Melissa Harrison’s bestselling 2018 novel All Among the Barley, set in the early 1930s, was much concerned with the pace of change in the countryside. The interfering outsider Constance FitzAllen passionately advocated for tradition, while worn-down farmers welcomed any innovation that would ease their punishing workload. Almost a century later, in another fictional English village, change can be neither debated nor resisted.
While Barley was narrated by an elderly woman looking back at her rural childhood, The Given World portrays a whole community, granting a chapter each to significant characters over six months, with birds, blossom and crops forming a restless backdrop. On the hill overlooking Lower Eodham lives Clare Grey in one of its oldest buildings: ‘What was once the priory’s refectory has been divided into a kitchen and a dining room, and its chapel with a small rose window is a library.’ She has just been to see Dr Subramanian and is digesting his news.
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