The Given World

by Melissa Harrison

'A state-of-the-countryside novel ... rich in detail but vast in scope' FINANCIAL TIMES
'A stunning tale of rural life ... Harrison earns a nod to George Eliot' ALEXANDRA HARRIS, GUARDIAN
' Extraordinary ... Harrison is a nonpareil describer of the natural world' INDIA KNIGHT
'Wonderful ... an Under Milk Wood for the twenty-first century' AMY LIPTROT
'Extraordinary ... The best serious fiction I've read this year' FRANCIS SPUFFORD

A FINANCIAL TIMES AND OBSERVER BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2026
A TIMES BOOK OF THE SUMMER 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.

'Attuned, loving and thoughtful ... I loved its warmth and intricacy' SARAH MOSS
'Nobody does nature better than Melissa Harrison' TRISTAN GOOLEY
'Reminds us with every luminous sentence about the fragile grace of ordinary lives' EVIE WYLD

Genres: Fiction, Nature, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Novels

208 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 14, 2026

About the author

Melissa Harrison is the author of the novels Clay and At Hawthorn Time, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize, and one work of non-fiction, Rain, which was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize. She is a nature writer, critic and columnist for The Times, the Financial Times and the Guardian, among others. Her new novel All Among the Barley is due for publication in August, 2018..

Reviews

[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

[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!

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

She lets her mind float out to touch the village, both the old part on the hill, faint with ghosts, and the living part below, given life by its river and the river’s ancient powers until the river should decide to take them away. It is all connected: the little church, the priory, the lost lanes and old houses and farms; each thing is part of all the others, and all of it is connected to its past. And beyond the valley it surely unfolds eternally: England’s woods and fields, its inns and spires, its roads shining like rivers, winding away.

 
Melissa Harrison is a nature writer (a regular Nature Notebook in the Times plus – where I know her work here from – regular nature-based articles in the New Statesman and Guardian) podcaster, Substacker and even now manager of an App (all of them Nature themed). Her non-fiction nature books (including a seasonally based quartet and a guided journal, and some of which I bought in the past as Christmas gifts) have seen her three times on the list for the Wainwright Prize.
 
Her second novel “At Hawthorn Time” was shortlisted for the Costa Prize and longlisted Women’s Prize, and her third and previous novel (and the first I have read ) “All Among The Barley” (set in 1933 Suffolk and which explored among other ideas the rise of rural fascism) – was the UK winner for EU Prize for Literature 2019.  Shortly after writing that novel she left London to live in Suffolk from where she  developed her nature still further as set out above.
 
This is her fourth novel and while with a clear English countryside village setting – it is much more present day (if possibly a slightly distorted view of it), albeit with a sweep back across history and although unspecified I think not set in Suffolk.
 
Its fictional location is the village of Eodham, a epigraph setting out its Domesday book entry (although historical evidence points to settlement back to at least Roman times) and it is we learn on the first page of the Prologue set in a valley which is a “a green crease sunk into England since forever, a place as old as anywhere, water-formed and still shaped by the river with its springs and tributaries and long-forgotten wells, its ford where horses and wagons once splashed through the shallows and now locals know to take their cars the long way round, by the road bridge, when the water’s high. It is a place of wide, flat meadows, in summer sunlit and golden and now, in autumn, tussocky and wet. On a hill an old stone priory watches over the little village below, and can no longer atone for its sins.”.
 
But we also learn that very timelessness is at threat: “Behind the iron clouds wait the shifting auroras that have animated the skies for months now, something few of the valley’s human inhabitants have chosen to notice –  and even fewer have spoken about. Instead, in their huddled houses the villagers suffer nightly through vast, unsettled dreams full of arcane symbols. Perhaps the truth of the times in which they are living presses too closely to admit, except in sleep.”
 
The narrative then goes back six months and tells the story of the village and its inhabitants in a series of chapters named after the main character in each but which also tell us of the wider inhabitants of the village – their relationships, changes and secrets and so on – as well as of the natural world of the village and its own relationships, changes and secrets – and how both develop over changing months and seasons. 
 
