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Harvest
A Japanese girl comes to visit her English lover in the house where he was born. She comes to it on a day of perfect summer, stands with his mother in a garden tangled with flowers; the fields beyond, his brother's wheatfields, are a green that soon will turn to gold.
But the summer sun cannot dispel the shadows of the family's buried past, a terrible loss and an unspoken violence carried back from a distant country and a distant war; a trauma that begins to surface in the present, as the wheat ripens and the days pass.
A poised and gracefully crafted novel about the power of submerged secrets, about departures and homecomings, about invisible scars and hidden grief, Harvest asks what happens when we come to reap what has been sown.
But the summer sun cannot dispel the shadows of the family's buried past, a terrible loss and an unspoken violence carried back from a distant country and a distant war; a trauma that begins to surface in the present, as the wheat ripens and the days pass.
A poised and gracefully crafted novel about the power of submerged secrets, about departures and homecomings, about invisible scars and hidden grief, Harvest asks what happens when we come to reap what has been sown.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published March 18, 2021
2 people are currently reading
130 people want to read
About the author
Georgina Harding
26 books48 followersGeorgina Harding is an English author of fiction. Published works include her novels Painter of Silence (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2012), The Spy Game (shortlisted for The Encore Award 2011), and The Solitude of Thomas Cave.
She has also written two works of non-fiction: Tranquebar: A Season in South India and In Another Europe. She lives in London and the Stour Valley, Essex.
She has also written two works of non-fiction: Tranquebar: A Season in South India and In Another Europe. She lives in London and the Stour Valley, Essex.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
March 24, 2021
Harvest is the third novel in the cycle of the Ashe family saga about the far-reaching consequences and legacy of war, the impact of trauma and how long-buried family secrets nearly always come back to devastate in the future. It begins in the early 1970s with Jonathan ”Jonny” Ashe returning home from Japan and his adventures and exploits in East Asia. A young photojournalist, Jonny was responsible for one of the defining images of the Vietnam war. But that sort of fame didn't sit well with him and he moved to Tokyo, seeking refuge in the city’s anonymity. He has now migrated back to his family’s farm in bleak but beautiful Norfolk. After getting settled in and with six months having gone by, he sends his Japanese girlfriend, Kumiko, a stunning photograph of luminous yellow daffodils swaying in the Spring breeze with him stood in the centre arms outstretched willing her to travel to Britain and importantly highlighting that it was not always drab and dull in terms of the weather. On the back, as if his stance hasn't been clear enough, he wrote: ”come and see me”, in soft pencil. The invitation was to the Norfolk farm his veteran father, Charles, had taken on once the Second World War had ended. Johnny and Kumiko had met and fallen in love when he turned up at the English language school where she worked one day. He had hit on lucky and was offered a job teaching English to Japanese students in Tokyo as someone had just left.
They had begun to talk due to their mutual concern over a student who was no longer turning up for classes. From there they had fallen deeply in love and the job, as well as Kimiko, can both be credited as helping him to move on from the stress and constant anxiety he felt as a world-renowned photographer. Back in present-day, she decides to spend the summer with him in England; he picks her up from a long flight at Heathrow Airport, and they hope to make plans to travel together when harvest is over and he has earned some cash from helping his brother, Richard, to reap, gather and store the crops. Through time Jonny’s mother, Claire, is taken aback by how much she has warmed to Kimiko, who she was once wary of due to Japan’s loyalty during the war, and she comes to mean a lot to her. Her animated, upbeat nature was a refreshing change to the troubled family who had been in a pit of depression and despair ever since Charles’ sudden death. They would share many touching moments marvelling at the beauty of Claire's garden; the blooms, the vivid colours and the solace it all brings. However, Richard remains distant and resolute about running the farm properly to follow in the footsteps of his father who had apparently died when he and Jonathan were both children. He was seemingly involved in a fatal but accidental shooting incident, which is shrouded in mystery.
