Publication
London Secker and Warburg 1992
ISBN
0436520745 / 9780436520747
Language
Collections
Description
Vintage Past- Inventive tales of times gone by to tell the histories we think we know At the heart of this novel lies the fictional village of Ulverton. It is the fixed point in a book that spans three hundred years. Different voices tell the story of Ulverton- one of Cromwell's soldiers staggers home to find his wife remarried and promptly disappears, an eighteenth century farmer carries on an affair with a maid under his wife's nose, a mother writes letters to her imprisoned son, a 1980s real estate company discover a soldier's skeleton, dated to the time of Cromell... Told through diaries, sermons, letters, drunken pub conversations and film scripts this is a masterful novel that reconstructs the unrecorded history of England.
User reviews
LibraryThing member philippa58
entranced from the beginning; bleaker than I anticipated; certainly not pastorale..sophisticayed structure didn't feel at all tricksy,,,particularly enjoyed the early parts of Ulverton's story...though had real difficulty reading view 9...Stitches..1887...I read this as solidly as I could for
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overview and overall impression...will now need to reread it slowly for its richness...at least the first 2 thirds Show Less
LibraryThing member AdonisGuilfoyle
Sometimes a book just calls to you, through cover or blurb, and Ulverton is a prime example. Great concept - the history of a small country village told through various first-hand accounts, from letters to a documentary - but not the easiest book to read. The semi-illiterate letters from a mother
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to her jailbird son and a stream-of-consciousness ramble from a broadly spoken farmer nearly defeated me (I'm still not sure what was said, and had to wait for a 'translation' of events in the following chapters), yet I persevered, such is the amazing skill of the author. He has the reader believing in these characters, and in the equally fictional Ulverton itself, by the distinctive narrative style and humour of each 'voice'. I don't regret plucking this somewhat experimental novel off the library shelf, but be warned: some of the chapters will leave you with a frown and a headache, like trying to read small text or decipher bad handwriting! Show Less
LibraryThing member mbmackay
Three centuries of a fictional English village told in the voices of 7 residents over the ages. OK, but failed to grab me.
Read in Samoa July 2002
Read in Samoa July 2002
Awards
Ondaatje Prize (Winner — 1992)
Original publication date
1992