I was reminded in the interplay and the separate complexity of country inhabitants and countryside of Jon McGregor’s brilliant “Reservoir 13” although that foregrounded annual repetition and rhythm over a 13 year period  whereas this is over less than a year and capture more of a sense of a point of inflexion.
 
Early on a character tells us “she’s long since given up trying to work out what happened when in the village’s history: as an outsider, you’d need to print out a timeline, and several family trees.“ – and I took this as permission to not obsess with drawing up and them mapping connections between a full character list, but some of the main characters include: Clare – who lives alone in the long since  converted priory and is now we quickly ascertain dying of cancer, her long estranged sister Rachek (they drifted apart after the death of their mother when Clare stayed behind to look after their domineering father) coming to nurse her and reopen long dormant memories in others, Clare in particular looking to make up for past wrongs their father did to two local smallholding farmer brothers;  Alan – the surviving brother – who now lives in a caravan while he rents the farm house for holiday lets; Connor – who having skipped Uni works as something of a casual labourer – and his farm labourer father Paul; Piers (and his son Josh) an ex TV mogul Lord who now owns and runs the largest and dominant local farm; Angela who with her husband Philip have moved into the Old School House where Angela has tried to design a country idyll to fill a hole in her life but are still seen as outsiders; the retired GP Hugh – something of a villain in the story, opportunistically cheating on his wife and on his neighbours lands; Faye a local candle maker, reiki healer and Tarot reader and (as the novel nears its end Death Doula); Roy a local builder; Dawn owner of an upmarket estate agent.
 
But as mentioned both the collective of the village and the countryside itself are also characters – and both appear to be suffering from change – the villagers in unsettling dreams, the countryside in an odd change – with river levels, crop ripening, flora and fauna growth and behaviour – all slightly at odds.
 

It also has some beautifully lyrically writing, for example: “the mad uprush of it, the dizzying verdant sappiness of this self-willed place which, left to enact its own multiple and tangled destinies that had absolutely nothing to do with people, and which was never cut or sprayed with any nasties because of its uncultivatable declivity” or the “unwitnessed” in “spring sun slants down in warm, unwitnessed diagonals between the smooth grey pillars of the trunks to the beech mast that makes up the wood’s floor”.
 
The author has said “I didn’t want to write climate fiction …… People already know the arguments; they’re already scared.  I don’t think writing a book that shows what could happen in the next 50 years is actually creating any kind of change, and it can risk being didactic. I’m more interested in bringing forward things that are in the background of people’s minds. One of the things art can do is to act like a kind of seismograph – it’s the pencil on the piece of paper that shows the movement of tectonic plates that everyone’s trying not to be aware of. The moment you’re trying to control the patterns, you’re no longer doing the job”
 
And I would say that she has written Climate Fiction, but just not in a near-future-dystopia way, but more in a current-day-uncovering and it is I think all the more unsettling and impactful for it. 
 
There is a kind of ancient practices theme beneath the village and not just in the person of Faye – the church (like many rural ones) has carvings which hark back to more ancient magical traditions, local folklore has it that the Cromwellian dissolution allegations of odd and non-Christian practices in the Priory where in this case not entirely unsubstantiated, odd finds turn up and so on and there is a sense overall of something of a change both gradual and epochal as some of the ancient natural forces underpinning the village are either preparing to make their departure or show their displeasure as what has happened to their ancient home.  Perhaps at times this is a little too pagan for my pleasure but its effectively done.
 
I would expect to see this novel on prize lists in the next year – such as the Ondaatje Prize and Climate Fiction Prize.
 
My thanks to Hutchinson Heinemann, Cornerstone for an ARC via NetGalley

[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.

[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

[Melissa Bell · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book drove me nuts. I could not keep track of who anyone was and how they were connected to each other or not connected and what their job was in this decaying village. And none of the stories of the people were very interesting. The only story I liked was Hilda's. It was hard to care about what was going to happen to everyone when I could not remember who anyone was from chapter to chapter.

[Jillann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each chapter is narrated by a different character in a village in a river valley in England. Beautiful descriptions of the natural world and and an ever-present eerie sense that our world is changing.

[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)

[Isabelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A work of pure magic, like modern folklore. She has such a lyrical, acute way of observing the world and character which is a joy to read. I love a book where nature itself is given the space and attention of an actual character. Wonderful.

