Harvest (Crace)

Book Reviews
Glorious.... Crace writes with a particular, haunting empathy for the displaced.... His plots may be epic, but his sentences carry a sensual charge.... In his compassionate curiosity and his instincts for insurgent uncertainty, Crace surely ranks among our greatest novelists of radical upheaval, a perfect fit for our unstable, unforgiving age.
Rob Nixon - New York Times Book Review


[Harvest] is intellectually and morally engaging while also being exciting to read.... Mr. Crace's imagery brilliantly suggests the loamy, lyric glories of rustic English language and life.... [he] devotes his considerable talents to telling an affecting tale of a bound world and its simple people as they head toward a tragic and inexorable breakdown.
Wall Street Journal


Harvest is as finely written as it is tautly structured. Pungently flavoured with archaic words, its language is exhilaratingly exact, sometimes poetic and sometimes stark. Magnificently resurrecting a pivotal moment in our history about which it is deeply knowledgeable, this simultaneously elegiac and unillusioned novel is an achievement worthy to stand alongside those of Crace’s great fictional ­influence, William Golding.
Sunday Times (London)


Crace, an original and a literary stylist, with, usually, something remarkable to say, says it here in a haunting work of sudden violence and vengeance ... Few novels as fine or as complex in their apparent simplicity will be published this, or indeed any, year.
Irish Times


As with Crace's other novels, Harvest is deftly written, in language — formal, slightly archaic even — that reflects the setting it describes. It's also tightly plotted ... Crace's real concern is his characters, the way that, like all of us, they make mistakes and act from weakness, and turn on one another when things go wrong.
Los Angeles Times


(Starred review.) [Harvest] is intellectually and morally engaging while also being exciting to read ... Mr. Crace's imagery brilliantly suggests the loamy, lyric glories of rustic English language and life ... [he] devotes his considerable talents to telling an affecting tale of a bound world and its simple people as they head toward a tragic and inexorable breakdown.
Publishers Weekly


[W]ith the hard work of planting and harvesting as backdrop, we see the villagers move inexorably toward a tragedy they've provoked. One morning, Master Kent's stable is found burning, and strangers who have peaceably signaled their presence by sending up the customary smoke plume are blamed.... Verdict: A quietly breathtaking work revealing how fate plays with us as we play with fate; highly recommended.  —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal


The order and calm of a preindustrial village in England is upset by a mysterious fire and the simultaneous appearance of three strangers. The insular community strikes out against the newcomers but turns on itself in a fit, literally, of witch hunting....  This is a spare, disquieting, unique, and ultimately haunting and memorable little novel. Its limited accessibility may restrict its audience, but followers of literary fiction will be reading and talking about it. —Mark Levine
Booklist


(Starred review.) Rarely does language so plainspoken and elemental tell a story so richly open to interpretation on so many different levels. Is this a religious allegory? An apocalyptic fable? A mystery? A meditation on the human condition? With economy and grace.... Crace continues to occupy a singular place in contemporary literature.
Kirkus Reviews