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“His deep footsteps led from the edge of the copse and we followed them back exactly so as not to disturb more of the snow.”
I initially marked this quotation because it was fitting for the picture that I took of Elmet lying in the snow. Reading it now, I realize that it is laden with symbolic significance. Mozley’s whole novel can be summarized in these words. Elmet is atmospheric, centering on the copse in which the narrator lives with his sister and father. They live on the land and with the land. The children lead a reclusive life, a life built by their father; the reader is led to ask, to what extent will they follow his figurative footsteps? As they follow him back into the copse, so do they follow him back to his past conflicts and sins.
As profound as I find this quotation to be, I also suspect that this one sentence is not particularly notable. That is, gravitas imbues Mozley’s prose, a prose that at once flows seamlessly while also demanding constant re-reading. I feel confident that I could find many such sentences that capture the novel in this way.
I initially became interested in this book after hearing about the splash it had made by being short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. My favorite surprising fact about about this novel is that it was the “first ever acquisition of assistant editor Becky Walsh.”¹
My interest in reading this book grew from learning more about its author, Fiona Mozley. She is currently a PhD student in Medieval Studies (the fact that she had time to write such amazing fiction while working on her dissertation amazes me). I was curious to read a work of fiction written by a medievalist and set in contemporary England, and I wondered how her experience with medieval material would influence her writing. It does so in the best way possible. She succeeds, beyond what I even thought possible, in maintaining a sense and feel of timelessness throughout the work.
What a great first read of 2018! I thought that I would love the book for its atmosphere alone. While reading, I did not feel particularly compelled by the plot nor was I wondering what would happen next. I kept reading because the prose was so compelling, and Mozely had constructed a world I did not want to leave. So the ending of the novel completely surprised me with its intensity and rage, and alerted me to the subtle way that she had built the central conflict throughout the book, almost imperceptibly. I will be thinking about this book for a long time to come.
I highly recommend!
https://lilreadsbigbooks.wordpress.com/2018/01/04/elmet-by-fiona-mozley/
I initially marked this quotation because it was fitting for the picture that I took of Elmet lying in the snow. Reading it now, I realize that it is laden with symbolic significance. Mozley’s whole novel can be summarized in these words. Elmet is atmospheric, centering on the copse in which the narrator lives with his sister and father. They live on the land and with the land. The children lead a reclusive life, a life built by their father; the reader is led to ask, to what extent will they follow his figurative footsteps? As they follow him back into the copse, so do they follow him back to his past conflicts and sins.
As profound as I find this quotation to be, I also suspect that this one sentence is not particularly notable. That is, gravitas imbues Mozley’s prose, a prose that at once flows seamlessly while also demanding constant re-reading. I feel confident that I could find many such sentences that capture the novel in this way.
I initially became interested in this book after hearing about the splash it had made by being short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. My favorite surprising fact about about this novel is that it was the “first ever acquisition of assistant editor Becky Walsh.”¹
My interest in reading this book grew from learning more about its author, Fiona Mozley. She is currently a PhD student in Medieval Studies (the fact that she had time to write such amazing fiction while working on her dissertation amazes me). I was curious to read a work of fiction written by a medievalist and set in contemporary England, and I wondered how her experience with medieval material would influence her writing. It does so in the best way possible. She succeeds, beyond what I even thought possible, in maintaining a sense and feel of timelessness throughout the work.
What a great first read of 2018! I thought that I would love the book for its atmosphere alone. While reading, I did not feel particularly compelled by the plot nor was I wondering what would happen next. I kept reading because the prose was so compelling, and Mozely had constructed a world I did not want to leave. So the ending of the novel completely surprised me with its intensity and rage, and alerted me to the subtle way that she had built the central conflict throughout the book, almost imperceptibly. I will be thinking about this book for a long time to come.
I highly recommend!
https://lilreadsbigbooks.wordpress.com/2018/01/04/elmet-by-fiona-mozley/