At Hawthorn Time
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
It is dawn on a May morning. On a long straight road between two sleeping fields a car slows as it arrives at the scene of an accident.
Howard and Kitty have been married for thirty years and now sleep in different rooms. They do not discuss it. It was always Kitty's dream to move from their corner of north London into the countryside, and when the kids were gone they moved to the village of Lodeshill. Howard often wonders if anyone who lives in this place has a reason to be there.
Jack was once a rural rebel, a protestor who only ever wanted the freedom to walk alone in his own country. Having finished another stint in prison for trespassing, he sets off once more, walking north with his old battered backpack.
Jamie is a nineteen-year-old Lodeshill boy who works in a distribution center and has a Saturday job at the bakery. He spent his childhood exploring the land with his grandfather and playing with Alex who lived in the farmhouse next-door.
As the lives of these people overlap, we realize that mysterious layers of history are not only buried within them, but also locked into the landscape. A captivating novel, At Hawthorn Time is about identity, consumerism, changing boundaries and our own long, straight path into the unknown.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Harrison's wondrous second novel (after Clay), disparate lives converge in a remote part of the British countryside. There's Jack, a vagrant prone to poetic musing, living on seasonal work and eschewing the security of putting down roots. Then there's Kitty and Howard, empty nesters grappling with the change in their relationship, especially after having left London for the countryside a wish of Kitty's that Howard agreed to after retiring from a business that he left in his son's hands, without really thinking through what that would mean for him. Kitty, seeking solace in the local church and finding her artistic voice through painting, is also coming to terms with a past infidelity and a looming concern about her health. And then there's Jamie, a young man with a warehouse job, finding his way in the world and hoping to better himself. A fateful accident brings the characters together, and Harrison's prose paints a stunning picture of the landscape, as her characters wistfully find themselves wishing for a past they can never get back.
