Two twists of smoke at a time of year too warm for cottage fires surprise us at first light, or they at least surprise those of us who've not been up to mischief in the dark. Our land is topped and tailed with flames. Beyond the frontier ditches of our fields and in the shelter of our woods, on common ground, where yesterday there wasn't anyone who could give rise to smoke, some newcomers, by the luster of an obliging reapers' moon, have put up their hut - four rough and ready walls, a bit of roof - and lit the more outlying of these fires. Their fire is damp. They will have thrown on wet greenery in order to procure the blackest plume, and thereby not be missed by us. It rises in a column that hardly bends or thins until it clears the canopies. It says, New neighbors have arrived; they've built a place; they've laid a hearth; they know the custom and the law. This first smoke has given them the right to stay. We'll see.
So begins Harvest and right from the start the language proves itself to be just odd enough to set the story in another place and time, not in a difficult way like trying to read Chaucer or Rabelais, but in a way that I found interesting and evocative -- several passages had me rereading to fully understand their meaning and several had me rereading just to enjoy their imagery. An example of such imagery:
I suppose their hats betray their standing. A workingman would never wear or even need to own a tall and heavy hat, or one with so deep a brim. Such hats belong to gentlemen who rarely need to bend their heads or swing a tool. A workingman could not afford to pass his day with so straight a back and so erect a head. It is as if these first two riders are suspended from their hats. All their wearers have to be is pendulous.
As a story, Harvest is a fascinating vignette of the life of a pre-Enclosure Acts English village and highlights the fact that although the hard-labouring villagers had lived in this spot for untold generations, their continuing presence relied on the goodwill of their master. It was mind-boggling to me that all of the villagers could dare to escape into unknown futures, destined to arrive somewhere unfamiliar and no better off than the squatters whom they had treated so horribly, and that they made this daunting decision before they even realised that their commons was to be turned into sheep pasture by the new master. The fragility of their existence, beyond the hard labour that they put into raising their food, was well captured.
But Harvest wasn't just about this story. The plot seemed subordinate to the words; with each sentence deliberately and brilliantly constructed, the book was more about the how than the what; which is why I can forgive plot points I didn't like. What was the point of accusing the women of witchcraft if Master Jordan never believed it and the case is dropped? As the final authority, he and his men didn't need an excuse to behave violently. Since I'm not likely to believe that the accusations were reflexive and lazy out of the mouths of the friends and family of the women, it feels reflexive and lazy from the pen of the author. Some passages I liked (even though on rereading them now, they may be less subtle, more heavy-handed and platitudinous, than I thought when I first encountered them):
Secrets are like pregnancies hereabouts. You can hide them for a while but then they will start screaming.
The mood has changed. It's heavier. We were liquid; now we're stones.
The dead leaves fly. They're cropped and gathered to the rich barn of the earth.
And it seems I ought to scatter too. Perhaps at once. It's always better to turn your back on the gale than press your face against it.
The real harvest in this book is of the Biblical as you sow so shall you reap variety: If the villagers had not been so suspicious of the squatters and protective of their own citizens, their lies of omission and half-truths would not have snowballed into the various, avoidable, tragedies. Harvest also served to highlight a truth of British society at the time: It was near impossible to move out of one's own position. Even after twelve years of working and living amongst the villagers, the city-born narrator was rejected as a foreigner when the troubles began. So too was Master Kent's position in peril as a landowner by marriage only -- the squatters with their plume of smoke ultimately had more rights than a man who had lived in and genially administrated the village for a dozen harvests.
This is the second of the 2013 Man Booker Shortlist nominees that I've read. Although they are both slim volumes, I'll put Harvest in the lead against The Testament of Mary and look forward to reading some of the weightier books on the list.
