Levels

by Peter Benson

Set in the Somerset Levels, a hidden world where lives Billy, by trade a basket maker, by inclination an innocent and regretful thinker whose days are spent with his mother who cannot help shouting, his father who cannot help getting into trouble, chickens who can't help dying and Dick, a childhood friend grown to adolescence but not maturity. Baskets are made and sold, eels caught, dogs lost and found, cider drunk and regretted and a haunted house discovered and explored. This idyll is broken by the arrival of Muriel and her mother and Billy, innocent of their urban ways, falls in love. The book weaves a deceptive and idiosyncratic magic as you are swept through the mysterious landscapes of Mid Somerset.

Genres: Fiction

1 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Peter Benson was born in 1956 in Kent, UK and is the award-winning author of seven novels. His work has been described as ‘a far-reaching exploration into unlikely relationships’ and is characterised by the precision of its language, characterisations and approach.

Reviews

[Kobus Engelbrecht · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was interested in the book purely as I moved to live on the Levels in 2008. Unfortunately the book did not really "do it " for me, although there were some interesting aspects in the narrative.
The main reason is that I found the author's writing style too erratic and not easy to follow.

[Val · Rating 4 out of 5]

A young man, Billy, grows up in the Somerset levels and becomes a basket maker. This is a traditional craft of the area, although it is dying out. He does not really choose his job, he follows his father in the craft and does not have many other opportunities in the area.
As a teenager, Billy has a summer romance with a girl whose artist mother rents the local 'haunted house' for a while, before the daughter goes to college in London. We know from the start that Billy and Muriel do not stay together and that Billy has regrets about this, which makes their story a bittersweet one. In the end, she can't stay to be with him and he can't leave to be with her.
This is the story of the Somerset Levels and a rural way of life which does not quite belong in the latter half of the twentieth century. It is quaint, historic, traditional and something for tourists to enjoy as a curiosity, but for Billy and the others who live it, it is real life. Billy and Muriel's romance personalises the contrast between the traditional and the modern.
This is a beautifully written debut novel and I will be reading more by the author.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Drove House has always loomed large over village life. Boarded-up for years, it is reputed to be brimming with ghosts, and is shunned by the locals - all except Billy, for whom it has been the site of childhood dens and secret adolescent adventures. When the captivating Muriel moves in with her bohemian mother, they sweep out the ghosts and breathe new life into both the house and Billy's quiet rural existence. After an idyllic summer, though, Muriel returns to her life in London, and the newly empty Drove House becomes the backdrop for Billy's struggle to reconcile the vanishing agricultural lifestyle he has inherited with the glimpses of a baffling new way of life Muriel seemed to offer. Charting the conflict between these two competing worlds, Peter Benson's award-winning first novel is at once a lyrical portrait of the landscape of the Somerset Levels and a touching evocation of first love.

Read my full review on my blog here.

[Clive Newnham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read The Levels shortly after Cider With Rosie (Laurie Lee). It makes a very comparable read which I thoroughly enjoyed and very much recommend.

[Kate Tilley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really beautifully rendered and quite depressing.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his first novel, Peter Benson brilliantly captures what it is like to grow up in a very rural environment. The story of Billy, a basket maker in the heart of the Somerset Levels, and a doomed teenage romance, it is one of the best books I've read for capturing how life is lived (or at least, how it was lived - the book was first published in 1987) among the rural poor. I grew up in a farming community in Norfolk in the sixties and seventies, and so many of the characters, their attitudes, limited horizons, and eccentricities remind me of people I knew then. There's a dreamlike quality to Billy's first person narration that makes it all the more powerful. I loved this short but intensely moving book.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

To start, there was a little more rural depiction than I fully appreciated, but the uncertainties of the developing relationship, Billy's attempts to understand Muriel's different level of confidence and experience were heart-breakingly rendered, and the worry was how Billy would survive that and his family.

[Tracey Gemmell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightful, humourous, poignant look at bygone life in rural Somerset. The joys and tears of first love, quirky characters, and ancient willow basket weaving traditions make this an absorbing read.

[Barbara Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes it's just a boy growing up in a post war world, where there is hardship; but the beauty of the place and the fragility of the boy's first love affair are conveyed so delicately by Peter Benson, the whole work became a single poem as I read.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, evocative but simple story. Made particularly relevant as it is set where I live. Loved the name checking of the villages and towns I'm familiar with.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like if normal people were good

[Dave Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

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