Peculiar Ground: A Novel
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A Kirkus Best Book of 2018
"Unlike anything I've read. With its broad scope and its intimacy and exactness, it cuts through the apparatus of life to the vivid moment. Haunting and huge, and funny and sensuous. It's wonderful."—Tessa Hadley
The Costa Award-winning author of The Pike makes her literary fiction debut with an extraordinary historical novel in the spirit of Wolf Hall and Atonement—a great English country house novel, spanning three centuries, that explores surprisingly timely themes of immigration and exclusion.
It is the seventeenth century and a wall is being raised around Wychwood, transforming the great house and its park into a private realm of ornamental lakes, grandiose gardens, and majestic avenues designed by Mr. Norris, a visionary landscaper. In this enclosed world everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war. Dissenters shelter in the woods, lovers rendezvous in secret enclaves, and outsiders—migrants fleeing the plague—find no mercy.
Three centuries later, far away in Berlin, another wall is raised, while at Wychwood, an erotic entanglement over one sticky, languorous weekend in 1961 is overshadowed by news of historic change. Young Nell, whose father manages the estate, grows up amid dramatic upheavals as the great house is invaded: a pop festival by the lake, a television crew in the dining room, a Great Storm brewing. In 1989, as the Cold War peters out, a threat from a different kind of conflict reaches Wychwood's walls.
Lucy Hughes-Hallett conjures an intricately structured, captivating story that explores the lives of game keepers and witches, agitators and aristocrats; the exuberance of young love and the pathos of aging; and the way those who try to wall others out risk finding themselves walled in. With poignancy and grace, she illuminates a place where past and present are inextricably linked by stories, legends, and history—and by one patch of peculiar ground.
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Lucy Hughes-Hallett. (2018). Peculiar Ground: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Lucy Hughes-Hallett. 2018. Peculiar Ground: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Peculiar Ground: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2018.
MLA Citation (style guide)Lucy Hughes-Hallett. Peculiar Ground: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2018.
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Lucy Hughes-Hallett is the author of The Pike: Gabriele d'Annunzio, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize, the Political Book Awards Political Biography of the Year and the Costa Biography Award and was chosen by The Sunday Times as the biography of the decade.
Her novel Peculiar Ground was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. Her other books include Fabulous, a collection of short stories, and the cultural histories Cleopatra and Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen.
She is a widely respected critic and was chair of the judges of the 2021 International Booker Prize.
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A Kirkus Best Book of 2018
"Unlike anything I've read. With its broad scope and its intimacy and exactness, it cuts through the apparatus of life to the vivid moment. Haunting and huge, and funny and sensuous. It's wonderful."—Tessa Hadley
The Costa Award-winning author of The Pike makes her literary fiction debut with an extraordinary historical novel in the spirit of Wolf Hall and Atonement—a great English country house novel, spanning three centuries, that explores surprisingly timely themes of immigration and exclusion.
It is the seventeenth century and a wall is being raised around Wychwood, transforming the great house and its park into a private realm of ornamental lakes, grandiose gardens, and majestic avenues designed by Mr. Norris, a visionary landscaper. In this enclosed world everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war. Dissenters shelter in the woods, lovers rendezvous in secret enclaves, and outsiders—migrants fleeing the plague—find no mercy.
Three centuries later, far away in Berlin, another wall is raised, while at Wychwood, an erotic entanglement over one sticky, languorous weekend in 1961 is overshadowed by news of historic change. Young Nell, whose father manages the estate, grows up amid dramatic upheavals as the great house is invaded: a pop festival by the lake, a television crew in the dining room, a Great Storm brewing. In 1989, as the Cold War peters out, a threat from a different kind of conflict reaches Wychwood's walls.
Lucy Hughes-Hallett conjures an intricately structured, captivating story that explores the lives of game keepers and witches, agitators and aristocrats; the exuberance of young love and the pathos of aging; and the way those who try to wall others out risk finding themselves walled in. With poignancy and grace, she illuminates a place where past and present are inextricably linked by stories, legends, and history—and by one patch of peculiar ground.