But as the summer progresses the tension between the two brothers becomes palpable and this makes Jonathan eager to fulfil his promises helping to harvest the crops and then leave with Kimiko as quickly as possible. Richard not only treats his brother with contempt but often the innocent Kimiko too. This is a captivating and compelling yarn featuring the deeply troubled and grief-stricken Ashe family. With a taut and unsettling plot, this powerful fine meditation on war’s long reach follows on from the previous novels but works just as well on its own. It is a graceful immersion in family dynamics, secrets and memory, told through carefully crafted prose with the background hum of the turn of seasons, beautiful descriptions of the East Anglian countryside and sexual tension. Shifting back and forth between past and present, no one writes about more the mundane, quotidian nature of life with such majesty managing to have you enthralled and absorbed throughout, and I found that the atmosphere - characterised by an underlying, perturbing palpable tension running the entirety of the plot - has you on edge waiting for the breaking point to arrive. Harvest is a story of love, grief, familial duty, being an outsider and the complex interplay between all of these themes, set against the repeated metaphor of gardens, farming and harvest. A beautiful, powerful and utterly devastating read. Highly recommended.
They had begun to talk due to their mutual concern over a student who was no longer turning up for classes. From there they had fallen deeply in love and the job, as well as Kimiko, can both be credited as helping him to move on from the stress and constant anxiety he felt as a world-renowned photographer. Back in present-day, she decides to spend the summer with him in England; he picks her up from a long flight at Heathrow Airport, and they hope to make plans to travel together when harvest is over and he has earned some cash from helping his brother, Richard, to reap, gather and store the crops. Through time Jonny’s mother, Claire, is taken aback by how much she has warmed to Kimiko, who she was once wary of due to Japan’s loyalty during the war, and she comes to mean a lot to her. Her animated, upbeat nature was a refreshing change to the troubled family who had been in a pit of depression and despair ever since Charles’ sudden death. They would share many touching moments marvelling at the beauty of Claire's garden; the blooms, the vivid colours and the solace it all brings. However, Richard remains distant and resolute about running the farm properly to follow in the footsteps of his father who had apparently died when he and Jonathan were both children. He was seemingly involved in a fatal but accidental shooting incident, which is shrouded in mystery.
But as the summer progresses the tension between the two brothers becomes palpable and this makes Jonathan eager to fulfil his promises helping to harvest the crops and then leave with Kimiko as quickly as possible. Richard not only treats his brother with contempt but often the innocent Kimiko too. This is a captivating and compelling yarn featuring the deeply troubled and grief-stricken Ashe family. With a taut and unsettling plot, this powerful fine meditation on war’s long reach follows on from the previous novels but works just as well on its own. It is a graceful immersion in family dynamics, secrets and memory, told through carefully crafted prose with the background hum of the turn of seasons, beautiful descriptions of the East Anglian countryside and sexual tension. Shifting back and forth between past and present, no one writes about more the mundane, quotidian nature of life with such majesty managing to have you enthralled and absorbed throughout, and I found that the atmosphere - characterised by an underlying, perturbing palpable tension running the entirety of the plot - has you on edge waiting for the breaking point to arrive. Harvest is a story of love, grief, familial duty, being an outsider and the complex interplay between all of these themes, set against the repeated metaphor of gardens, farming and harvest. A beautiful, powerful and utterly devastating read. Highly recommended.
August 9, 2024
Although still in his mid-twenties, Jonathan has already received acclaim as a photographer in Vietnam War. Having grown disillusioned with this calling, he spends some time as a language teacher in Tokyo, and then returns to the farm in Norfolk where he grew up. His father died, allegedly in a “shooting accident” when Jonny was just seven, but his mother Claire still lives there, together with his elder brother Richard, who now runs the farm. Jonny is soon joined by Kumiko, his Japanese girlfriend, who has heard much about her partner’s past and his childhood home and now has the chance to experience them for herself:
"She had asked him to tell her about his home, many times. She wanted to know so that she could know him better, so that she had some world to fit him into, that he came from, so that he had some dimension deeper than being just an Englishman who had come to Japan…"
The couple decide to stay on to help with the harvest, before resuming their travels. But rain delays the job and a brief English holiday becomes, for Kumiko, a summer among a family with its fair share of secrets, a family haunted by its past.
Although recounted in the third person, the novel’s point of view keeps changing throughout, presenting us with the different perspectives of the four main characters. It starts and ends in Kumiko’s voice and yet her character is – ironically, and deliberately – the one which remains most mysterious, the one which we least get to know on a personal level. For the other characters including, one suspects, Jonathan himself, Kumiko remains “the Japanese girl”, an outsider, a glitch in an otherwise English pastoral. But, precisely because of her “foreignness” Kumiko becomes a catalyst for the family, leading them to face an uncomfortable past. The secrets which Charlie, Jonny's father, took to the grave, remain something of a mystery - that part of the story is recounted in Harding's Land of the Living (to which Harvest is a sequel, albeit a "free-standing one").
