Two plumes of smoke are the first ill omens for the village at the centre of Jim Crace's new – and, he has said, last – novel. The first plume comes from the surrounding woods and indicates a fire created by newcomers, two men and a woman, who have put up a rough hut there. The second comes from the landowner's hay lofts and stable. Immediately, the villagers seek to blame the newcomers for causing the latter fire as well and they put the men in the stocks and shave the woman's head. But most of the accusers are uneasily aware that their victims are not guilty.
As so often in Crace's work, the setting of Harvest is vivid but not specific. It is simply The Village, a place of 58 inhabitants, many of them related. The nearest market town is "two days by post-horse, three days by chariot". Plague is still a threat. This is no arcadia: the villagers struggle to live on the products of their harvest, and on their livestock, and have learned to regard nature as "inflexible and stern". Even in a good year, winter is "the hungry months".
Walter Thirsk, the narrator, tells his story in rhythmical, incantatory prose, clearly not contemporary but not inflexibly antiquated either. Readers of Crace's previous novels will expect Walter's startling way with metaphor: a midnight storm "enamelling" puddles; air that is "stewed"; a woman's "finchy" voice. They will also be unsurprised to find a good deal of specialist vocabulary and may wonder, Crace being famous for playful inventions, what terms among ruddock, longpurple, eringe, pippinjay, sorehock and suffingale are genuine.
The harvest that is just gathered as the novel opens is not lavish. It has been "frugal in the ear" is Walter's way of putting it. The village, unrefreshed by newcomers since Walter and his master, the landowner, arrived 12 years earlier, is in decline. "Too rooted in their soil, too planched and thicketed", the villagers do not welcome outsiders, who might bring new blood and new vitality.
But in addition to the falsely accused men and their female companion, there is another arrival to worry about: a disabled, smiling man with a beard "shaped and honed to a point with wax". He tours the village, drawing charts, and acquires the nickname Mr Quill. Despite his amiability, he is the object of suspicion and fear because he seems to be involved in the planning of enclosures.
The fear takes shape with the arrival of the landowner's cousin and his henchmen. Edmund Jordan combines modernising zeal with a tyrant's willingness to play on superstition to further his plans. He aims to enclose the common land to create pastures for sheep, removing the villagers' livelihoods and transferring the profits from farming to himself. When the landowner's mare is killed, Jordan claims that witchery has been at work in the village and rounds up various suspects, among them Walter's lover, along with Lizzie, the village's newly crowned, four-year-old "Gleaning Queen". A toxic mixture of Jordan's viciousness and the villagers' guilt-ridden dread bring about ruin.
This is a novel with plenty of incident but little drama, creating its considerable power, instead, through Walter's mesmerising narrative. At the end, it may not be too fanciful to conflate Walter and Crace, as the narrator steps out of bounds and says farewell to a way of life.