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"Full of drama, vivid characters, wit, gorgeous writing and fascinating botanical, religious and social detail.... Peculiar Ground, with its witches and aristocrats, its highly educated men, women and children and its gradations of every conceivable social type between upstairs and downstairs, is a grand spectacle."
— New York Times Book Review"Sophisticated and erudite.... Ms. Hughes-Hallett is a natural heir to A.S. Byatt, delivering a densely patterned novel that shimmers with human interest as it probes our cultural story." — Wall Street Journal
"Dazzling.... A brilliant, ambitious mixture of actual history and creative invention." — Boston Globe
"Rather more than your usual English country house novel. Think of it as a saga of a place depicted in gorgeous prose.... With its clever juxtaposition of past and present and its mediation of time and change, Peculiar Ground is reminiscent of Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia." — Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Thoroughly engaging.... Hughes-Hallett is a master storyteller. Her prose is a treasure—evocative, rich, engaging." — Library Journal, starred review
"Unlike anything I've read. With its broad scope and its intimacy and exactness, it cuts through the apparatus of life to the vivid moment. Haunting and huge, and funny and sensuous. It's wonderful." — Tessa Hadley
"Vast in scope but intimate in its details. A first novel stunning for both its historical sweep and its elegant prose." — Kirkus, starred review
"An enjoyable, sprawling epic debut.... Hughes-Hallett effectively expands the domestic drama to touch on class resentment, religious conflict, and international affairs. Her Wychwood is a remarkable, ambivalent creation... and readers will delight at strolling its grounds under her guidance." — Publishers Weekly
"Give this to readers who enjoy the works of A.S. Byatt." — Booklist
"Peculiar Ground is so clever and beautifully written, it gripped me from start to end. I abandoned work and family to finish it." — Roddy Doyle
"Lucy Hughes-Hallett's novel is immensely vivid, full of rich and deeply imagined life, and glowing with energy. Her Wychwood estate is utterly real, her characters (both seventeenth- and twentieth-century) entirely convincing, and the story moves with a masterful assurance. There's a calm virtuosity in the language that I admired a great deal. I just enjoyed it so very much." — Philip Pullman
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September 1, 2017
Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for The Pike: Gabriele D'Annunzio, Hughes-Hallett received sparkling reviews in the UK for this fiction debut. It opens with the 17th-century construction of a great house named Wychwood, whose high walls shelter the inhabitants after decades of bloody civil strife. Jump forward to the last half of the 20th century, with the Berlin Wall rising and falling even as Wychwood's current inhabitants try to deny the real world.
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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November 6, 2017
Author of an acclaimed biography of the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, Hughes-Hallet offers an enjoyable, sprawling epic debut about an enclosed paradise. Populated by a large cast, its subject is singular: Wynchwood, a lavish English country estate that weathers centuries of upheavals, from civil war to its transformation into a theme park for the aristocrat-obsessed. The novel concentrates on two historical eras. The 17th-century scenes, which bookend the novel, focus on John Norris, a prim landscape architect with extravagant Eden-like visions for the estate. Magnificent though his designs may be, the outside world creeps in, notably in the form of tragic accidents and the plague that ravaged England in 1665. These sections, which include flourishes of historical and cultural detail (witchcraft, folklore, secret religious sects), paint a vivid picture. The novel’s middle episodes, which check in on the fast-living set congregating at Wynchwood during key moments throughout the Cold War, are the highlight: consistently witty, they are reminiscent of another country house saga, Alain Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child. Hughes-Hallett effectively expands the domestic drama to touch on class resentment, religious conflict, and international affairs. Her Wynchwood is a remarkable, ambivalent creation, “at once a sanctuary and place of internment,” and readers will delight at strolling its grounds under her guidance.
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December 1, 2017
Hughes-Hallett's ambitious novel begins in 1663. The British monarchy has been restored after years of civil war. Norris, a landscape designer, arrives at Wychwood to refashion the gardens and oversee the construction of a wall that will completely enclose the grounds. Much of Norris' design still stands 300 years later, when Wychwood is a sanctuary (or, as one character puts it, a sanctuary and a place of internment ) for a new generation, the generally upper-class Wychwood stalwarts, whose lives Hughes-Hallett traces from 1961 to 1989. Also on hand are characters descended from the estate workers of Norris' time, in tune with the past and Wychwood's attendant legends. Witchcraft, ancient Roman mosaics, the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, and the stirrings of Islamic fundamentalism all come into play amid themes of continuity and change and the author's frequent use of water as a symbol. The novel's final section returns the reader to 1665, when Wychwood is seen as a refuge against the plague. Give this to readers who enjoy the works of A. S. Byatt.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)
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Starred review from December 1, 2017
The Costa Award-winning author of The Pike makes her literary fiction debut with a thoroughly engaging novel about people in two different ages but in one place. The times are 1663-65 and 1961-89, both periods of wrenching change. In 1663, good King Charles II is newly restored to his throne; the Puritans are ousted. In 1961, Puritan attitudes are taking it on the chin; even monogamy suffers. By 1989, another generation has taken over, homosexuality is no longer taboo, and the Berlin Wall falls. Dozens of people populate these pages, shaping the narrative, but there is another player. The great manor of Wychwood and its landmarks play key roles throughout. Family names persist across three centuries among the estate's servitors and tenants. The many stories in this wonderful book are all variations on the theme of change and of the holding power of place over transient circumstance. Hughes-Hallett (Gabriele D'Anunzio) is a master storyteller. Her prose is a treasure--evocative, rich, engaging. VERDICT This book is already a hit overseas and will be here, too. History lovers, but even more, lovers of good fiction, will gobble it up. [See Prepub Alert, 7/31/17.]--David Keymer, Cleveland
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from November 1, 2017
An award-winning historian (Gabriele D'Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War, 2013, etc.) makes her fiction debut with a story vast in scope but intimate in its details.The year is 1663. England's civil war has ended. Newly returned from exile, royalist Arthur Fortescue, the Earl of Woldingham, has hired the landscaper John Norris to turn his ancestral home into a private paradise. As he is drawn ever deeper into the life of Wychwood, Norris discovers that the Earl's plan to enclose his new gardens, fountains, and tree-lined avenues within a wall will be a disaster for the religious dissenters who live and worship in the forest around the estate. The Earl's land, Norris learns, is crisscrossed with secret paths used by people scorned and abused for their faith. When Hughes-Hallett brings the narrative 300 years into the future without first resolving this issue, the shift feels abrupt. But it soon becomes clear that the temporal leap makes perfect sense: the issue of the wall is unresolved because it is irresolvable. Who owns the land, who has right of way, what the very wealthy owe everyone else: these are questions that never go away. Hughes-Hallett explores how the past persists in other--more personal--ways as well. Relationships between masters and servants recapitulate themselves across generations. Family tragedies repeat with slight variations. Wychwood remains a world unto itself even as people come and go and the property changes hands. Time feels like a circle, and the novel brings us to 1989 before taking us back to the 17th century. There are multiple narrators and perspectives here, but the text never feels cacophonous because each voice is so exquisitely limned. Hughes-Hallett's choice to turn minor players into major characters is especially satisfying; of course those who rely upon the wealthy and powerful must be canny observers of the wealthy and powerful. The novel is a pleasure to read for the loveliness of its language. It's also a timely meditation on walls, on what they keep in and what they keep out.A first novel stunning for both its historical sweep and its elegant prose.COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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A Kirkus Best Book of 2018
"Unlike anything I've read. With its broad scope and its intimacy and exactness, it cuts through the apparatus of life to the vivid moment. Haunting and huge, and funny and sensuous. It's wonderful."—Tessa Hadley
The Costa Award-winning author of The Pike makes her literary fiction debut with an extraordinary historical novel in the spirit of Wolf Hall and Atonement—a great English country house novel, spanning three centuries, that explores surprisingly timely themes of immigration and exclusion.
It is the seventeenth century and a wall is being raised around Wychwood, transforming the great house and its park into a private realm of ornamental lakes, grandiose gardens, and majestic avenues designed by Mr. Norris, a visionary landscaper. In this enclosed world everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war. Dissenters shelter in the woods, lovers rendezvous in secret enclaves, and...
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