I always have a soft spot for books with maps in them, and we get two beautiful maps at the start, one of the village and a larger scale one of the farm. Although I did not know her well yet, I felt more real, more interesting even, when I saw myself through Constance’s eyes. Although this novel is set just before WW2 I was transported back to the very early 1960s when as a 7yr old girl I lived in a village and walked with my little brother to school through the fields and orchard.

her central character Edie, many decades later, looks forward to ending her days going back to where she had spent her formative years, presumably hoping to find it as she left it.

All of these things appeared to be particularly daunting to Edie, as a teenager, facing a future which seemed quite bleak, even though she was told that she was bright and different and could take a different path to her mother. As an evocation of place and a lost way of life, Harrison’s novel is astonishing, as potent and irresistible as a magic spell. It picks up speed past halfway, only to come to at a rather abrupt and not entirely satisfying ending. For a novel so gentle and with plots and sub-plots which build slowly, it comes as a real and sudden punch in the gut. She undoubtedly sees rural Britain through rose-tinted spectacles and, as time goes on, we realise that there is a political edge to her which underpins that uncritical view.

They had four fields at the bottom of the garden, one leading onto the next like a patchwork quilt, in shades of green and gold through the seasons. For Edie, who has just finished school and must soon decide what to do with her life, Connie appears to be a godsend. Harrison’s ear for the music of language is so acute that, even when Edie simply lists what she sees, the words have the hypnotic lilt of an incantation: ‘‘Corn poppies and cornflowers, dockweed, thistles, wild onion, mousetail, cleavers, shepherd’s needle, charlock, rye brome and corn buttercup”. From the empty pews at the church to the tools left idle in barns to the poorly stacked ricks due to a lack of skilled men, these silent absences are deeply felt.While Connie may be keen to celebrate tradition, those around Edie are aware of the need for adaption and for balancing progress against tradition. In fact, it could be seen as a political novel disguised as a coming-of-age story, albeit it in a very nuanced way! The glory of the farm then, just before harvest: acres of gold like bullion, strewn with the sapphires of cornflowers and the garnets of corn poppies and watched over from on high by larks.