[Lilly · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

nur dreieinhalb sterne weil tiktok vorkam

[Jamad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Melissa Harrison’s The Given World is one of those novels that feels less interested in plot than in atmosphere, community and the slow accumulation of lives lived in one place. Set over six months in the fictional Welm Valley, it follows a wide cast of villagers as strange disturbances ripple through both the natural world and their personal lives. Rivers behave oddly, people share unsettling dreams, old grievances surface and Clare Grey, living alone in a converted priory, is forced to confront both her family history and her own mortality.

This is a beautifully observed book. Harrison writes about the countryside with extraordinary precision and clearly knows every bird, hedgerow and field she describes. The changing seasons, the rhythms of farming and the quiet connections between neighbours are all rendered with great care. I particularly liked the way she gave space to people who rarely take centre stage in fiction: farmers, builders, postmen and older residents whose histories are bound up with the landscape around them.

At times, though, I found the novel a little too diffuse. The constant shifting between viewpoints created an impressive portrait of a community, but it also kept me at arm’s length from some of the characters. There is a lingering sense of ecological dread throughout, and while that unease is effective, the novel occasionally felt more concerned with its themes than with momentum. The atmosphere is rich, but the pacing can be very slow.

Still, there is much to admire here. Harrison captures a version of rural England that is neither nostalgic nor sentimental, and she writes thoughtfully about responsibility, belonging and the fragile relationship between people and the land they inhabit. An intelligent and deeply reflective novel, even if it never quite came together for me as fully as I hoped.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mich hat die wunderbare Beschreibung des Orts und der Landschaft um ihn herum gleich auf den ersten Seiten gefesselt. Aber hinter aller Schönheit verbirgt sich doch auch das wahre Leben mit allen Grautönen, man muss nur genauer hinsehen.

Wer Clare an diesem Tag sieht, sieht ihr nicht an, dass sich ihr Leben gerade für immer verändert hat. Auf die Menschen, denen sie begegnet, wirkt sie wie immer. Gerade das schätze ich an dem Roman: Melissa Harrison beschreibt ihre Charaktere zuerst so, wie sie von außen wahrgenommen werden und lässt dann den Blick tiefer gehen. Bei Clare erfahre ich, warum sie immer noch in dem Haus ihrer Kindheit lebt, obwohl nicht alle Erinnerungen glücklich sind. Fast beiläufig wird ihrer Schwester erwähnt und ich kann mir gut vorstellen, dass sie bis zu diesem Tag keinen großen Platz mehr in Clares Leben eingenommen hat. Die Jüngere hat das Dorf verlassen und ist ihren eigenen Weg gegangen, während die Ältere zurückgeblieben ist.

Die Geschichte wandert von einem Charakter zum nächsten. Alle Geschichten hängen zusammen, wie das in einem so kleinen Ort oft ist. Melissa Harrison verknüpft die einzelnen Handlungsstränge zu einem bunten Teppich. Fast unmerklich vergeht die Zeit im Roman. Das Leben der Menschen geht weiter und mancher findet sich an einem anderen Platz in seinem Leben wieder als zu Beginn der Geschichte. Andere haben das Dorf verlassen, ohne dass es den Bewohnern und auch mir als Leserin aufgefallen ist.

Melissa Harrison erzählt in ihrem Roman nicht nur schöne Dinge. Gerade bei Clare hatte ich den Eindruck, als ob sie die eine oder andere verpasste Gelegenheit bedauert. Aber gerade das macht den Roman für mich authentisch, denn so ist das Leben.

[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.

[Englyn · Rating 0.25 out of 5]

The "nature writing" this book is praised for is as incredibly inept as the remainder of the prose. And I mean remainder. The following examples are all from the prologue and first chapter, so within 27 pages of large print text.

