Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Six of the best books on rural life

Tim Pears's novels include In the Place of Fallen Leaves (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award), In a Land of Plenty (made into a ten-part BBC series), Landed (shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2012 and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2011, winner of the MJA Open Book Awards 2011) and the West Country Trilogy.

At the Guardian, Pears tagged six of the best books on rural life, including:
Melissa Harrison probes tensions between tradition and modernity. Her most recent novel, All Among the Barley (2018), appears to be a farming daughter’s straightforward coming-of-age story set in 30s Suffolk, yet is impossible to pin down. It’s about class, farming, folk culture, gender, politics and more, but resists glib interpretation and stays with the reader long after finishing it.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue