In the Place of Fallen Leaves Tim Pears 9781408884102 Books
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In the Place of Fallen Leaves Tim Pears 9781408884102 Books
This first novel shows its origins as a series of short stories about the author's home village and betrays a great deal of influence of the magical realist novels which were so popular at the time of writing. Louis De Bernieres was greatly impressed by this debut novel and it won a number of prizes. The writing is more mature than one would expect from a first novel and there are some scenes of great insight. Having said all that it can be a touch too quirky for its own good and is far too long. I strongly suspect the author had no clear plan for how to finish and a number of characters float in and out of prominence. There is at last one major continuity problem caused probably by incorporating two stories about the same characters without considering a logical continuum. A good read. I assume the author chose to write in character of a thirteen year old girl because of the opportunity to write about puberty and perhaps a bit too much Harper Lee.Product details
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In the Place of Fallen Leaves Tim Pears 9781408884102 Books Reviews
I was waiting for some coherent narrative...to no avail. Decently written atmospheric sketches, but they were pointless, no plot to speak of...empty air. A good writing class exercise, but other than that, it's all empty air.
This is a book to get lost in. As are all his books.You cannot put it down. His characters are deep and interesting.Nothing phoney about the people or their behaviours. Love it!
very poignant story of a teens life with family and friends in a small English village and all the trials and tribulations that go with it
"The afternoon was at its height the sun had just begun its slow descending curve towards Cornwall and was slumbering on the wing. A drowsy hornet drifted by. The harsh air rasped my throat as I inhaled, and my eyelids felt heavy as velvet ... In the hedge to our right I spotted a ripe blackberry, and as daddy reached over to pluck it another appeared, then another. Soon his lips and tongue were stained purple. He lay down in the shadowed verge and fell asleep, and I joined him." - from IN THE PLACE OF FALLEN LEAVES
In his novel, Notwithstanding, based on rural life in the English county of Surrey, author Louis de Bernières calls IN THE PLACE OF FALLEN LEAVES by Tim Pears a "beautiful book." And, indeed, it is.
IN THE PLACE OF FALLEN LEAVES is set in the rusticity of Devon, a south coast shire further to the west of Surrey and one short of that of Land's End, Cornwall. It's the end of a stifling hot summer in the year 1984, and the main character is thirteen-year old Alison, who lives with her two older brothers, Tom and Ian, her older sister Pamela, and her parents and grandparents on a generations-held farm somewhere near the mouth of the Teign River in the triangle of land formed by the towns of Exeter, Torquay, and Newton Abbot.
Alison serves as the narrator of/participant in contemporary events of that September and October and as chronicler of past family history before her time. From the tenor of her narrative, the reader can almost feel the heat that oppresses the region and taste the dust that swirls off the parched land.
As in NOTWITHSTANDING, the affection and empathy of Pears for his book's characters is sumptuously evident. But whereas the former is essentially a series of short stories connected only by its locale, the latter is threaded beginning to end by Alison and her kin even as the author weaves-in other major personae, such as the parish Rector and Johnathan, the son of the former landlord, Viscount Teignmouth, who sold out to a property developer.
A necessary element of any novel is adversity, which, here, is provided by the effects of the sizzling weather and the challenge of several critical events within the family itself. So, for Alison, it becomes a story of maturation and, for the family, one of survival. As crafted by Tim's pen, it's lovingly done, though I do wonder slightly if his depiction of Alison and her perspective would be different if he were a woman. Oh well, no matter, really.
I imagine coming-of-age novels set in rural places number in the thousands. So, why read this one? Well, if your love for England, like mine, is relatively far greater than that for, say, Nebraska, the Philippines, the Ukraine, or any other place, then that's reason enough.
This book is certainly one of the finest short novels I've ever read. The writing is so poetic and continually stunning that, like the heat in the Devonshire summer in which it is set, it takes one's breath away. And yet author Tim Pears never allows his stylism to obtrude into the story and, more significantly, the narratives of the characters' past and present lives in the village as told by narrator Alison. Rather, he very deftly weaves it into the structure of the book so that the reader unwittingly succumbs to the feeling that s/he is spiralling around something lovely and tender at the very heart of life. For, despite the tragedies inherent in mucking through the world as a sentient being which are scattered throughout the book, the feeling with which one comes away from the reading of it is one of almost desperate tenderness such as only the best poetry usually evokes.
Here is a sampling
"The women of the village sweating around the stoves, after calling from their kitchens, finally stepped outside and proceeded to follow each other without consultation, pulled not by their will but by impulses so far out on the edges of their senses that they were unaware of them at the time. It was only afterwards that they were able to infer from traces in the sediment of their memories that they must have been drawn by the inaudible screeching and the blurred tilting of wings of seagulls, and by the intangible taste of salt in the air..."
So rich and lovely is the language and so simple the tale that I felt completely as one with narrator Alison by the end, "lost in the beauty and the strangeness of the earth."
This first novel shows its origins as a series of short stories about the author's home village and betrays a great deal of influence of the magical realist novels which were so popular at the time of writing. Louis De Bernieres was greatly impressed by this debut novel and it won a number of prizes. The writing is more mature than one would expect from a first novel and there are some scenes of great insight. Having said all that it can be a touch too quirky for its own good and is far too long. I strongly suspect the author had no clear plan for how to finish and a number of characters float in and out of prominence. There is at last one major continuity problem caused probably by incorporating two stories about the same characters without considering a logical continuum. A good read. I assume the author chose to write in character of a thirteen year old girl because of the opportunity to write about puberty and perhaps a bit too much Harper Lee.
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