This novel is a little gem which I enjoyed at so many different levels. Jonathan is a photographer and, appropriately, the descriptions have a strong “visual” element, occasionally vibrant with yellows and golds, at other times “grey and brown and ochre… black even”. Nature is not only vividly portrayed but, as in a Hardy novel, it becomes almost a character in itself, a timeless backdrop to the family drama which plays out in the novel.
I loved the tone of the novel: melancholy, wistful and poignant. Harding subtly conveys the complicated psychological strands which link the characters, particularly Claire’s fraught relationship with her late husband and the underlying rivalry between the brothers whose life-story is indelibly marked by the tragic death of their father. The title of the novel is not just a reference to the literal “harvest”, in which Jonny and Kumiko participate, but becomes a metaphorical one, as the family reaps the seeds sown in its past.
Understated, yet complex and satisfying, Georgina Harding’s “Harvest” is a novel to watch (and read) in 2021.
https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/20...
"She had asked him to tell her about his home, many times. She wanted to know so that she could know him better, so that she had some world to fit him into, that he came from, so that he had some dimension deeper than being just an Englishman who had come to Japan…"
The couple decide to stay on to help with the harvest, before resuming their travels. But rain delays the job and a brief English holiday becomes, for Kumiko, a summer among a family with its fair share of secrets, a family haunted by its past.
Although recounted in the third person, the novel’s point of view keeps changing throughout, presenting us with the different perspectives of the four main characters. It starts and ends in Kumiko’s voice and yet her character is – ironically, and deliberately – the one which remains most mysterious, the one which we least get to know on a personal level. For the other characters including, one suspects, Jonathan himself, Kumiko remains “the Japanese girl”, an outsider, a glitch in an otherwise English pastoral. But, precisely because of her “foreignness” Kumiko becomes a catalyst for the family, leading them to face an uncomfortable past. The secrets which Charlie, Jonny's father, took to the grave, remain something of a mystery - that part of the story is recounted in Harding's Land of the Living (to which Harvest is a sequel, albeit a "free-standing one").
This novel is a little gem which I enjoyed at so many different levels. Jonathan is a photographer and, appropriately, the descriptions have a strong “visual” element, occasionally vibrant with yellows and golds, at other times “grey and brown and ochre… black even”. Nature is not only vividly portrayed but, as in a Hardy novel, it becomes almost a character in itself, a timeless backdrop to the family drama which plays out in the novel.
I loved the tone of the novel: melancholy, wistful and poignant. Harding subtly conveys the complicated psychological strands which link the characters, particularly Claire’s fraught relationship with her late husband and the underlying rivalry between the brothers whose life-story is indelibly marked by the tragic death of their father. The title of the novel is not just a reference to the literal “harvest”, in which Jonny and Kumiko participate, but becomes a metaphorical one, as the family reaps the seeds sown in its past.
Understated, yet complex and satisfying, Georgina Harding’s “Harvest” is a novel to watch (and read) in 2021.
https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/20...
December 20, 2022
This is a new author for me .I found it very intense and emotional story ,love story ,farm saga brothers and ties to the Land. all quite beautiful and a bit sad-
September 16, 2020
Harvest follows a family of three, Jonathan, Richard and their mother, Claire over the course of a harvest in the Norfolk countryside when Jonny's girlfriend Kumiko comes to visit them from Japan.
This book is a graceful immersion in family dynamics, secrets and memory, told through carefully crafted prose with the background hum of the turn of seasons, beautiful descriptions of the East Anglian countryside and sexual tension.
I really enjoyed reading this novel. I enjoyed the fluidity between different character's points of view and memory and action without it being sign-posted; it made it feel that the characters were interlinked and gave a real feeling of family to the piece. I am currently living in East Anglia and it is harvest time, so it felt extremely evocative and real. I also loved the way the plot unravelled, though it is a book that is much more about how the story is told than the story itself.
It is a gentle read that is very satisfying; partly due to the language is beautifully poised and partly for the structure of the story.
Thank you to Bloomsbury and Netgalley for an advance reader copy of Harvest in return for an honest review.
This book is a graceful immersion in family dynamics, secrets and memory, told through carefully crafted prose with the background hum of the turn of seasons, beautiful descriptions of the East Anglian countryside and sexual tension.
