Description
Book Synopsis‘I would compare her to writers like Helen Dunmore, Elizabeth Strout, Jon McGregor’ BBC Radio 4 ‘Harding achieves a weighty sense of silence and things not said in this unsettling book about the aftershocks of trauma and the burdens of bearing witness’ Sunday Times 'A masterly achievement, illuminating with wisdom and compassion the darkest corners of the human heart' Guardian A farm in Norfolk in the 1970s. A Japanese girl comes to visit her English lover in the house where he was born. She arrives on a day of perfect summer, stands with his mother in a garden filled with roses, watches as his brother walks fields of ripening wheat. But between the two brothers lies the shadow of their father’s violent death almost twenty years before, the unresolved narrative of their childhood – a story that has gone untold, a story that began in the last war. In the presence of the girl, the old trauma begins to surface as the work of the harvest begins.
‘Taut and unsettling ... A fine meditation on war’s long reach’ Mail on SundayTrade ReviewLuminescent … Organic and vital … Remarkable …
Harvest is a work of delicate, devastating beauty, proof that Harding is a writer of rare insight who deserves to be read more widely * Financial Times *
Harding moves fluently between each character … The payoff is devastating * Daily Mail *
Harding’s cycle of books stand as a masterly achievement, illuminating with wisdom and compassion the darkest corners of the human heart * Guardian *
Harding achieves a weighty sense of silence and things not said in this unsettling book about the aftershocks of trauma and the burdens of bearing witness * The Times *
So deeply engaging, so threatening, so mild, so controlled — at every stage it seems as if desperate damage is about to be done, and then bit by excruciating bit you realise it was done long, long ago, and nobody you’re looking at now can do anything about it. What a writer! -- Louisa Young, author of My Dear I Wanted to Tell You
Harvest is an old-fashioned novel in the best possible sense ... The rewards are many. The heartbeat of the book continues to echo long after the last page has been turned’ * Times Literary Supplement *
Taut and unsettling, this fine meditation on war’s long reach follows on from
Land Of The Living but more than satisfies as a stand-alone * Mail on Sunday *
An absolutely exceptional novel … She has a deeply humane and developed sense of what it means to be a woman, and also what it means to belong -- Clover Stroud
Staggering … An unparalleled masterpiece * Lunate.co.uk *
