The Perfect Golden Circle
Selected for BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club 2022
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4.3 • 14 Ratings
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
**Selected for BBC 2 Between the Covers 2022**
**The BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick**
**Longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2022**
'In this folksy, magnetic tale, two outsiders seek healing and enlightenment by creating crop formations in a Wiltshire field ... A memorable hymn to beauty' OBSERVER
'The pleasures of this bountiful novel are like a glass of cool water on a parched summer day' THE TIMES
'A spirited and anarchic novel... a roiling, rollicking crop-circle folk tale' GUARDIAN
England, 1989. Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men – traumatized Falklands veteran Calvert, and affable, chaotic Redbone – set out nightly in a clapped-out camper van to undertake an extraordinary project.
Under cover of darkness, the two men traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns. 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.
Moving and exhilarating, tender and slyly witty, The Perfect Golden Circle is a captivating novel about the futility of war, the destruction of the English countryside, class inequality – and the power of beauty to heal trauma and fight power.
'Brilliantly constructed and steeped in rural atmosphere' FINANCIAL TIMES, Best summer books of 2022
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.
Customer Reviews
For the love of England and it’s people.
This is the best book I have read this year and probably next to. It is a an intimate love letter to the English countryside. And a homage to all the Redbones and Calvats who are the unrecognised salt of the earth and need their song to be sung.
Paul Sutton