October brings the 2017 Man Booker prize awards after the short list of the six novels was announced in September. By chance, when the long list came out earlier, I heard an interview on the radio with Fiona Mozley, a young first time novelist whose book, ELMET, I bought a few days later. Good news when, against many expectations, Elmet was one of the six short listed.
The word Elmet meant nothing to me. The book explains, quoting Ted Hughes, ‘Elmet was the last independent Celtic Kingdom in England and originally stretched out over the Vale of York.’ Since buying the book I keep coming across the name – there is even an MP for Elmet and…
The tale is one of our time focusing on a family, well, a son, Daniel, and daughter, Cathy, and their ‘Daddy’, a man mixing moments of tenderness with a mean fighting lifestyle, essential to his survival.
Every year the Yeovil Community Arts Association holds a lively debate (this year on Thursday 5th October in The Johnson Studio at The Octagon Theatre, Yeovil) with advocates arguing the merits, or on occasion the failings, of each of the six finalists. On occasion the subsequent vote of those attending is in line with the that of Man Booker judges.
The six on the short list are: 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster (Faber & Faber), HISTORY OF WOLVES by Emily Fridlund (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, Orion Books), EXIT WEST by Moshin Hamid (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House), ELMET by Fiona Mozley (JM Originals, John Murray), LINCOLN IN THE BARDO, George Saunders (Bloomsbury Publishing) and AUTUMN by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House).
Several long listed ‘names’ didn’t make the cut. Will Elmet succeed? It might just do it.
I had been reluctant over the past few years as it was the best growing tree of all the nine hundred we planted in our small woodland, but now it wasn’t so dominant as many of the other trees are reaching up to a good height. The tree will spring up again building out from its coppiced stool; maybe in ten years we will have to take the same action, unless some future technology has removed the power lines in favour of a future alternative method of power distribution
resisted the gales.
Probably a warbler, maybe a Willow Warbler, we see those about. I wondered about a Goldcrest, but the book suggests they nest high in a tree. This nest is low and in a small tree.
rams. They wait out the winter building up their strength for their spring lambing. Now it is winter with a night time temperature falling below zero.
spider woven gorse
Our House Martins, after their most successful nesting season for several years – in the end six active nests, probably nine broods, have already departed. We wish them safe away and safe home again next April.
The final proofs are in order and the presses will roll.
Cousins Mo and Freddie Holtbury, strangers since an unfriendly childhood, now in their fifties, meet on a bleak October day, the only family at Aunt Ethel’s funeral. Neither has married, both are only children. The dilapidated mansion, built by their great-great grandfather, with its contents, is their joint inheritance.
Chip Tolson 