Harvest by Jim Crace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Novels set in tiny rural villages are quiet, contemplative, maybe even gentle. Not this one. There’s a quietness and a contemplativeness, but there’s no gentleness; this is a violent, frustrating, challenging little novel.
Crace is an expert at setting a tone and a mood, almost immediately. We’re made intimate observers of the action, via his narrator, who himself is 12 years in the commonwealth but still not completely accepted by its people. In this way we’re explained what needs to be explained, but not over much so. Details like names and dates are left out, adding to the intimacy, making this less a chronicle and more a memory. All within a rich, almost-but-not-quite inscrutable vocabulary peculiar to the setting.
We’re tugged along by the narrator’s urges, in a place where humans are little better than animals. His libido colors some of his wonderings, leading him astray in though if not in deed. But there’s a poignancy there too, witnessing the kind of injustice that only humans can invent, and the fatal consequences of that invention.
Every year I try to read as many books from the Booker long list as possible, with mixed results. A few bad ones (in my opinion) a few good ones, a few great ones. Last year it was Hilary Mantel’s Bring up the Bodies; this year’s it’s Jim Crace’s Harvest. I’m looking forward to going back and reading his other award-winning writing.