AKENFIELD: Portrait of an English Village

by Ronald Blythe ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 22, 1969

Blythe's book is a real-life Spoon River Anthology which tries to do for the English village what Edgar Lee Masters did for small town America: ""to catch the actual speaking, hoping voice of the place."" ""Akenfield"" is a little agricultural village in East Suffolk, ninety-two miles from London, and the talk of the inhabitants (extracted by Blythe from long conversations with villagers of various age and work groups) covers half a century of farming slump and the beginning of a ""second agricultural revolution,"" revealing the problems and tensions of a Small rural community faced with a modern world. The speakers are varied -- retired farm worker, Baptist Dean, political organizer, farm student, blacksmith, thatcher, schoolmistress, pig-farmer, magistrate, gravedigger -- but behind their words pulses the eternal rhythm of ""spring, summer, harvest, winter"" and the universal cycle of change lamented by the old (""... the town boys come out here on their motorbikes to work. It is just a job to them. They're not involved, you understand. They just see new machinery."") and celebrated by the young (""What the older workers can't understand is that work is just work -- something to be done and paid for. Of course we know that the old men had art -- because they had damn-all else!... And we young men have efficiency...""). Cinema verite in prose; an evocative find provocative social documentary.

Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION