Special Price $28, rrp $32.99
Reviewed by Karen (Retired Bookseller); Benjamin Myers lastest novel, "The Perfect Golden Circle" is set in the south West of England during a long, hot summer, in 1989.
Two characters, one a SAS veteran, Calvert, who served in the Falkland war, and the other a very talented old hippy, Redbone. Their mission to combine their skills and talents to create the perfect crop circles. After meticulous planning they set out in the early evening to achieve their goal before sunrise, improving the complex design with each operation.
The writing is beautiful, entertaining, delightful, with descriptions of nature, of their lives, fears, frustrations, joy and humor, from beginning to end.
I loved this novel, the characters and their exploits that summer will stay with me.
England, 1989. Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men - traumatized Falklands veteran Calvert, and affable, chaotic Redbone - set out nightly in a clapped-out camper van to undertake an extraordinary project.
Under cover of darkness, the two men traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns. As the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation - and that an unlikely and beautiful friendship has taken root as the wheat ripens from green to gold.
Moving and exhilarating, tender and slyly witty, The Perfect Golden Circle is a captivating novel about the futility of war, the destruction of the English countryside, class inequality - and the power of beauty to heal trauma and fight power.
The understated, plangent loveliness of Myers's storytelling is reminiscent of Mackenzie Crook's brilliant TV series Detectorists. Here is a strong, spiritual writer who sees and loves every dewdrop, old oak, soft little animal and buried sword, and offers them up to us like the precious treasures they are. The Perfect Golden Circle deserves top ranking in any list of the best books about rural England * THE TIMES *
Fantasy
Paperback
Benjamin Myers
256 pages
H: 216mm W: 135mm