In hindsight, the resonance of this dark and fierce debut on the stage of world literature should have been the warning bell that #MeToo movement was about to extract its penalty. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2017, this novel’s strengths are in describing a natural world that seems almost untouched in its primitiveness, a world that one would swear were long gone.
A family of father, daughter, and son build their own dwelling on land passed on by a long-dead wife and mother. A wealthy landowner nearby likewise claims the land but recognizes the family from when the mother lived there. A convoluted agreement is worked out whereby the wealthy man deeds the land to the family in return for fealty.
The story is old as Moses but were for modern day appliances and tools, we’d not know the exploitation continues so blatantly today. Mozley brilliantly describes the bump and thrum of life on a working woodlot which yields most of the family’s needs for game and heat. The father, a very large man, earned a living early on by bare-knuckle fighting for cash. He was cool-minded and strong; he always won.
The daughter and son were seen as strange among the townspeople who knew of them. They were self-sufficient and proud, and did not attend any local school, though they were of an age to do so. The boy was slight in frame and lovely in countenance; the girl became a tall and strapping and arresting-looking woman. It is said the son took after the mother. We learn that the daughter takes after the father.
This was a very good choice for the international fiction prize, evoking as it does the history of the Celtic Britons, the earliest known settlers of the region in 4th Century B.C. The epigraph itself, a quote by Ted Hughes, speaks of Elmet as "the last independent Celtic kingdom in England...a sanctuary for refugees from the law." The story itself is rich and complete, the bullying nature of wealthy landowners charted throughout the ages. Insular and suspicious townsfolk make an appearance, as does a singular woman who lives alone in the hills.
A fight scene near the end of the book registers viscerally. The momentum and brutality derived from that moment electrifies our experience through the end, the final scenes almost changing the nature of the novel despite the foreshadowing given earlier. This may be why Mozley added the italicized chapters earlier on--to warn us of great changes to come. Perhaps ideally these wouldn't be necessary, but then the sense of time and distance and distress of the narration wouldn't be as clear.
There are so many intriguing aspects of this novel one is tempted to cut Mozley some slack if some fulsome descriptions might be considered extraneous to the thrust of the action. The character of Vivien, for instance, may have been developed somewhat beyond her remit. Considering the vast talent arrayed for the award last year, it is difficult to expect a debut would have prevailed against such talented entries as Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, which did end up taking home the prize. But this was, without a doubt, a very strong debut indeed.
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