A remote English village wakes on the morning after harvest, looking forward to enjoying a hard-earned day of rest and feasting. But two mysterious columns of smoke mar the sky, raising alarm and suspicion. The first column of smoke comes from the edge of the village land, sent as a signal by newcomers to announce their presence as per regional custom. The second smoke column is even more troubling: it comes from a blaze set in Master Kent's stables. Walter Thirsk, a relative outsider in the village, casts his eye on three local boys and blames their careless tomfoolery. The rest of the villagers, though, close ranks against the strangers rather than accuse one of their own. Two men and a woman are apprehended; their heads are shaved to mark their criminality; and the men are thrown into the stocks for a week. Justice has been served. Or has it? Meanwhile, another newcomer has been spotted in the village sporting the finer clothes and fashionable beard of a townsman. Mr. Quill, as the villagers name him, observes them closely and takes careful notes about their land, apparently at Master Kent's behest. It is his presence more than any other that will threaten the village's entire way of life. In effortless, expertly crafted prose, Jim Crace details the unraveling of bucolic life in the face of economic progress. His tale is timeless and unsettling, evoking a richly textured world you will remember long after you finish reading.
About the Author :
Jim Crace is the author of over ten novels. Being Dead was shortlisted for the 1999 Whitbread Fiction Prize and won the US National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2000. In 1997, Quarantine was named the Whitbread Novel of the Year and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Crace has also received the Whitbread First Novel Prize, the E. M. Forster Award, and the Guardian Fiction Prize. He lives in Birmingham, England.
John Keating is an actor, voice talent, and AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. His numerous acting credits include Roundabout Theatre's production of Juno and the Paycock and La Mama ETC's production of Cat and the Moon, as well as various parts with the Irish Repertory Theater and the Irish Arts Center. He can also be seen in the HBO miniseries John Adams, starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney.
Review :
"A haunting work of sudden violence and vengeance."
-- "Irish Times"
"Affecting tale of a bound world and its simple people as they head toward a tragic and inexorable breakdown."
-- "Wall Street Journal"
"Crace is fascinated by the moment when one era gives way to another. Here, it is the enclosure of the commons, a fulcrum of English history, that drives his story of dispossession and displacement. Set in a village without a name, the narrative dramatises what it's like to see the world you know come to an end, in a severance of the connection between people and land that has deep relevance for our time of climate crisis and forced migration."
-- "The Guardian (London)"
"Crace's real concern is his characters, the way that, like all of us, they make mistakes and act from weakness, and turn on one another when things go wrong."
-- "Los Angeles Times"
"Crace's signature measured delivery and deliberate focus create unforgettably poetic passages that quiver with beauty."
-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"
"In language beautiful and painstakingly precise, Jim Crace circumscribes the story as neatly as a fairy tale...Entirely absorbing."
-- "Minneapolis Star Tribune"
"Magnificently resurrecting a pivotal moment in our history about which it is deeply knowledgeable, this simultaneously elegiac and unillusioned novel is an achievement worthy to stand alongside those of Crace's great fictional influence, William Golding."
-- "Sunday Times (London)"
"Rarely does language so plainspoken and elemental tell a story so richly open to interpretation on so many different levels...With economy and grace, the award-winning Crace gives his work a simplicity and symmetry that belie the disturbances beneath the consciousness of its narrator."
-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"
"Ravishingly rich in evocations of country life...Crace's prose is so sensual you can't help but believe it describes an actual material place. But this village is like the forests of the Brothers Grimm, a setting meant to be both familiar and strange. If you think Crace is only talking about the shift from the medieval to the modern world, you'd be very, very wrong."
-- "Salon"
"Surreptitiously thought-provoking."
-- "Boston Globe"