"a robin tremulously releases a trickle of song" [/author has definitely never heard a robin aggressively declare their territory both day and night, 1]

"an olive-green chiffchaff clasps a twig with wirework legs and makes a small assay at song" [/makes a small test at song = assays a song, with no need for "makes" or "a small" unless you're padding a feeble wordcount with badly written description]

"The chiffchaff is still singing, closer now if not more strongly, and joining its repeated chime" [/"not more strongly" or not stronger]

Chiffchaff: "The distant notes stop and start in the churchyard, still a shadow of the strident song that will strengthen and then barely fall quiet until the summer's leaves, mostly still fisted in buds now, start to drop from the trees." [/"fisted in buds", lol]

"a robin sings hesitantly" [/author has definitely never heard a robin aggressively declare their territory both day and night, 2]

"the lovely note of a blackbird coming from further away" [/"lovely" in what way? + "coming from further away" or just "further away" for people not padding their word count with generic description]

Lastly, looking beyond the "nature writing" of birds for a moment, the first chapter ends with, "as she raises the sieve of her hands to her face." What? What the actual?!

[Rebecca Bridgeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐ Review – The Given World
The Given World is a fascinating and cleverly constructed novel that kept me engaged throughout. Each chapter introduces a different character from the same village, allowing the story to unfold through multiple perspectives. As their individual experiences and viewpoints gradually intertwine, a richer picture of the overall narrative emerges.
I particularly enjoyed how the author used these shifting perspectives to reveal new layers of the story. Seeing the same events through different eyes added depth and complexity, making the village and its residents feel authentic and interconnected. The structure could occasionally make it challenging to keep track of everyone, but the payoff is a rewarding and unique reading experience.
Overall, it's an inventive and thoughtfully written book with an engaging narrative style. While it didn't completely captivate me emotionally, I appreciated the skill involved in weaving so many voices together into one cohesive story.

[Carlton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great novel of rural England.
Beautiful writing and description of the natural English countryside, and it does feel specifically southern England:
The valley is a green crease sunk into England since forever, a place as old as anywhere, water-formed and still shaped by the river with its springs and tributaries and long-forgotten wells, its ford where horses and wagons once splashed through the shallows and now locals know to take their cars the long way around, by the road bridge, when the waters high.

I live in a similar rural part of southern England, and this novel connected deeply with my perception of a “spirit of place”. The book is necessarily a simplification and a bit “New Age”, but the evocative polyphony of voices wonderfully captures the multiplicity of experience. The short linking nature writing is beautiful and well judged to capture the passage of time.
Highly recommended.

[Ivan Monckton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The latest wonderful offering from a writer of fiction, non fiction and children’s books, all of which have nature playing a central role. This book is set in a fictional village, with each chapter covering one of the inhabitants, though of course they intermesh as the book goes on.
As I’ve said before, Harrison writes about the real countryside, with its real inhabitants, not some sanitised chocolate box nostalgia fest. The characters, almost without exception, are treated sympathetically despite their failings, and the book contains lessons in acceptance, especially for those of us that live and work in a rural setting.
Every one of her books has been reviewed 5 stars by me, and I wholeheartedly recommend all of them to you.

[Note: the hardback edition was released at the same time as the digitised versions listed by Goodreads, but isn’t included by them yet. Available in all goodbookshops]

[FionaHamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Think I would have given this a higher rating if I hadn’t very recently read Daffodil Days which I found more compelling. Similar structure in that a different inhabitant of a small community is the focus for a chapter and the whole builds up a picture of a community. Slow time novel. Whilst there is ‘not much’ that happens in terms of dramatic plot, there is so much that is revealed about the villagers and many of them are caught at pivotal moments. the narrative of Clare runs throughout. As well as community, struggling nature is more than a backdrop; it is a focus. The insects, the birds and the larger animals fails to thrive as do plants and crops. Different birds appear in different chapters and the descriptions of the flora and fauna are beautiful.
I started by giving this a 3* but actually it deserves an extra one!
Chosen for me by Mr Bs. Not a keeper for me but a beautiful book.

[Rachael Salmon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a well written and deftly plotted book. I initially felt like a ‘newbie/outsider’ to the village, but one who was perhaps going to be accepted within the community, as I found out more about the village’s inhabitants.
The writing had me feeling by turns melancholy for the ways in which we take for granted what we have – be that in relationships or in nature – but also frustrated at how our own carelessness for/with our given world can happen incrementally, almost like we sleepwalk our way into losing what we should treasure.
The book made me ponder how things on the inside can be so different from what is on the outside. I know we know this anyway, but it’s good to be reminded that what you see on the surface is not always a reliable indicator of what’s going on underneath.