I really enjoyed reading this novel. I enjoyed the fluidity between different character's points of view and memory and action without it being sign-posted; it made it feel that the characters were interlinked and gave a real feeling of family to the piece. I am currently living in East Anglia and it is harvest time, so it felt extremely evocative and real. I also loved the way the plot unravelled, though it is a book that is much more about how the story is told than the story itself.
It is a gentle read that is very satisfying; partly due to the language is beautifully poised and partly for the structure of the story.
Thank you to Bloomsbury and Netgalley for an advance reader copy of Harvest in return for an honest review.
September 7, 2022
Like rain falling from the sky, Harding describes the elusive moments between past and present ; the impact of the past strong as a gun’s retort.
September 21, 2020
'𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝑺𝒆𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒐𝒚𝒔 𝒘𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒂𝒘𝒂𝒚 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒄𝒉𝒐𝒐𝒍. 𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒅𝒊𝒅, 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒆 𝒅𝒂𝒚𝒔. 𝑰𝒕 𝒎𝒂𝒅𝒆 𝒔𝒐 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒔𝒆, 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒊𝒅, 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒘𝒐 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎 𝒕𝒐 𝒈𝒐, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒐𝒈𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓. 𝑰𝒕’𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆 𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎, 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒊𝒅, 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚’𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒃𝒐𝒚𝒔 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆. 𝑷𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒂𝒍𝒘𝒂𝒚𝒔 𝒉𝒂𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒂𝒚. 𝑷𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒏𝒐𝒓𝒎𝒂𝒍. 𝑻𝒐 𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒏𝒐𝒓𝒎𝒂𝒍 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒊𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔𝒏’𝒕 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒆𝒓𝒆. 𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒕𝒐 𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒑𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒗𝒆𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒅. 𝑰𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒏’𝒕 𝒂 𝒘𝒉𝒐𝒍𝒆 𝒇𝒂𝒎𝒊𝒍𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒉𝒂𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒌 𝒐𝒇 𝒊𝒕.'
𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭 by 𝐆𝐞𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 is a story of the family of a single mother and her two boys. It is the story of a family loss, the loss of a huge and significant figure of a father and a husband in boys and Claire’s lives.
The novel touches on an important issue that was avoided being spoken about in the past. Even these days people tend to avoid talking about it, especially the older generation. There is a slight shame felt in it. Long-term exposure to war can cause serious psychological problems. Charles, the father who commits a suicide in the novel 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭, was one of those who could not cope with it, who never spoke about it, who never asked for help, who lived with his thoughts long past the War unable to forget. Now, you have a woman with two little boys in a farm trying to sort her life out on her own; a father is long time gone.
The story shifts all the time: from the present to the past then again back to the present. The reader gets to see the whole, complete picture of the family, the whole dynamics of it.
Beautiful melancholy, wistful tones are set through the entire novel. The characters are very real and dynamic. It is amusing to be able to see life through all of their eyes even though the story is told through the 3rd person’s narrative, we get close to each of these characters.
Overall, 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭 is such a beautiful novel. Something to be really excited for. Bring it on, 2021!
𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭 by 𝐆𝐞𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 is a story of the family of a single mother and her two boys. It is the story of a family loss, the loss of a huge and significant figure of a father and a husband in boys and Claire’s lives.
The novel touches on an important issue that was avoided being spoken about in the past. Even these days people tend to avoid talking about it, especially the older generation. There is a slight shame felt in it. Long-term exposure to war can cause serious psychological problems. Charles, the father who commits a suicide in the novel 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭, was one of those who could not cope with it, who never spoke about it, who never asked for help, who lived with his thoughts long past the War unable to forget. Now, you have a woman with two little boys in a farm trying to sort her life out on her own; a father is long time gone.
The story shifts all the time: from the present to the past then again back to the present. The reader gets to see the whole, complete picture of the family, the whole dynamics of it.
Beautiful melancholy, wistful tones are set through the entire novel. The characters are very real and dynamic. It is amusing to be able to see life through all of their eyes even though the story is told through the 3rd person’s narrative, we get close to each of these characters.
Overall, 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭 is such a beautiful novel. Something to be really excited for. Bring it on, 2021!
March 17, 2021
In Harvest, we hear about the story of a family while Kumiko, the Japanese girlfriend of one of the sons, comes to visit the farm in England where they live and they wait for the weather to allow them to harvest their fields.
The story goes back and forth between the past and the present.
I am not sure how I feel about this book. I spent the first half waiting for something to actually happen. I liked the premise, and the way the book started (and, in general, the parts of the story when Kumiko is in England), but then the point of view changes to that of the mother, and at that point the story became fairly boring. It's such a short book, that I feel like the word 'boring' should not be part of a review of it.
