All Among the Barley

Product Information

Workers rights, women’s rights, political tensions, anti-semitism, historical customs and traditions as well as the introduction of modern working practices and mechanisation are all introduced and thread into the story. 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.

There is a lyricism in Harrison’s descriptions of the environment which manages to be both detailed and evocative. There’s all that laundry every Monday, and the chickens to care for as well as all the work to help bring in the harvest.

It was certainly evocative of the time that our land was still an agricultural land for the most part but also showed that change was very much in the air and the harshness of war already casting a sadness on the population. 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. The farm is still largely run by horse power, and the book vividly describes both what has since been lost in the English landscape (for example Edith adopts an orphaned landrail or corncrake - these birds were very common then but are now almost extinct here) and the hardships endured by those that worked in it. I felt as though she perceived me more clearly than my family did, for they all took me for granted, whereas she seemed curious about who I was and what I thought.

Conveying rural Suffolk between the wars requires more than endless lists of plant names and explanations of harvest techniques. The novel is narrated by Edie Mather, a fourteen-year-old girl who lives at Wych Farm with her parents, George and Ada Mather. It was a Waterstones Paperback of the Year and a Book of the Year in the Observer, the New Statesman and the Irish Times. But this country must be able to feed itself without relying on imports,’ Connie said, ‘and that means ensuring decent honest Englishman like you, George, can continue to farm. WWI and its aftermath, especially the Great Depression (which was preceded by a precipitous agricultural downturn in the 1920s), combined with agricultural modernization to threaten the rural folkways that made rural England special.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. In short, Miss FitzAllen harbours anti-Semitic views, beliefs that play a key role in the novel’s dramatic denouement.

Connie has an idealistic and patronising view of country people although she develops great affection, not only for Edie, but for her family and the wider community. The glory of the farm then, just before harvest: acres of gold like bullion, strewn with the sapphires of cornflowers and the garnets of corn poppies and watched over from on high by larks. The landrail becomes Edie’s pet whom she names Edmund, and given the number of farm cats, a constant source of worry.And yes, I can see how someone like Constance would make an lasting impression on a young girl, especially an adolescent like Edie. Though I was very moved by the working out of the story, I had some difficulties with both characterisation and plot. Williamson’s classic, Tarka the Otter, was described by Ted Hughes as “a holy book, a soul-book, written with the life blood of an unusual poet”, and there is in Harrison’s work a similar kind of poetry, an in-the-bone connection with the natural world that contrives to be both sparklingly precise and wildly exhilarating.