All Among the Barley

February 5, 2018 By John E. Riutta in Newly Noted Books Tags: all, among, barley, Bloomsbury, book, Fiction, harrison, News, novel

This just in! Melissa Harrison‘s new novel All Among the Barley will be published this autumn by Bloomsbury.

I know, I know; I don’t review much fiction here in The Well-read Naturalist – primarily because I haven’t been all that impressed by most of the contemporary fiction I’ve read, and because few contemporary authors I’ve found seem to have any genuine understanding of the natural world, much less incorporate it into their work.

However with Ms. Harrison, given her superb editorial work on the Seasons quartet from Elliott & Thompson, and her sublime Rain; Four Walks in English Weather from Faber & Faber, I know I have found an author of not only exquisite writing skill but also possessing a deep and expansive understanding of the natural world. Thus I think it entirely reasonable to expect that this latest novel – her third, following upon Clay and At Hawthorne Time – is one about which to become more than just a bit tingly with anticipation.

John E. Riutta

Founder and publisher of The Well-read Naturalist. Inveterate autodidact. Has repeatedly been found out standing in many fields. Plays well with otters.

→ John E. Riutta

1 Comment

Annis Pratt
February 6, 2018 @ 07:41

Have you heard about the new genre of Eco-Fiction? I am a passionate lover of nature and wanted a way to get my many notes from kayaking and canoeing rivers and marshes as well as my Atlantic Ocean sailing adventures into published form, so I used them all for the settings in my Infinite Games series about the draining of the East Anglian Fens and the fierce resistance to it. I invented a world to use both my American and British flora and fauna, but it is down to earth, not fantastic: http://amzn.to/2DDTtqs

Recent Reviews

The Marvelously Multifaceted Mr. Newton
January 22, 2023
Most of us likely first heard the name Isaac Newton when we were in primary school. For some, it may have been in a classroom; for others it may have been while viewing a television program – most likely a cartoon. However, in most all instances, I’d be willing to wager that the name was […]
Then There Were Dragons
November 20, 2022
The phrase “here there be dragons,” so famously seen on old maps indicating places where there were great and mysterious dangers to be found, was not so very long ago not simply a metaphor. In fact, no less an authority on natural philosophy (what would later become known as natural history) than Linnaeus himself included […]
Meeting Your Local Spiders
October 9, 2022
When it comes to lists of common phobias, arachnophobia – the fear of spiders – almost always makes the top ten, and more often than not, the top five. Some have even argued that the fear of spiders, like the fear of snakes, is an innate fear – people are simply born with it thanks […]