The prose is beautiful, and at some parts it was the only thing that kept me interested.
I think there are two main reasons for my boredom:
The first one is the way the book description is crafted. "But the summer sun cannot dispel the shadows of the family’s buried past, a terrible loss and an unspoken violence carried back from a distant country and a distant war; a trauma that begins to surface in the present, as the wheat ripens and the days pass." This (at least to me) gives the impression of much more action than there actually is. This 'trauma that surfaces in the present' is only about 5% of the book.
The second reason is that the parts of this book that referred to life in a farm (i.e., the majority of the book), reminded me a lot of another book I read recently. Otherwise, I think I would have learnt quite a bit, and enjoyed it much more, so don't let my review put you off if you want to learn about work in a farm.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.
The story goes back and forth between the past and the present.
I am not sure how I feel about this book. I spent the first half waiting for something to actually happen. I liked the premise, and the way the book started (and, in general, the parts of the story when Kumiko is in England), but then the point of view changes to that of the mother, and at that point the story became fairly boring. It's such a short book, that I feel like the word 'boring' should not be part of a review of it.
The prose is beautiful, and at some parts it was the only thing that kept me interested.
I think there are two main reasons for my boredom:
The first one is the way the book description is crafted. "But the summer sun cannot dispel the shadows of the family’s buried past, a terrible loss and an unspoken violence carried back from a distant country and a distant war; a trauma that begins to surface in the present, as the wheat ripens and the days pass." This (at least to me) gives the impression of much more action than there actually is. This 'trauma that surfaces in the present' is only about 5% of the book.
The second reason is that the parts of this book that referred to life in a farm (i.e., the majority of the book), reminded me a lot of another book I read recently. Otherwise, I think I would have learnt quite a bit, and enjoyed it much more, so don't let my review put you off if you want to learn about work in a farm.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.
April 2, 2021
You know how there are some stories you pick up last because you’re not sure if you’ll love them as much as some of the others on your shelves? Well this was one of those for me, and yet it turns out I did love it - so much so that I read it all in one sitting!
This is a really gentle, elegant story that seized me from the moment I read the first page. It’s a story of loss, secrets, lies and the grief which propels us forward, and it is told against the backdrop of a farm and its harvest.
When Jonathan’s Japanese girlfriend Kumiko comes to stay at his family home, with his mother Claire and brother Richard, family secrets which have been long buried will become fresh wounds again.
Narrated by all of the characters in turn, and moving through the past and present, this is quite a dark and tragic story, and yet there’s also something quite breathtaking about it - perhaps in the surroundings of the farm, and in the beautiful garden which Claire tends to. The characters are compelling and don’t quite seem to all fit together, and yet it’s only by having them all together that we get to the powerful truth of the story.
It’s difficult to explain precisely what it is that captured me so much with this - it’s definitely more of a slow, quiet, literary novel rather than anything overly dramatic, but I just found myself devouring it. A testament to Harding’s writing, and the power of nuanced characters!
This is a really gentle, elegant story that seized me from the moment I read the first page. It’s a story of loss, secrets, lies and the grief which propels us forward, and it is told against the backdrop of a farm and its harvest.
When Jonathan’s Japanese girlfriend Kumiko comes to stay at his family home, with his mother Claire and brother Richard, family secrets which have been long buried will become fresh wounds again.
Narrated by all of the characters in turn, and moving through the past and present, this is quite a dark and tragic story, and yet there’s also something quite breathtaking about it - perhaps in the surroundings of the farm, and in the beautiful garden which Claire tends to. The characters are compelling and don’t quite seem to all fit together, and yet it’s only by having them all together that we get to the powerful truth of the story.
It’s difficult to explain precisely what it is that captured me so much with this - it’s definitely more of a slow, quiet, literary novel rather than anything overly dramatic, but I just found myself devouring it. A testament to Harding’s writing, and the power of nuanced characters!
June 22, 2022
This is a carefully painted picture of a family, a family accommodating to a tragedy which occurred some twenty years before - the brutal death of the father. It's set on their farm in Norfolk, and its landscape and mores are built up, layering scenes from the present with scenes from the past. Younger son Jonathan, who's been living for a couple of years in Japan invites his Japanese girlfriend Kumiko for an extended stay. She gets on well with his mother, Claire and is a bright and colourful presence. But somehow, her being there opens cracks. Untold secrets are slowly exposed, and are as out of the family's control as is the harvest, dependent as it is entirely on the vagaries of the weather. This is a compassionate and sympathetic book, and examines the human heart and its dark and unwilling-to-be-exposed corners. It's also the last in a trilogy. I was unaware of this as I started to read. And I don't believe it mattered for my understanding of the story. But I'm now keen to read the two preceding volumes: The Gun Room & The Land of the Living
March 30, 2022
Kumiko travels from Japan to a Norfolk farm, boyhood home of Jonathan whom she first met in Tokyo working in a language school.
