The Given World

by Melissa Harrison

'Wonderful ... an Under Milk Wood for the twenty-first century' AMY LIPTROT
'Reminds us with every luminous sentence about the fragile grace of ordinary lives' EVIE WYLD
'Extraordinary ...The best serious fiction I've read this year' FRANCIS SPUFFORD
'Attuned, loving and thoughtful ... I loved its warmth and intricacy' SARAH MOSS
'Nobody does nature better than Melissa Harrison' TRISTAN GOOLEY

A FINANCIAL TIMES AND OBSERVER BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2026

April brings spring surging with it, giving rise, among many in the village, to a comforting illusion that all is somehow still right with the world, and that nothing will ever change.

In the ancient Welm Valley, something is the river is behaving oddly, while the arrival of spring, with its familiar rhythms, is shadowed by an undercurrent of unease.

A woman falls while out walking and hopes to be found before nightfall; a doctor realises, too late, that he has long underestimated his wife; across the village, people are plagued by the same vast and unsettling dream. And alone in a converted priory, overlooking watermeadows unchanged for centuries, Clare Grey receives news which will force her to reconsider her family’s past and the fresh weight of her solitary existence.

Genres: Fiction

208 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication May 14, 2026

Reviews

[ada ☽ · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful novel that maps the intricate web of connections we are all a part of. Every glimpse into a new character‘s life was deeply personal yet enmeshed with the village‘s life at large. Even as the novel gives a voice to so many people, it decentralizes humans in a powerful way. The natural world as a home and as a voice of its own is the driving force behind the narrative, and the novel is slow yet strangely intense. By the end of it I felt myself as a piece of the whole, interconnected with everything around me, yet individual and important as such. An ode to the very essence of life.

Thank you to Random House UK and NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review!

[Ben Dutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Melissa Harrison has slowly been building up a body of work which luxuriates in the natural world, in descriptive fiction which lets you smell the soil, feel the river water flow, sense the dew in the air. Her latest novel, The Given World, tells the story of a community in the Welm Valley, through the voices of its residents. As usual her writing is beautiful, restraining and lyrical in its quality. She draws her characters expertly on the page, and as each chapter is from a different characters point of view, she has managed to do so multiple times over. By novels end I felt I knew this community as if it were my own.

I have long admired Harrison's writing and The Given World cements that love even more. This is a grand, beautiful novel, and one worth spending some time with.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

[Alex Sarll]

It's fascinating, if frustrating, to watch environmental collapse reach the point where even litfic starts paying attention. To be fair, Melissa Harrison doesn't come across here as one of those clowns writing op-eds asking where all the climate fiction the century needs is, while standing with their backs to a huge wall of science fiction and fantasy addressing exactly that. When she conjures the old, weird Albion, the three-quarters forgotten little local gods, the disruptions to the immemorial cycles of local wildlife that pass unnoticed, the weather patterns that grow a little more oppressive each year than the last, she does so beautifully, though of course it's the sort of beautiful that comes with unease at its back. But to populate a novel she needs people too, and while some of the inhabitants of Lower Eodham feel alive on the page, others come across as more researched than inhabited, just a little too much telling detail given about the specifics of their weekly shop or their secret vaporwave career, like when a lie reveals itself through an excess of supporting information. Though it's not that they even ring false, as such; I'm sure there are plenty of people exactly as obvious and unappealing as, say, Hugh, supercilious former GP and the closest thing to an outright baddie here. But I've minimal interest in seeing the bastards on the page when I already have to deal with them in real life. It's not even that he's a pantomime villain, that would be too colourful; he's the villain from a well-reviewed play, possibly at the Royal Court, whose existence everyone will have forgotten in a decade. With other characters, the alloy is harder to assess; some will flick back and forth from compelling to insubstantial several times within the space of their chapter, or even a single paragraph. On the other hand, maybe I'm just defensive about my own obsolescence when faced with a book which has someone getting into Campion and Sapphire And Steel by way of tapes that belonged to their late gran. Gran! And if Harrison's attempts to write her way into others' heads sometimes carry the airlessness of the creative writing class, once she gets back to the big stuff – dogs, dying, the way the consolation of knowing the world will carry on just fine without us is being stripped away – she writes true.

(Netgalley ARC)

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in the fictional English village of Lower Eodham, ‘The Given World’ by Melissa Harrison is a clear-sighted look at what is happening in the countryside now. Alongside farm shops, thatched cottages, gardens worthy of glossy magazine spreads and charming folklore, all of which are rightly celebrated, the author also explores the harsh reality of rural living. It’s not quite as grim as Show of Hands' ‘Country Life’ lyrics (worth a listen in any event), but the reader is left in no doubt that it’s a mind-numbing existence for the young, a physically exhausting one for their parents, and an asset stripping bonanza for the unscrupulous.

