Akenfield
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A hundred years from now, anyone wanting to know how things were on the land will turn more profitably to Akenfield than to a sheaf of anaemically professional social surveys. (the Guardian )
Product Description
This colourful, perceptive portrayal of English country life reverberates with the voices of the village inhabitants, from the reminiscences of survivors of the Great War evoking days gone by, to the concerns of a younger generation of farm-workers and the fascinating and personal recollections of, among others, the local schoolteacher, doctor, blacksmith, saddler, district nurse and magistrate. Providing insights into farming, education, welfare, class, religion and death, Akenfield forms a unique document of a way of life that has, in many ways, disappeared.
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First Sentence
Len and his wife live in a solitary house which stands not more than a yard off the Roman road. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Len and his wife live in a solitary house which stands not more than a yard off the Roman road. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a book to read if you have any forebears from the English peasantry: it will bring their lives sharply into focus and cure you of any lingering faith you might have had in the joys of the Rural Idyll. If you were at the bottom of the heap, the Rural Idyll was cold and impoverished and extremely hard work.
Blythe, a Suffolk boy himself, based this book on a series of interviews he carried out in the village of Charsfield, not far north of Ipswich. He caught the community right on the cusp, the horses just recently surrendered to the tractors, the commuters starting to move in. He spoke to men and women, young and old, and from all walks of life: older people recollect stone picking and tater picking and children being sewn into their winter underwear; the young blacksmith talks of his work almost with obsession.
Although it brings us up to what was the modern day when the book was published (the early 1970s) it's the harshness of working-class rural life at the end of the Victorian era and into the 1930s which really sticks in the mind - and the compassion and affection people could feel for one another even under quite brutal circumstances.
The whole lucid outline of the village is given to the reader in clear, fluent and beautifully readable prose. It helps that the author is very familiar with the landscape and people of which he wrote: he loves both, and is in enormous sympathy with them.
It is one of the best books I have ever read.
Blythe, a Suffolk boy himself, based this book on a series of interviews he carried out in the village of Charsfield, not far north of Ipswich. He caught the community right on the cusp, the horses just recently surrendered to the tractors, the commuters starting to move in. He spoke to men and women, young and old, and from all walks of life: older people recollect stone picking and tater picking and children being sewn into their winter underwear; the young blacksmith talks of his work almost with obsession.
Although it brings us up to what was the modern day when the book was published (the early 1970s) it's the harshness of working-class rural life at the end of the Victorian era and into the 1930s which really sticks in the mind - and the compassion and affection people could feel for one another even under quite brutal circumstances.
The whole lucid outline of the village is given to the reader in clear, fluent and beautifully readable prose. It helps that the author is very familiar with the landscape and people of which he wrote: he loves both, and is in enormous sympathy with them.
It is one of the best books I have ever read.
22 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Akenfield is a book which makes a concerted effort to fall between boundaries of fiction, biography and reportage, and as a result, is all the richer for the elements which it draws from each and blends into a most satisfying and enjoyable whole.
To deal with each element in reverse order, the book's reportage is that of a documentary of a Sussex village in 1974, although its field of vision extends as far back as the years before the Great War. The feeling is one of decline and fall, of a community which no longer is bound together by its old practices and habits, but which in many ways has benefited enormously from the changes brought about in society after the Second World War. At no stage is does this become a nostalgic lament for a lost England, but rather does Blythe reveal to us quite how hard life was for the poor in England's villages well into the Twentieth Century.
The biographical aspect of the book is to be found in the way Blythe presents a succession of different characters from the village and its surrounding area, from the farmhand to the housewife, and the magistrate in the Town. Each has his or her own story and fascinating, and often very funny, account of their lives, and one is left with a rich picture of a village society, where no one perspective is privileged over another.
And fiction? Well, Blythe makes plain in his introduction that Akenfield is a palimpsest of many villages, and its people are not single individuals but prisms through which the lives of many are reflected for us. Blythe's style of writing is brilliantly neutral and understated, even when dealing with harrowing or very funny topics (frequently the two go hand-in-hand).
Few books have made such a great impression on me.
To deal with each element in reverse order, the book's reportage is that of a documentary of a Sussex village in 1974, although its field of vision extends as far back as the years before the Great War. The feeling is one of decline and fall, of a community which no longer is bound together by its old practices and habits, but which in many ways has benefited enormously from the changes brought about in society after the Second World War. At no stage is does this become a nostalgic lament for a lost England, but rather does Blythe reveal to us quite how hard life was for the poor in England's villages well into the Twentieth Century.