Her visit evokes memories for Jonathan, his mother and his elder brother, who now works the farm. The family’s lives have all been affected by the tragic death of the boys’ father who died when they were quite young.
Events take place whilst they await the harvest although precious few actions occur. Instead, the story flits from character to character, sharing their thoughts and feelings and memories.
This is a story of loss and identity and the difficulties in really getting to know and understand another person and of how hiding from the past can affect the present.
Beautifully told and thought provoking.
Her visit evokes memories for Jonathan, his mother and his elder brother, who now works the farm. The family’s lives have all been affected by the tragic death of the boys’ father who died when they were quite young.
Events take place whilst they await the harvest although precious few actions occur. Instead, the story flits from character to character, sharing their thoughts and feelings and memories.
This is a story of loss and identity and the difficulties in really getting to know and understand another person and of how hiding from the past can affect the present.
Beautifully told and thought provoking.
April 28, 2023
So, I don’t exactly know what motivated me to pick this one up in the BorrowBox app, but I’m glad that I did. It’s a beautifully written story, and while not a lot actually happens, the writing is what carries the story through.
The relationships are at the heart of the story here. Whether between Kumiko and Jonathan, or between the brothers, or with their mother, it’s the relationships that move the story on. You want to get to the bottom of the conflict in their relationships and you want to know the truth because of the impact on those relationships.
And while you might not know the truth about what happened to the Father figure, you get this beautifully written look at family dynamics with a stunning natural backdrop.
Beautiful.
The relationships are at the heart of the story here. Whether between Kumiko and Jonathan, or between the brothers, or with their mother, it’s the relationships that move the story on. You want to get to the bottom of the conflict in their relationships and you want to know the truth because of the impact on those relationships.
And while you might not know the truth about what happened to the Father figure, you get this beautifully written look at family dynamics with a stunning natural backdrop.
Beautiful.
April 3, 2021
A young photojournalist leaves Japan and returns home to Norfolk where his mother and brother run the family farm. He sends his Japanese girlfriend an invitation to visit, and she becomes a catalyst to revive old memories, secrets and grief that have been simmering within the family.
This was a very atmospheric and visual novel, understated in tone but with a depth of feeling. I did feel a bit detached from it and did not feel absorbed in the story, but have since found that it is the third in a trilogy and it would probably have been more meaningful had I read the other books first.
This was a very atmospheric and visual novel, understated in tone but with a depth of feeling. I did feel a bit detached from it and did not feel absorbed in the story, but have since found that it is the third in a trilogy and it would probably have been more meaningful had I read the other books first.
March 21, 2021
A young Japanese woman goes to stay at her boyfriend’s home in Norfolk, in what seems to be the perfect English summer. Although Claire, the mother, has reasons to distrust the Japanese, even though thirty years have elapsed since the end of the Second World War, Kumiko seems the perfect guest.
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August 11, 2023
I loved The Spy Game and was excited about reading more from this author. I had tried unsuccessfully to read Land of the Living and so read this instead - in the wrong order chronologically as the two books are connected. I just about stayed in there - it’s well written but I wasn’t gripped. The Japanese girl remained like an unknown character to me - and in fact I found it hard to care about anybody in the story … best parts were the descriptions of the land and farming.
August 23, 2021
A beautiful story beautifully written.
November 16, 2024
I started Harvest by Georgina Harding with great anticipation, but unfortunately, I couldn't get into it. The story of a Japanese girl visiting her English lover’s childhood home on a perfect summer day promised rich emotional depth, but I struggled to engage with the characters.
A key issue for me was the author's lack of personal connection to the Japanese experience, which raised concerns about cultural authenticity.
Curious for more details? Read my full review on my blog! https://themagicfarawaytreenet.wordpr...
A key issue for me was the author's lack of personal connection to the Japanese experience, which raised concerns about cultural authenticity.
Curious for more details? Read my full review on my blog! https://themagicfarawaytreenet.wordpr...
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