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“Rarely does language so plainspoken and
elemental tell a story so richly open to interpretation on so many different
levels…With economy and grace, the award-winning Crace gives his work a
simplicity and symmetry that belie the disturbances beneath the consciousness
of its narrator…Crace continues to occupy a singular place in contemporary
literature.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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“Crace’s signature measured delivery and
deliberate focus create unforgettably poetic passages that quiver with beauty.
An electrifying return to form.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred)
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“As with Crace’s other novels, Harvest is deftly written, in language—formal,
slightly archaic even—that reflects the setting it describes. It’s also tightly
plotted…Crace’s real concern is his characters, the way that, like all of us,
they make mistakes and act from weakness, and turn on one another when things
go wrong.”
— Los Angeles Times
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“Crace, an original and a literary stylist,
with, usually, something remarkable to say, says it here in a haunting work of
sudden violence and vengeance…Few novels as fine or as complex in their
apparent simplicity will be published this, or indeed any, year.”
— Irish Times
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“Harvest
is as finely written as it is tautly structured. Pungently flavored with
archaic words, its language is exhilaratingly exact, sometimes poetic and
sometimes stark. Magnificently resurrecting a pivotal moment in our history
about which it is deeply knowledgeable, this simultaneously elegiac and
unillusioned novel is an achievement worthy to stand alongside those of Crace’s
great fictional influence, William Golding.”
— Sunday Times (London)
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“In language beautiful and painstakingly
precise, Jim Crace circumscribes the story as neatly as a fairy tale…Entirely
absorbing.”
— Minneapolis Star Tribune
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“Ravishingly rich in evocations of country life…Crace’s
prose is so sensual you can’t help but believe it describes an actual material
place. But this village is like the forests of the Brothers Grimm, a setting
meant to be both familiar and strange. If you think Crace is only talking about
the shift from the medieval to the modern world, you’d be very, very wrong.”
— Salon
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“Surreptitiously thought-provoking…Harvest attains a haunting and almost
subversive quality.”
— Boston Globe
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“[Harvest]
is intellectually and morally engaging while also being exciting to read…Crace’s
imagery brilliantly suggests the loamy, lyric glories of rustic English
language and life…[He] devotes his considerable talents to telling an affecting
tale of a bound world and its simple people as they head toward a tragic and
inexorable breakdown.”
— Wall Street Journal