Product Description

Written by the author of "Hawksmoor", winner of the Whitbread Prize for Fiction, and "Chatterton", this is a pastoral novel of the late 20th century in which the author meditates on the nature of history, the problem of time and the true qualities of the English landscape.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1128909 in Books
• Published on: 1990-04-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Customer Reviews

very good
Contrary to many others books by Peter Ackroyd this one isn't set in London, but that doesn't diminish its merits in the least. If you've read and liked other books by Peter Ackroyd, or if you like intelligent historical novels in general you can't go wrong with this one.

Ackroyd is a master at creating a mood of suspense and untold secrets, the book is driven on by a very-well crafted plot, and peopled by captivating characters. Very very good!

The novel with everything
This book has everything: comedy, drama, mystery, love, ghosts, madness, tragedy, brilliant characters, many separate but interwoven stories, plus a philosophical/emotional investigation into the beginning and end of the universe, time, death and the star dust we're all made of. Compassionate, funny, brilliant.

What on earth?
This is the only one of Peter Ackroyd's novels that I have read and I found it disappointing. The characters are caricatures, from the farmer and his sagely simple son to the unconvincingly ignorant and unsympathetic Lesbian from The Ministry. The metaphysical aspects are vague and inconsistent, the relevance of the star Aldebaran (a name given to it by Arabic speakers, of whom there were precious few in Bronze Age Britain) to the "Old Barren One" forced beyond reason. If you want satirical bucolic lampoon, Stella Gibbons did it far better in "Cold Comfort Farm". The skeleton of a much better novel lies within these pages; a shame that Ackroyd perhaps did not have the time or the vision to produce it.