[Nadhirah · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Set in present day English countryside with an ensemble cast of characters. As with her previous books, Harrison keeps them at arm's length and nature becomes the main character. The atmosphere of the book is eerie with a sense of ecological foreboding. There's an emphasis on the spirit of a specific place that is ancient, that humans are just temporary visitors, but even though our existence is just a blip in the timeline of the earth, we somehow manage to drive that ancient spirit away with our modern footprint. That gives the book a pagan, elemental layer that I found haunting and beautiful. At risk of sounding like I'm romanticising things given the environmental issues raised in this book, Harrison's descriptions of the pastoral landscape make me want to go on a long walk in a meadow somewhere and just listen to birdsong and the wind in the reeds.

[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.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful! I've always loved how Melissa writes, and this portrait of an English countryside village and its inhabitants is just so beautifully crafted. Told over 6 months, each chapter is narrated by a different character and we see the weight of previous generations through neighbourly land feuds, land inheritance, second homes, and more. It's a fascinating look at a village in an ever-changing Britain, both politically and environmentally. And of course in true Melissa Harrison style, something strange is also at play...

Perfect for fans of Sarah Moss, Benjamin Myers, Niall Williams, and Tom Cox.

[Stephen Robert Kuta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Luminous, tender, and quietly urgent, this multi-voiced novel follows six months in an ancient English valley village, where familiar rhythms fray amid ecological unease and quiet change. Centred on Clare, facing terminal illness, it weaves together the lives of residents—old-timers, newcomers, farmers, dreamers—bound by land, history, and shifting seasons.

Harrison’s prose is breathtaking: every page glows with precise, loving nature writing, blending realism with faint mythic undertones, as the natural world itself feels unsettled and grieving. A stunning portrait of community, belonging, loss, and care—an elegy and a love letter to the fragile, beautiful world we inherit and share.

[Pow Wow · Rating 4 out of 5]

A British pastoral novel in a way, a portrait of a place via an interconnected narrative composed of multiple voices close to or living in an English village. This is well-written, pointed, elegantly executed and a good book which comes with a big caveat: You really need to like nature writing and I, sadly, can't be bothered a lot of the time. The nature writing here is minutely observed and excellent and anyone who likes that kind of thing should perhaps rate this even higher. However, in my case, it's just pearls before swine. It makes no sense to me, however, to downgrade it just on the account of a personal preference as the book knows what it is setting out to do and does it well.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engaging and then haunting

I bought this book on a whim, expecting something lighter and less alive. But it wove a spell on me and kept me coming back frequently to a beautifully draw cast of characters in a breathing landscape. The writer mentions 'Jerusalem' by Jez Butterworth in her acknowledgements and there's a little of that in here and I think a little of Kate Atkinson's ability to jigsaw a plot from disparate elements. But the writing, the sense of nature and the natural world are unique.

So it's a character book, and a nature book, and a book with a story of unfolding lives. And a little bit more, a bit magical. Loved it. Everyone's getting it for Christmas.

[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.

[Ronan O’Neill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely a contender for my book of the year. A truly wonderful treatise on a disappearing English countryside told through six months in the lives of multiple characters. This is my 3rd M. Harrison book and probably my 3rd 5 star rating for her. Her characters are real and varied, I can picture all of them in the day to day worlds. This is a book I will want to reread again and again. Highly recommended.

[Suzie Grogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply wonderful. Deep, dark and full of meaning, it is a portrait of a village and its characters in flux in a changing natural environment. I cared about the characters- sympathetic and unsympathetic- from the first page, their intertwining stories and their interactions with the landscape perfectly pitched. Highly recommended.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to the audible read by Alex Jennings. The polyphonic nature is quite challenging for one narrator, but he portrays the characters well. My only quibble was I didn’t feel the author was very accurate with the teenagers and the way General Practice was shown. Hopefully this will be widely read as accessible climate fiction.

[Dawn Tyers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such beautiful writing here, so evocative of season and landscape. The characters are fully formed, their relationships with each other and their place in the world are clearly explored. This novel demonstrates our interconnectedness with the natural world and gently reminds us of our responsibilities.