2021/057: At Hawthorn Time -- Melissa Harrison

2021/057: At Hawthorn Time -- Melissa Harrison

'Where are the primroses that used to carpet that wood?' he’d written, in the end. 'Why don’t you coppice it if you say it is yours? You think it doesn’t matter, that it is just a wood. You think things will always be the same. You think you have dominion – that you’re not part of things. Like in that book. But if there is no light the primroses can’t come. Is it spring you are afraid of or something else? Life finds a way but not like you think. I am still here.' [p. 59]

It starts where it ends: an early-morning car crash on an A road, a Roman road, just as the sun is rising. The crash ties together three stories: the story of Howard and Kitty, incomers who've retired to the countryside; the story of Jamie, who's grown up in the village, knowing every lane and leaf; and the story of Jack, an indigent wanderer, who's always felt close to the land, 'less like a modern man and more like the fugitive spirit of English rural rebellion'. At Hawthorn Time is above all a novel about connecting to the natural world( no spoilers )