Elmet

by Fiona Mozley Narrated by Gareth Bennett Ryan

Overview

In this atmospheric and profoundly moving debut, Cathy and Daniel live with their father, John, in the remote woods of Yorkshire, in a house the three of them built themselves. John is a gentle brute of a man, a former enforcer who fights for money when he has to, but who otherwise just wants to be left alone to raise his children. When a local landowner shows up on their doorstep, their precarious existence is threatened, and a series of actions is set in motion that can only end in violence. Steeped in the natural world of northern England, this is a lyrical commentary on the bonds of siblings and fatherhood, and on the meaning of community in the modern world. Elmet marks the launch of a major new voice in literary fiction.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times - John Williams

…a lyrical and mythic work…[Mozley's] story is rooted, actually and tonally, in ancient soil. The mentions, early on, of cars and television sets are surprising, some of the first indicators that we're anywhere north of, say, the 12th century. The successful execution of this bold strategy, to voice a story set in the present day as if it could be happening nearly any time in human history, is just one indicator of Mozley's skill and ambition…Debut novels especially can sometimes too clearly betray their debts, but Elmet is a beguiling patchwork of influences held together by Mozley's distinct voice…In its signposting and pacing, Elmet promises a reckoning, and we get one. The climactic scene is full of bedlam. It is also cartoonish. One might balk at its outlandishness, or squirm at its vivid, protracted violence, but it keeps your attention and doesn't leave any fireworks unpopped…Despite the book's frequent attention to realistic details, it is securely situated in fable territory, and Mozley's sheer storytelling confidence sends the reader sailing past almost every speed bump.

Publishers Weekly

11/06/2017
Mozley’s debut, shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, is a rugged, potent work whose concentrated mixture of lyricism and violence recalls Cormac McCarthy. A taciturn giant of a man, a bare-knuckle fighter who is the “fastest and toughest... in Britain and Ireland,” builds a house for himself and his two children in the Yorkshire woods, where “the soil was alive with ruptured stories that cascaded and rotted then found form once more and pushed up through.” In this secluded spot, he attempts to strengthen his two children, a slight, observant boy and an indomitable girl, “against the dark things of the world.” Dark things soon intrude as the family becomes embroiled in a bitter dispute with a villainous local landowner and his two entitled sons. That conflict generates overheated scenes of gore and overlong speeches that dissipate the novel’s power. There are nevertheless many eerily beautiful scenes, particularly one in which the grizzled father rigs up rustic Christmas lights deep in an ancient copse. Mozley is best when describing the tight-knit family in its isolated splendor, creating, and then clinging to, their “strange, sylvan otherworld.” (Dec.)

From the Publisher

Winner of the Polari First Book Prize * Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award * Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award

“Beguiling . . . A lyrical and mythic work . . . Mozley’s sheer storytelling confidence sends the reader sailing.”
─The New York Times

“[A] magical debut novel. Set in modern-day Yorkshire, this dazzling debut feels steeped in a more primitive, violent past. Teenagers Cathy and Daniel are living self-sufficiently in the woods with their father—until their peaceful existence is threatened by a wealthy landowner. Narrated by 14-year-old Daniel in seductively poetic prose, the book shines a light on the toll of power wielded cruelly, as well as on a countering force: the extraordinary sustenance family devotion can provide.”
─People (Book of the Week)

“Excellent . . . Brims with primal, folkloric power.”
─Wall Street Journal

"One of the literary sensations of 2017."
─NPR

“Fiona Mozley’s debut novel, Elmet, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, is a firestorm of a story. Through carefully woven characters, Mozley spools a tale that simultaneously homes in on the dynamics of a family and assesses the systemic issues within a rural society.”
─Electric Literature

“Fiona Mozley’s debut novel Elmet is hypnotic and atmospheric . . . [Her] writing is lyrical and evocative.”
─BuzzFeed

“A literary gothic British thriller that will make you want to smash the capitalists.”
─New York Magazine

“A finalist for this year’s Man Booker Prize, Fiona Mozley’s Elmet is a gorgeous, haunting novel about a family living in Elmet in rural Yorkshire.”
─Southern Living

“A gripping, disquieting first novel set in Yorkshire, which was shortlisted for Man Booker Prize. Elmet is bleak but beautiful, earthy yet airy. Mozley has emerged as an exciting new talent.”
─Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize, Mozley’s preternaturally accomplished debut novel is a riveting and disquieting fable of a family reaching back to life’s essentials and embracing nature’s beauty, abundance, and challenges, yet remaining caught in the perpetual twist of human good and evil. In pristinely gorgeous and eviscerating prose, Mozley, who chimes with Hannah Tinti, Lydia Millet, and Daniel Woodrell, sets ablaze a suspenseful family tragedy stoked by social critique, escalated by men’s violence against women, and darkly veined with elements of country noir.”
─Booklist (starred review)

