Peculiar Ground
Summary (from the publisher): The Costa Award-winning author of The Pike makes her literary fiction debut with an extraordinary historical novel in the spirit of Wolf Hall and Atonement—a great English country house novel, spanning three centuries, that explores surprisingly timely themes of immigration and exclusion.
It is the seventeenth century and a wall is being raised around Wychwood, transforming the great house and its park into a private realm of ornamental lakes, grandiose gardens, and majestic avenues designed by Mr. Norris, a visionary landscaper. In this enclosed world everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war. Dissenters shelter in the woods, lovers rendezvous in secret enclaves, and outsiders—migrants fleeing the plague—find no mercy.
Three centuries later, far away in Berlin, another wall is raised, while at Wychwood, an erotic entanglement over one sticky, languorous weekend in 1961 is overshadowed by news of historic change. Young Nell, whose father manages the estate, grows up amid dramatic upheavals as the great house is invaded: a pop festival by the lake, a television crew in the dining room, a Great Storm brewing. In 1989, as the Cold War peters out, a threat from a different kind of conflict reaches Wychwood’s walls.
Lucy Hughes-Hallett conjures an intricately structured, captivating story that explores the lives of game keepers and witches, agitators and aristocrats; the exuberance of young love and the pathos of aging; and the way those who try to wall others out risk finding themselves walled in. With poignancy and grace, she illuminates a place where past and present are inextricably linked by stories, legends, and history—and by one patch of peculiar ground.
It is the seventeenth century and a wall is being raised around Wychwood, transforming the great house and its park into a private realm of ornamental lakes, grandiose gardens, and majestic avenues designed by Mr. Norris, a visionary landscaper. In this enclosed world everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war. Dissenters shelter in the woods, lovers rendezvous in secret enclaves, and outsiders—migrants fleeing the plague—find no mercy.
Three centuries later, far away in Berlin, another wall is raised, while at Wychwood, an erotic entanglement over one sticky, languorous weekend in 1961 is overshadowed by news of historic change. Young Nell, whose father manages the estate, grows up amid dramatic upheavals as the great house is invaded: a pop festival by the lake, a television crew in the dining room, a Great Storm brewing. In 1989, as the Cold War peters out, a threat from a different kind of conflict reaches Wychwood’s walls.
Lucy Hughes-Hallett conjures an intricately structured, captivating story that explores the lives of game keepers and witches, agitators and aristocrats; the exuberance of young love and the pathos of aging; and the way those who try to wall others out risk finding themselves walled in. With poignancy and grace, she illuminates a place where past and present are inextricably linked by stories, legends, and history—and by one patch of peculiar ground.
Review: I received an uncorrected proof copy of this novel from HarperCollins.
Switching in time between the seventeenth and nineteenth century, this novel is set on the great estate of Wychwood in England. In 1663, the landscaper Mr. Norris is designing ornamental lakes and elaborate gardens as a wall is raised around the estate. In 1961, Nell, a little girl whose father manages the estate, witnesses adult behavior she cannot understand and talk of the wall being raised in Berlin which confuses her.
Joined across time both thematically and by the great estate, the two storylines focus heavily on the impact and import of walls, both physical and internal. Barriers that guard and shield but that also enclose and trap. Barriers that ultimately cannot hold forever. The question of who has ownership, who should be allowed entry, and how to define trespassing are constantly debated. Throughout the novel, the elaborate grounds and structure of Wychwood loom behind the characters and connect them through the decades.
This novel was well written. Certain lines, such as "the lives of the saints never tell us that the holiest may be irritable or tired as they perform their good works" caused me to pause and read the line a second time (406). My favorite elements of the novel were the many descriptions of the great estate, the budding romance experienced by Mr. Norris, the childlike innocence of Nell as a child, and the beautiful maternal scenes of Nell adeptly caring for her fussy infant.
However, despite many excellent elements, this failed to capture my attention in a way that I had hoped. There were far too many characters, meaning many were never full fleshed out and it was difficult for me to keep up with all the names. Hughes-Hallett rotates between various perspectives of many of the characters, but it felt like just getting a taste rather than the full story. Furthermore, despite the many thematic connections and the linked setting, I found the two time periods too loosely woven together to work well. I didn't care for Mr. Norris as a narrator and while I did like Nell's perspective better, the time jumped so quickly to her as an adult that I felt like I had missed too much in the character's lives to feel closely connected to any of them. In short, despite its highly competent writing style and beautifully imagined setting, this novel seems to attempt to tackle to many years, too many characters, and too many themes.
Stars: 3
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