The English are already far too much in love with the past..."

What an absolute privilege to have been allowed an Advance Reading Copy via NetGalley of this book from Bloomsbury Publishing, written by Melissa Harrison. How was this book NOT long-listed for the Man Booker? I love some of the other books on that list this year and All Among the Barley is the equal of those novels - it may well be my favourite novel of 2018. This book deserves accolades!

This novel starts out as a rich pastoral story from the point of view of a 14 year old girl (Edie) in 1930's England - giving the reader arguably a more approachable, modern and yet equally detailed version of rural life offered by novels such as George Eliot's Middlemarch. The reader can practically feel and hear the cornfields thrumming with life.

There is clearly so much research of the period underpinning this book and that is combined with the author's evident deep understanding of the land and nature, deftly woven into the pages here. That's not to say this is dull. We fully inhabit this world with Edie, her family and the neighbouring village folk and we readers care about those characters. There is also a sense of foreboding that builds throughout; we are told right at the start that Edie does not get to do some of the things she will set out to do. So we know the guillotine is going to drop at some point but we are not sure when (or precisely what) that will look like.

What starts as a pastoral novel then becomes something else: a political novel, focusing on the dangers of nationalism and nostalgia. Particularly interesting, given our current political climate.
That danger comes in the form here of Constance FitzAllen who befriends the young Edie and worms her way into the small farming community, ostensibly to write an article about rural life and preserving the "old ways", whilst also planting the seeds (pardon the pun) of political disquiet. What starts as a few comments regarding "living in harmony with the land" and tropes such as "England is the country, and the country is England", soon turn into anti-Semitic and anti-socialist commentary.

Harrison keeps us on our toes and takes us into new territory again - exploring issues regarding the mental health of one of the characters. That individual suffers a manic episode that is sensitively portrayed and from what I understand, accurate. That must have been a frightening period in which to suffer a mental health condition. At least today, though certainly not perfect, our understanding is greater, the stigma less and people are more encouraged to speak up about their feelings.

This book is beautifully and confidently written and I highly recommend it.

"The spring she is a young maid who does not know her mind,
The summer is a tyrant of a most ungracious kind,
But the autumn is an old friend that does the best he can
To reap the golden barley and cheer the heart of man.

All among the barley, oh who would not be blithe
When the free and happy barley is smiling on the scythe!

The wheat he’s like a rich man, all sleek and well-to-do;
The oats they are a pack of girls, all lithe and dancing too;
The rye is like a miser, he’s sulky, lean and small
But the free and golden barley is monarch of them all.

All among the barley, oh who would not be blithe
When the free and happy barley is smiling on the scythe."

collected by Alfred Williams from farm hand Henry Sirman of Stanton Harcourt, and printed in the 1923 book Folk-songs of the Upper Thames: with an essay on folk-song activity in the Upper Thames neighbourhood

Melissa Harrison's previous novel, At Hawthorn Time, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2015 and longlisted for the 2016 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. All Among the Barley was unfortunate to miss out on this year's Booker but I suspect could be a repeat contender for the other awards.

The novel is set in 1933-4 and narrated in the first person by Edith, looking back at the events of that time when she was a 14 year-old girl living on the family farm. Her self-introduction immediately alerts us that something very significant happened at the end of this period.

"My name is Edith June Mather and I was born not long after the end of the Great War. My father, George Mather, had sixty acres of arable land known as Wych Farm; it is somewhere not far from here, I believe. Before him my grandfather Albert farmed the same fields, and his father before him, who ploughed with a team of oxen and sowed by hand. I would like to think that my brother Frank, or perhaps one of his sons, has the living of it now; but a lifetime has passed since I was last on its acres, and because of everything that happened I have been prevented from finding out."

Edie is not a typical farming girl, something of a loner, a deep-thinker but also superstitious:

"I preferred the company of books to other children, and was frequently chided by my parents after leaving my tasks half-done, distracted by the richer, more vivid world within my head.
...
I would hear Mother calling me in exasperation, but it has always been my habit never to close a book unless I have reached a sentence of seven words exactly in case something dreadful should happen to the farm, or to my family; so I would delay, and often go home to a hiding, because we were expected to work in the fields when we weren’t at school and not to waste time reading books. "

When she finds a recently abandoned nest and, with the add of the farm hens, hatches an egg, she finds herself the unwitting foster-mother of a corncrake, although a joke of her mother's takes on more significance in Edith's mind than intended.

"‘Well,’ said Mother, sliding the ash pan out and standing up, ‘happen as you have
yourself a familiar, Edith June.’‘A familiar?’ She laughed.‘ A pet, at any rate.’"