The road-kill badger at the beginning of the novel is little more than carcass by the end, going the way of all flesh. And it’s not just the badger that disintegrates. The unseasonal weather affects all manner of flora and faun. The farmers notice that the crops are failing; and the gardeners can see that plants aren’t thriving. At the end of the novel, the rising river has biblical overtones – what will it take to make us treat the natural world with respect?

Nonetheless, whilst there is plenty of death in life, Harrison also reminds us that the natural world gives us so much through her sensitive, nuanced depictions. As one of the villagers muses, ‘…you never know just what you’re going to see, you can’t order it all up like pressing buttons on the remote control to change the television channel, you just have to keep your eyes and ears open and, more than that, your heart and sometimes the world just reveals itself to you, and oh! when it chooses to it’s wonderful…’. Hand in hand with a spiritual understanding is the recognition that we have the capacity to be kind and generous towards each other. But is this enough? The final scene Harrison paints is very powerful and the outcome suitably unknowable.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.

[Wendy Greenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Melissa Harrison is expert at capturing big events by placing them within small stories/settings. I adore how her vocabulary choice affects how the reader (or this reader) imagines a character or that particular moment.

I stuttered at the beginning of this novel as I met the first of our cast of characters, only to then realise that I was not being returned to their perspective again. The timeline is linear (with "the past" implicit in each point of view) but is like a relay as the village of Lower Eodham comes to life through its residents. Some fully formed, others not so much, rather as anyone would encounter new neighbours and their lives and connections.

The changing natural world is at the heart of the story despite not having its own voice yet it is there as a menacing yet ephemeral stage backdrop. The further I read, the more I enjoyed the construction and scope of the story capturing far more than the six months of spring to autumn. I am so enjoying seeing the development of Harrison's work.

With many thanks to #NetGalley and #RandomHouseUK for the opportunity to read and review

[Katy Wheatley · Rating 5 out of 5]

In an ancient village we meet a modern cast of characters, each of whom is gifted a chapter in this book. Their thoughts and feelings are threaded with the narrative of the natural world around them as nature, like the people of this place, struggles to survive the rigours of the twenty-first century. Harrison is gifted in the way she describes nature and its attempts to reinstate the rhythms of the year against modern agribusinesses and developers. The dis-ease which becomes apparent in the fields and hedgerows also begins to gather pace in the minds of the characters as they deal with love and loss. This is a beautifully crafted book which talks about disaster while it dreams of hope.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A state of the nation novel but with the focus on the countryside.

Each chapter draws you into the life of a different person in and around a small village but each fragment combines to create a vivid picture of this community.

The approach to focus on the minutia of daily life to lay clear the politics, relationships, generational and climate changes was a great choice and elevated the impact.

I don’t find many books with this ambiguous scope that will shun the city and instead explore land, farming, pubs and what it means to lack privacy in an offline world.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK for the arc.

[Stephen the Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

" Everyone's more separate these days. People don't believe they have the same responsibility to one another now, they don't see the web that runs between them."

The Given World is a truly beautiful and moving book but also a vital read in a rapidly changing world.

Melissa Harrison's knowledge and understanding of the natural world and the rural environment is powerful. At first glance this could be conceived as a novel about village life but this is much much more. Melissa Harrison has taken a microscopic view of rural living and also the seasonal beauty- the changing sensory delights in flora and fauna.

This is a story told over six months and each chapter is written from the perspective of a different resident; individuals whose families have lived in the area for generations; those who have been in the area since childhood when farming and building use changed; the young and older - each with a differing connection to the landscape and finally the new incomers- the weekenders/holiday home owners.

Each character has a different understanding /connection living in the Whelm Valley - for some every seasonal moment and adaptation has an impact of nostalgia or but also a deeper resonance and connection of living in a rural environment whilst for others the land is their lifeblood and living and for some the countryside community could be construed as being part of an idyll but without the deeper connection ( and for a few - its about power, land grabbing and greed).

The prose is exquisite - emotions are exposed and tenderly revealed. But is the inter-laying of describing the natural environment alongside the daily lives ( successes, failures, hopes and dreams) that makes this such a superb reading. It leaves you with questions about what will become of the countryside as the human condition continues to be ever more disconnected from what once was - for many- an integral and primal connection to the seasons and countryside and a deeply woven relationship.


Highly recommended - and deserving of plaudits and success in 2026

Thank you to Hutchinson Heinemann publishers and Netgalley for the advance copy