Cover: Rhi Winter
‘The mound was built and the great stones erected as signposts in the landscape, so people would never forget that this is sacred land.’ (p 253)
Old ground
The great Alan Garner, Susan Cooper and others established a wonderful tradition of children’s literature that taps richly into the magical landscape of our British Isles. That is to say, not only the power of the landscape itself, but also the myths and legends of its ancient roots. Even without a belief in magic as such, there is a potency still in stone circles, ancient barrows and the like, because these things seem to represent an awareness of the earth, the sky and the seasons that still has much to say to us today, or perhaps ought to have. Whether consciously or subliminally, these things give a novel a deep resonance with our very identity, our origins and our essence as human beings. They can also provide powerful metaphors for events and issues in our modern world.
This tradition has, thankfully, been continued by many other fine authors since, although it has faded in and out of prominence at different times. A few years back Bone Jack by Sara Crowe dipped very impressively into this area and, more recently, two outstanding fantasy sequences, Celine Kiernan’s Wild Magic trilogy and Catherine Doyle’s Storm Keeper trilogy, have drawn effectively, if rather more fancifully, on Irish lands and legend. However, it is a while now since I discovered a book that has so successfully blended a relevant, contemporary story with the post-Garner tradition as does Lu Hersey’s new Broken Ground.
Rich ground
Of its precedents, what this new book puts me most in mind of is Alan Garner’s The Owl Service. Though no less thoughtful, Lu Hersey’s style is far more explicit, more accessible than Alan Garner’s very densely packed, concentrated writing, and her setting and themes are quite distinct. However, the parallels lie in the exploration of intense relationships between a trio of teenage protagonists and their families, worked out against, and through, a background of particular landscape and its ancient myths. In this case, her setting is an only thinly veiled version of the area around Silbury Hill in Wiltshire.
Lu Hersey’s trio of troubled youngsters centre on the novels’s narrator, Arlo, whose family have lost their long-standing ownership of the local farm and its land, following the suicide of his father. Warm-hearted and sensible Jaz, the friend Arlo is very attracted to, is a girl of African heritage, only recently returned to this area of England. The third of the triangle is Hayden, son of the violent and abusive Phelps, the new owner of the land. Although his involvement in events is more peripheral, the author cleverly also includes a fourth young character, Clay, whose pragmatism and good-humoured bluntness are often brought in as a foil, thankfully defusing some of the intensity of interaction between the others.
A thoroughly contemporary concern provides the catalyst of the action here, in that Phelps is illegally using the ancient land of his farm as a base for test drilling the potential extraction of shale gas. And whilst, in our own world, fracking may have been largely discredited as a potential energy source in the not too recent past, it has now begun to be reconsidered as a possible solution to the short-term energy crisis. Few environmental issues could be of more immediate relevance.
Using the ‘magical’ creation of intricate Celtic-patterned crop circles as the way in, events and character interactions are catalysed by the intervention of the highly disturbing Andraste, an archetypal earth figure conjured into reappearance from beneath The Hill by the attack on ‘her’ domaine and demanding a high price as recompense.
Deep ground
Broken Ground may be a more accessible, more contemporary novel than, say, Red Shift or The Owl Service, but easier to read and understand does not mean that it is easier to take emotionally.. In fact this is ultimately a very dark and disturbing teen read. As indicated by the title, it is a story about ground that is broken, violated; the ground of human relationships as well as the soil of the earth. And it is a reminder that deep folklore, ancient beliefs with their sacred sites and nature deities, are not always benign and certainly not comfortable. They give, but they also demand. Here, reparation for the desecration of the earth, for the disturbance of its personified guardian, demands sacrifice, requires blood, and the price paid by its young inhabitants is terrible on a personal as well as an emotional level.
This is a story that will disquiet as much as it comforts and, though its young protagonists learn much about themselves, their families and their world, it is at cost. They grow into love and reconciliation but only having lost and suffered much to achieve it. In this sense, Broken Ground is a very grown up book, or at least a growing up book. It is a book for the time of Lughnasa, and the dark secret Harvest Home, even whilst it holds the perpetual promise of Imbolc, the coming of Spring.
Of its type, it is a remarkable book, and its type is very remarkable indeed.
Rhi Winter is to be warmly congratulated for a cover that catches the essence of the story brilliantly, without giving too much away. It is is also one of the most tastefully compelling to be seen on a young readers’ title for quite some time.