Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer's Reviews > Unsettled Ground

Winner of the 2021 Costa Novel Prize

I re-read this book after its deserved shortlisting for the 2021 Women's Prize.

A remarkable story of rural 21st century marginalisation; repercussions of life changing events; resilience to trauma; and recalibration of identity and relationships.

On my second read I found the book equally enjoyable - one thing that did strike me was how much of the book's underlying story is hinted at in the very brief first chapter.

ORIGINAL REVIEW (DECEMBER 2019)

This is the first book I have read by Claire Fuller, despite it being her fourth novel, but I was aware of her work given that her first book won the prestigious Desmond Elliott Prize for debut fiction in 2015, defeating the phenomenon that was “Elizabeth is Missing” (to give an example of the ability of the prize to identify brilliant talent – the other recent winners are Eimear McBride, Lisa McInerney, Francis Spufford, Preti Taneja, Claire Adam and Derek Owusu – if you are looking for a list of authors whose careers you should follow that I would suggest would make a very good start); her second novel shortlisted for the Encore prize for second novels (winners of that prize run by the Royal Society of Literature include Anne Enright, Ali Smith, Sally Rooney and a host of other Booker listed authors).

I am not sure I have read a book whose opening had such unsettling and unfortunate resonances for me - a story of two 51 year old twins whose mother suffers a stroke, and with much of the opening plot of the book about discovering the costs of funerals – which uncannily sums up the start and end of the difficult last twelve months of my own life.

The book is set in a rural part of present day Wiltshire - Jeanie and Julius Seeder (no one is sure if the name was an elaborate joke by their father) despite their age, live with their mother Dot in a small cottage which still has an outside toilet.

Dot and Jeanie grow vegetables which they sell both at the bottom of their garden in an honest box and more recently to an upmarket deli in the local village. Julius does a variety of casual labouring jobs for cash.

Their ability to survive is helped by a long arrangement with the local farmer and landowner Rawson that they can rent the cottage for free in perpetuity – something which dates back to their father’s death 40 year’s previously, decapitated while driving Rawson’s new tractor (after an accident the twins believe was due to faulty bolts fitted by Rawson).

The family’s life is circumscribed: Jeanie by a childhood heart condition and by a lac of desire for things other women seem to her to seek for – fashion, sex, money; Julius by the after effects of the accident which mean he suffers severe travel sickness and the unspoken requirement to care for his sister; the whole family by a fierce independence, self-sufficiency, and bond over folk music and their shared beliefs about who they are and their family story.

When at the book’s start the twins find their mother dead from what later turns out to be a stroke they are forced to: engage with the other people (including Rawson and Dot’s best friend Bridget); engage with the outside world (for example the need to register the death and incur the costs of a funeral); confront their lack of any money; deal with those who quickly move to exploit their vulnerability; come to terms with discrepancies between what they have always believed about themselves and their history and what seems to be the emerging reality of their situation; and to reset their own relationship.

To say much more would be to spoil the story – a relatively simple but powerful tale of rural poverty, of those marginalized from 21st Century English society (both exploited by the establishment and ignored by progressives) and at heart a tale of resilience when everything you know about yourself changes and of a recalibration of beliefs, lifestyle and relationships in the face of the repercussions of a life changing traumatic event.

My thanks to Penguin General UK for an ARC via NetGalley