“Part fairy tale, part coming-of-age story, part revenge tragedy with literary connections, Mozley’s first novel is a shape-shifting, lyrical, but dark parable of life off the grid in modern Britain. Mozley’s instantaneous success . . . is a response to the stylish intensity of her work, which boldly winds multiple genres into a rich spinning top of a tale.”
─Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Striking a balance between mounting pressure and literary quietude, Elmet delivers a violent family drama that finds depth in the complexity of detail.”
─Shelf Awareness
 
“Thrums with all the energy and life of the forests that surround the family . . . Rhythmic and lilting, the writing is dreamily poetic . . . Elmet is a rich and earthy tale of family life, sibling relationships, identity, how we define community.”
─Financial Times
 
“A quiet explosion of a book, exquisite and unforgettable.”
─The Economist
 
“An impressive slice of contemporary noir steeped in Yorkshire legend . . . Elmet possesses a rich and unfussy lyricism.”
─The Guardian

"Pastoral idyll, political exposé, cosy family saga and horror tale, it reads like a traditional children’s story that turns into a gangster film: Hansel and Gretel meets The Godfather."
─Sunday Times

“A stunning debut . . . A wonder to behold. An utterly arresting novel about family, home, rural exploitation, violence and, most of all, the loyalty and love of children under siege.”
─Evening Standard (UK)

“One of the surprises on Britain’s Man Booker Prize shortlist last year was Elmet, the fine debut novel from Fiona Mozley. American readers now have the chance to experience the novel’s atmospheric writing and its vivid portrait of a family struggling to outrun its past . . . Elmet paints a memorable picture of fraught familial relationships and the perils of revenge.”
─BookPage
 
“As rich, wild, dark and beautiful as its Yorkshire setting, Elmet is a gripping debut about life on the margins and the power ─and limits─of family loyalty.”
─Bookreporter.com
 
“Lushly written, yet perfectly understated . . . What makes this novel stand out . . . is its dense palette of language, layer upon layer of image and visual description that transports the reader into an almost dreamlike world.”
─NY Journal of Books

“[With] many eerily beautiful scenes . . . A rugged, potent work whose concentrated mixture of lyricism and violence recalls Cormac McCarthy.”
—Publishers Weekly

Library Journal - Audio

02/15/2018
Listeners are advised to be patient with this story. It takes time to figure out the names of some primary characters and whom the narrator is seeking in the "current" chapters of the book. Much of the novel is background for the events that lead to the "current" pursuit. This background has exquisite descriptions of the modern remains of Elmet, an ancient kingdom in West Yorkshire, England, where Daniel and Cathy live with their father, John. John has built a cottage on land previously owned by the children's mother but is often away prizefighting. They live off the land by poaching game and growing a small garden. Mr. Price, the real landowner, wants the family to leave, or to employ John as an enforcer to bring his other tenants into line. Mr. Price organizes a large prizefight that John must win to protect his land for the children. Continued family existence leads to desperation and violence. Narrator Joe Jameson's characterizations are excellent, and his accent perfect for the setting. VERDICT This novel is highly recommended for adult audio collections.—Cliff Glaviano, formerly with Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., OH

DECEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

The dialect of northern England is a defining element in Fiona Mozley’s kicker of a first novel, a finalist for this year’s Man Booker Prize. Narrator Gareth Bennett-Ryan gives just enough of that sound to draw the listener into her strange and savage landscape. At first, and for what seems like many minutes, we have only that voice—the voice of a boy in an identified place, time, and circumstance. By calculated degrees, we’re brought from an atmosphere of mystery into a meticulously detailed contemporary northern England that is no less ungoverned and menacing than the worlds of fantasy and the supernatural that comprise Bennett-Ryan’s usual repertory. In an unforgettable match of voice and text, Bennett-Ryan creates a distinctively accented and nuanced world that is equal and counterpart to Mozley’s unique literary achievement. This memorable match of voice and text is a double pleasure, and a work of suspense unlike anything you’ve heard before. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2017-10-31
A not-always-gentle giant and his two children live peacefully in the woods, but the push and pull of old forces will eventually find them, and the results will be explosive.Part fairy tale, part coming-of-age story, part revenge tragedy with literary connections, Mozley's first novel is a shape-shifting, lyrical, but dark parable of life off the grid in modern Britain. Its narrator is 13-year-old Daniel, the tall, sensitive son of John Smythe, a man mountain who makes his living as a bare-knuckle fighter. Daniel, his lovely, fearless older sister, Cathy, and their father live in a house John built in a copse, on land that once belonged to the children's mother. They are self-sufficient, fed by game they hunt, seated on furniture they built. It's an idyllic if elemental life, lived largely outside society, until landowner Price, who once employed John as a debt collector, arrives to apply some pressure. Soon John is helping lead an insurrection of underpaid farm laborers and oppressed tenants against Price's clique of farmers and power brokers. The deal that will resolve this confrontation requires John to fight a brutal match, but the violence doesn't end there. Mozley's title refers to a Ted Hughes poetry sequence and a West Yorkshire setting with deep historical roots. Her ruined Eden of a landscape is evoked with beauty and empathy: "The soil was alive with ruptured stories that cascaded and rotted then found form once more and pushed up through the undergrowth and back into our lives." Ecological messages, class and gender conflict, and England's long history of struggle—all are mingled with Daniel's sexual awakening and a surreal, or superhuman, or quasi-spiritual, gothic and gory final reckoning.Mozley's instantaneous success—this debut landed straight on the 2017 Man Booker Prize shortlist—is a response to the stylish intensity of her work, which boldly winds multiple genres into a rich spinning top of a tale.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170157242
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	12/15/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

