The Perfect Golden Circle
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Summer 1989, deep in the English countryside — during a time of mass unemployment, class war, and rebellion . . . .
Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men — Calvert, an ex-soldier traumatized by his experience in the Falklands War, and his affable freind Redbone — set out nightly in a decrepit camper van to undertake an extraordinary project.
Under cover of darkness, they traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns, painstakingly avoiding damaging the wheat to yield designs so intricate that their overnight appearances inspire awe amongst a mystified public.
And as the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation—and that an unlikely and beautiful friendship has taken root as the wheat ripens from green to gold.
But as harvest-time beckons—and as media and the authorities begin to take too much interest in their work—Calvert and Redbone have to race against time to finish the most stunning and original crop circle ever conceived: the Honeycomb Double Helix.
Moving and exhilarating, tender and slyly witty, The Perfect Golden Circle is a captivating novel about the futility of war, the descruction of the English countryside, class inequality — ower of beauty to heal trauma and fight power.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this slight, low-key outing, Myers (The Gallows Pole) chronicles the efforts of two friends who conspire to make crop circles in Southern England in 1989. The empathetic Redbone and the traumatized Calvert, whose face is scarred, aim to create something worthy of a folk myth to enrich their otherwise unfulfilling lives as they work up to "The Big One," the Honeycomb Double Helix. After their crop circles hit the news, some folks wonder if they were made by aliens. Myers keenly observes the men's distant yet intimate friendship and working relationship as they abort one crop circle design and risk being caught creating another. They grapple with rain, drought, and fire, and even discuss climate change. The men also risk exposure: first by a strange old woman who lost her dog, then with Earl William Lachlan Alexander Bruce Lascar of Winchem. There are some clever descriptive passages and phrases—Calvert's cooking "does not eschew palatability for sustenance's sake"—and some nice imagery, and though the conversations between the two protagonists are illuminating, they don't quite add up to a satisfying narrative. In the end, the meditative quest lands as too meek.
