All Categories
An Amazon Best Book of December 2017: Fiona Mozley’s debut novel is a surprising, serious story with some of the best writing about nature and family published this year. Short listed for the Man Booker prize, Elmet begins with a young person – without name or sex – walking along a railroad line in the north of England, searching for someone lost. The origins of that scene unfold: a family has sought refuge on a patch of woods that was once theirs, but their harmonious and humane way of life in this Edenic setting is threatened by conflict with “Mr. Price,” the rapacious new landowner. Mozley’s liberal sympathies are all out in the open across a range of issues from unionization to privatization and gender identity. But even to readers who might not share her politics, Elmet presents a persuasive and evocatively written argument. Her vision of what rural life could be is only slightly tempered by the knowledge that like all Edens, this one must be left behind. --Sarah Harrison Smith, Amazon Book Review