We arrived in summer when the landscape was in full bloom and the days were long and hot and the light was soft. I roamed shirtless and sweated cleanly and enjoyed the hug of the thick air. In those months I picked up freckles on my bony shoulders and the sun set slowly and the evenings were pewter before they were black, before the mornings seeped through again. Rabbits gamboled in the fields and when we were lucky, when the wind was still and a veil settled on the hills, we saw a hare.
 
Farmers shot vermin and we trapped rabbits for food. But not the hare. Not my hare. A dam, she lived with her drove in a nest in the shadow of the tracks. She was hardened to the passing of the trains and when I saw her I saw her alone as if she had crept out of the nest unseen and unheard. It was a rare thing for creatures of her kind to leave their young in summer and run through the fields. She was searching. Searching for food or for a mate. She searched as if she were a hunting animal, as if she were a hare who had thought again and decided not to be prey but rather to run and to hunt, as if she were a hare who found herself chased one day by a fox and stopped suddenly and turned and chased back.
 
Whatever the reason, she was unlike any other. When she darted I could barely see her but when she stopped for a moment she was the stillest thing for miles around. Stiller than the oaks and pines. Stiller even than the rocks and pylons. Stiller than the railway tracks. It was as if she had grabbed hold of the earth and pinned it down with her at its center, and even the quietest, most benign landmarks spun outrageously around, while all of it, the whole scene, was suckered in by her exaggerated, globular, amber eye.
 
And if the hare was made of myths then so too was the land at which she scratched. Now pocked with clutches of trees, once the whole county had been woodland and the ghosts of the ancient forest could be marked when the wind blew. The soil was alive with ruptured stories that cascaded and rotted then found form once more and pushed up through the undergrowth and back into our lives. Tales of green men peering from thickets with foliate faces and legs of gnarled timber. The calls of half-starved hounds rushing and panting as they snatched at charging quarry. Robyn Hode and his pack of scrawny vagrants, whistling and wrestling and feasting as freely as the birds whose plumes they stole. An ancient forest ran in a grand strip from north to south. Boars and bears and wolves. Does, harts, stags. Miles of underground fungi. Snowdrops, bluebells, primroses. The trees had long since given way to crops and pasture and roads and houses and railway tracks and little copses, like ours, were all that was left.
 
Daddy and Cathy and I lived in a small house that Daddy built with materials from the land here about. He chose for us a small ash copse two fields from the east coast main line, far enough not to be seen, close enough to know the trains well. We heard them often enough: the hum and ring of the passenger trains, the choke and gulp of the freight, passing by with their cargo tucked behind in painted metal tanks. They had timetables and intervals of their own, drawing growth rings around our house with each journey, ringing past us like prayer chimes. The long, indigo Adelantes and Pendolinos that streaked from London to Edinburgh. The smaller trains that bore more years, with rust on their rattling pantographs. Old carthorse-trains chugging up to the knacker, they moved too slowly for the younger tracks and slipped on the hot-rolled steel like old men on ice.
 
***
 
On the day we arrived an old squaddy drove up the hill in an articulated lorry filled with cracked and discarded stone from an abandoned builders’ yard. The squaddy let Daddy do most of the unloading while he sat on a freshly cut log and smoked cigarette after cigarette that Cathy rolled from her own tobacco and papers. He watched her closely as she spun them with her fingers and tipped tongue over teeth to lick the seal. He looked at her right thigh as she rested the tobacco pouch upon it and more than once leaned over to pick it up, brushing his hand against her as he did so, then pretending to read the text on the packet. He offered to light her cigarettes for her each time. He held out the flame eagerly and took offence, like a child, when she continued to light them herself. He could not see that she was scowling the whole time and frowning at her hands as she did his work. He was not a man who could look and see and understand faces well enough to tell. He was not one of those who know what eyes and lips mean or who can imagine that a pretty face might not be closed around pretty thoughts.
 
The squaddy talked all afternoon about the army and the fighting he had done in Iraq and in Bosnia and how he had seen boys as young as me slashed open with knives, their innards a passing blue. There was little darkness in him when he told us this. Daddy worked on the house during the day and in the evening the two grown men went down the hill to drink some of the cider the squaddy had brought in a plastic pop bottle. Daddy did not stay long. He did not like drinking much and he did not like company save for me and my sister.
 
When Daddy came back he told us that he'd had an argument with the squaddy. He had clouted the squaddy about the head with his left fist and now had a bloody nick in his skin just by the thumb knuckle.
 
I asked him what had started the argument.
 
“He were a bastard, Daniel,” Daddy said to me. “He were a bastard.”
 
Cathy and I thought that was fair enough.

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