The farm is near the village of Elmbourne set in a fictionalised part of Suffolk:

"Some say that ours is a flat county, but that isn’t quite true: it undulates gently, unlike the level landscape of the Fens, and dips to the winding course of the River Stound ; but the skies are huge, and the views, from any slight rise, go on for miles.The lanes are narrow, the fields small and deeply hedged , sometimes in double rows, tree-high: oak and ash, field maple, and dog-roses twining through. Because our part of the country was never reshaped as other places were, by prosperity or the railways or industry, a great many of its dwellings have survived to a great age. The farmhouses are often sway-backed, with deep thatch and crooked timber frames; the black barns are brick-footed, with tall gables and great doors. Our churches are of knapped flint gleaned from the fields, the land itself raised up in prayer; and everywhere the corn reaches right up to the village edges, as I have been told the vineyards do in France.
....
The village’s main thoroughfare, The Street, ran along the north side of the river, which was only a stream here really, and slow. There was a post office and general stores, our little schoolroom, a grocer, a butcher, two smithies – one with a crimson petrol pump outside – the wheelwright Connie had mentioned, who was also a cabinet-maker and undertaker, a draper, a sweet shop and the Bell & Hare; once there had been an inn called the Cock, too, but that was no more.We had nearly everything we needed, excepting a bank and a doctor, both of which could be found in Market Stoundham, where the cattle and grain markets were held. There was little need to travel any further, and most people didn’t; likewise, new people rarely moved to the district, and so our day-to-day world was composed almost entirely of people we knew."

But the village life is interrupted by the arrival of a visitor, a middle-aged woman from London, Constance FitzAllen ('Connie'), wearing men's clothing, who has come to record and preserve the rural ways:

"I’m making a study of country ways: folklore, cottage crafts, dialect words, recipes – that kind of thing.The War – well, that’s when everything began to change, don’t you agree? And it’s such a dreadful shame to see it all being forgotten. So I mean to preserve it – or some of it, at least – for future generations.We simply must celebrate places like this.’"

Topically, given the summer of 2018 when this book is published, 1933-4 were some of the driest years on record (indeed 1933 had the lowest rainfall in the UK in the 20th Century) - albeit this was more of a gradual than sudden drought, with consistent low rainfall over a prolonged period. The following passage also highlights Harrison's wonderful prose descriptions of the countryside and the way that she uses nature and the changing seasons to illustrate the passing of time in the book in a way reminiscent of my favourite book of 2017, Reservoir 13. All Among the Barley fully justifies the glowing praise from Jon McGregor and Robert Macfarlane.

"I was thirteen in 1933, the year our district began to endure its famous – or infamous – drought. It crept up on us: the hay came in well, and when the rick was thatched Father was pleased, because he knew it was dry and wouldn’t spoil; this meant that the horses would have enough fodder to last the winter , and he would not have to buy any in. But without any rain the field drains ran dry and by August even the horse-pond by the house had shrunk to a thick green scum.
...
In October, Wych Farm’s trees turned quickly and all at once, blazing into oranges and reds and burnished golds; with little wind to strip them the woods and spinneys lay on our land like treasure, the massy hedgerows filigreed with old-man’s-beard and enamelled with rosehips and black sloes. Along the winding course of the River Stound the alder carrs were studded with earthstars and chanterelles and dense with the rich, autumnal stink of rot; but crossing Long Piece towards The Lottens the sky opened into austere, equinoctial blue, where flocks of peewits wheeled and turned, flashing their broad wings black and white. At dawn, dew silvered the spiders’ silk strung between the grass blades in our pastures so that the horses left trails where they walked, like the wakes of slow vessels in still water. At last, wintering fieldfares and thrushes stripped the berries from the lanes, and at night the four tall elms for which the farm was named welcomed their cold-weather congregations of rooks. The dew dampened the stubble in the parched cornfields, drawing from it a mocking green aftermath."

Harrison manages to create a number of threads in the book, and possible triggers for whatever event Edith was referring to in the opening: the threat to the harvest and the suggestion that Edith's father may be in debt; family tensions between Edith's parents and also with the workers on the farm; the inappropriately sexual attention Edith experiences from an older boy; wider political developments and Edith's own, rather fevered, superstitions. But one particularly grabbed my attention as both fascinating and pertinent to the current time.

Connie's project starts to take on a slightly more political (and sinister) air than the bucolic project she initially suggested. The first hint is when she bites her tongue when describing her ideal:

"‘It must be run by farmers themselves, not by the – well, not by international financiers.’"

She claims inspiration from the editor of The Nation, the radical magazine that would eventually merge with the New Statesman:

"I met Henry Massingham too, once. Such a fine man. It was his articles on rural crafts and home cultivation that helped me to see what my life’s work should be."

But her real project seems to have a rather different inspiration as the left-leaning farm worker John identifies:

"We need a strong government to free us from our dependence on the international finance system – one which will act in the best interests of the British people, that will favour British manufacturing and farming, and ensure this never happens again . We need a British system of credit that benefits Britain alone, rather than lining the pockets of usurers and profiteers – and that means proper import quotas , and reform of our agricultural system.We must bring down national debt and return to full employment, of course; and we must look to the shires and their ancient traditions, not to the intellectual classes in the cities, for a new sense of national identity and pride. Places like here,’ she said, smiling at all of us and sitting back, her little speech over. ‘

Hear, hear,’ Father said.

‘A strong government, you say? I’ll wager I can guess who it is that you mean,’ said John.

‘The silly little fencing-master?’ she laughed.‘ Good Lord, no, you’re quite wrong on that account.’"

That last a reference to Oswald Mosley of course, a fencing champion in his youth. Connie wants to create something rather different to Mosley's League, an Order of English Yeomanry, a type of organisation that was common in the 1930s, as the author explains in an afterword:

"These complex, fragmented groups differed from one another, sometimes slightly, sometimes profoundly; but all drew 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."

A beautifully written tale of country life between the Wars, but with important political echoes for our own time. Recommended.