The biographical aspect of the book is to be found in the way Blythe presents a succession of different characters from the village and its surrounding area, from the farmhand to the housewife, and the magistrate in the Town. Each has his or her own story and fascinating, and often very funny, account of their lives, and one is left with a rich picture of a village society, where no one perspective is privileged over another.
And fiction? Well, Blythe makes plain in his introduction that Akenfield is a palimpsest of many villages, and its people are not single individuals but prisms through which the lives of many are reflected for us. Blythe's style of writing is brilliantly neutral and understated, even when dealing with harrowing or very funny topics (frequently the two go hand-in-hand).
Few books have made such a great impression on me.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a book about the people of a village. Set in a Suffolk in the early 1960's the people in this book look both forward and backwards. The young looking forward into the possible time to come, and the old looking backwards into the desperation of the depression and the "Great War".
There are many books in print that concentrate on the changed rural landscape of Britain, but this book focuses on the people. In close to fifty monologues rural people of all ages and backgrounds talk about the present, the future and often the past. In their stories you find the best of times and the worst of times, you find optimism, pessimism and defeat.
Forge workers and farm labourers, carpenters and cart markers, vets and school teachers are all given the chance to speak of the world they know. This was a time when such variety of trade could still be found in a village, although the numbers were falling.
Many themes are present in the book - with time and how it is used recurring throughout the book. The perfect straight lines of horse drawn ploughing were possible in the past because labour was cheap and time was cheaper. Today, time is the enemy and a tractor plough need not be drawn so straight. "I began in world without time" says a saddler, meaning a job took as long as it needed to take. "Time in a village is quite different from time a town...... I knew so little about time and its importance when I came here" says the author who moved into the village.
A second important theme is the link between the village men and the land, a link they was being lost as farm workers left the land and were replaced by "outsiders". The farmers and farmworkers knew their land and they knew their animals. Although there was cruelty in farming, a farmer says "Pigs are interesting people and some of them can they leave a gap when they go off to the bacon factory".
This really is a wonderful book, full of people sitting on the cusp of enormous change and trying to make sense of it. Trying to hold on to what they see is good, and worried about what they see as bad.
My only criticism is in the format of the book, which has squeezed a long book into nearly 300 pages of very fine print. If you have not already visited the optometrists you may need to if you read this book.
This is a remarkable book. Very highly recommended.
There are many books in print that concentrate on the changed rural landscape of Britain, but this book focuses on the people. In close to fifty monologues rural people of all ages and backgrounds talk about the present, the future and often the past. In their stories you find the best of times and the worst of times, you find optimism, pessimism and defeat.
Forge workers and farm labourers, carpenters and cart markers, vets and school teachers are all given the chance to speak of the world they know. This was a time when such variety of trade could still be found in a village, although the numbers were falling.
Many themes are present in the book - with time and how it is used recurring throughout the book. The perfect straight lines of horse drawn ploughing were possible in the past because labour was cheap and time was cheaper. Today, time is the enemy and a tractor plough need not be drawn so straight. "I began in world without time" says a saddler, meaning a job took as long as it needed to take. "Time in a village is quite different from time a town...... I knew so little about time and its importance when I came here" says the author who moved into the village.
A second important theme is the link between the village men and the land, a link they was being lost as farm workers left the land and were replaced by "outsiders". The farmers and farmworkers knew their land and they knew their animals. Although there was cruelty in farming, a farmer says "Pigs are interesting people and some of them can they leave a gap when they go off to the bacon factory".
This really is a wonderful book, full of people sitting on the cusp of enormous change and trying to make sense of it. Trying to hold on to what they see is good, and worried about what they see as bad.
My only criticism is in the format of the book, which has squeezed a long book into nearly 300 pages of very fine print. If you have not already visited the optometrists you may need to if you read this book.
This is a remarkable book. Very highly recommended.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Amazing book AND film
I studied this book as part of my history degree and found it fascinating both as history and literature. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Susie
Interesting social history of a Suffolk village
This really is a good read for those interested in social history. The book is a collection of stories, originating from older people in the village, about their life when young,... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Graham1952
Brilliant.
I received brilliant service, the book arrived very promptly and was in as-new condition. A totally satisfied customer. Will certainly order again.
Published 7 months ago by Trina
A genuine document of rural life
The first thing you need to know is that this book is a series of transcripts of the actual accounts, in their own words, of ordinary people. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Peasant
An elegantly written account of village life in an age now gone.
While reading 'Ackenfield,' I found myself returning to certain passages to experience again the elegance of Ronald Blythe's writing. Read more
Published on 22 April 2010 by J. R. Lloyd
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