A Perfect Read

I've just finished reading a great book. In fact, out of the tremendous number of books that I've read, I would say that this is probably one of the most perfect, if not the most. It's not a new publication. In fact it was published originally way back in 1994, but that doesn't stop it being great. It was the first novel written by Tim Pears, and is entitled, In the Place of Fallen Leaves.

Tim Pears was born in 1956 and grew up in Devon (UK), leaving school at sixteen. He has worked in a wide variety of jobs and is a graduate of the National Film and Television School. His first novel, In the Place of Fallen Leaves, won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award. His second novel, In a Land of Plenty, has been adapted for television and is now a major BBC television series. Since then he has had a further three novels published, the latest of which, Blenheim Orchard, was published earlier this year.

The story is set in the long hot English summer of 1984 --- one of the hottest summers of the 20th Century, and records life in a small Devon village through the eyes of a young girl who is part of a dynastic farming family. The fact that the author is also a published poet shows through every page of this book, his descriptive abilities transporting the reader to be an onlooker, almost to the point of voyeurism, of all that took place during that summer affected by the miner's strike, record levels of unemployment and a national teacher's strike.

Jennifer Salway, in a review of this book for the Observer newspaper, wrote of it that it was 'More perfect than any first novel deserves to be'. I concur. When I finished the final paragraph last night I felt saddened that what seemed to be a special episode in my own life had ended, such is the power of this writer to draw the reader into becoming an integral part of the story themselves.

Have I eulogised too much dear reader? Well, all I can say is that if I have then this book deserves it, and more! I guess that a good second-hand copy will probably be available from Amazon.com if you want to read it for yourself.