At Hawthorn Time - Softcover

The most powerful and original debut novel I've read in years' A. N. Wilson 'Instantly beautiful in its calm and wise tone * Robert Macfarlane * Among the 2013 debuts, I was taken with Melissa Harrison's Clay. Most reviewers seem to have mistaken it for realism, whereas Harrison, a nature writer if ever there was one, is reaching after something else - a communal style (reminiscent of that of Nan Shepherd a century ago) with a formal determination to meet shared needs. It's beautifully written * Ali Smith, New Statesman Books of the Year *

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2015 Four-thirty on a May morning: the black fading to blue, dawn gathering somewhere behind the treeline in the East. A long, straight road runs between sleeping fields to the little village of Lodeshill, and on it two cars lie wrecked and ravished, violence gathered about them in the silent air. One wheel, upturned, still spins. Howard and Kitty have recently moved to Lodeshill after a life spent in London; now, their marriage is wordlessly falling apart. Custom car enthusiast Jamie has lived in the village for all nineteen years of his life and dreams of leaving it behind, while Jack, a vagrant farm-worker and mystic in flight from a bail hostel, arrives in the village on foot one spring morning, bringing change. All four of them are struggling to find a life in the modern countryside; all are trying to find ways to belong. Building to an extraordinary climax over the course of one spring month, At Hawthorn Time is both a clear-eyed picture of rural Britain, and a heartbreaking exploration of love, land and loss.