I've now read four of Tim Pears' novels - the West Country trilogy (The Horseman, The Wanderers, The Redeemed) -and this one. Three or four months ago I'd never heard of him. It's a depressing thought that despite a lifetime of avid reading I am still ignorant of so many fine novelists (not to mention poets or historians). When I come across writers who make a tremendous first impression on me (T. Pears, for instance) I have always been moved to tell as many people about them as possible. This tendency may account for the fact that in the days when I used to frequent pubs I could never enter the front door of one without becoming aware of two or three people sliding out the side entrance.
In 2008 a thirteen-year-old boy named Theo is travelling with his academic parents in their clapped-out car to a family reunion on the Welsh/English border. Over the next few days they experience a number of crises and arguments about the nature of society, about their places in that society, about the influence of money, social class and status; about the nature of transition between the generations; about what can be passed on and what might be used up; about the function of reflection and the function of activity; about the relationship between mankind and the rest of the natural world.
In some ways the novel reads like a stage play, particularly when significant characters (woodpeckers, badgers) are mostly off stage and made known to the reader by the comments and reflections of Theo and the members of his family.
In the end, despite much discussion of change, my enduring impression was of the continuity of human society, largely because of Theo's haunting vision, towards the end of the book, of Welsh raiders coming over the border just as an important betrayal is ruining what remains of the family's inheritance.
This is a wonderful novel.
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