The Western Wind, by Samantha Harvey

The Western Wind is set in the Middle Ages, in an obscure village in Southern England. At first sight it's a murder mystery, told in the first person by its protagonist John Reve the village priest, who is set to unravel the truth about the death of Thomas Newman, the one man in the village with wealth and substance. He has been steadily buying most of the land in the village, largely from Oliver Townshend, the previous man of substance who has had to trim his cloth due to unwise schemes and the general poor fortunes of the village. Their attempts to build a vital bridge across the river have failed yet again, and Newman seems to have disappeared into the river during a spell of torrential rain, while inspecting the latest collapse.

As much as the intrigue suggested by Newman's death, the reader's attention is immediately caught by the character of the village and the villagers. The lives of most of these people is one of never ending oppressive toil, and the grinding ordeal of trying to work this dismal land is convincingly drawn by Samantha Harvey. She writes beautifully, both about the physical world, but also about the spiritual world which is so central to their lives in ways which are lost to us now.

The reader is further likely to be struck by the perplexing structure of the book. We begin on 'Day 4' - Shrove Tuesday, 1491. It's a long and difficult day, beginning with Herry Carter, a dutiful but troubled villager who Reve clearly knows well, bringing report of the discovery of a body. As the day carries on, he seems to have his work cut out trying to defend various villagers including Oliver Townshend from the suspicions of the rural dean, who would like to clear the matter up with a burning of a murderer. But the villagers themselves appear increasingly wayward in the devotions, and their relationship with God is suffused with superstition and sheer ignorance.

Day 4 is followed by Day 3, then Day 2, and finally Day 1. Each day is described from beginning to end, so it's not a question of time going in reverse. But we soon ask: how can this be a mystery, if it's a first person narrative? This isn't the first time writers have tried something like this, but it can't be done without a certain amount of sleight of hand. I think it is a weakness that in the first few chapters of Day 4 certain things are withheld. I understand something of the justification for it, but I'm only really okay with it because other themes and incidents become more important. One expects a revelation at the end of Day 1 - the end of the book - which makes us rethink what we thought we understood about earlier or I should say, later events. And we do indeed. The end of the book delivers us a powerful punch. It's not a complete surprise, but it has impact coming in the way it does, in particular in pulling out the final thread from our impression of Reve. The easy verdict is that he found himself in a hole and kept digging, but Samantha Harvey's writing makes all his actions sadly understandable.

She has taught me some striking things about first person narratives. She's pulled off a writer's trick one can only applaud. She shows us how you almost can't help but trust the narrator, as well as sympathise with them, and be fooled in the process. But in a world full of utterly three dimensional characters, the way the writer has rendered John Reve in all his psychological depth, weaknesses and inconsistencies, self deception and all, constitutes a masterclass. He may haunt you. I'm still thinking about him; and Newman, and Oliver Townshend, and Ralph Drake, and Sarah, and Herry Carter; and even some of the absent yet crucial figures we barely encounter, like Reve's sister Annie.

As for the reverse sequencing of the story, near the end, as John Reve agonises about his failure to shrive Thomas Newman, thinking 'if only', he, or perhaps the author, says "...that small word if was... a gateway to all manner of heaven and hells. It would be better to start not with what might happen, but what did happen - to begin with the end and journey backwards, like kicking against a current, away from the rock against which you've washed up and out to the open waters, the waves the intentions that carried you in. Not the sin, but the intention behind the sin - this is God's interest. Not where you washed up, but the waves that washed you there."

Just before the end - I use that word with misgivings - he vainly wrestles with trying to formulate a way to properly confess, and says; "I'd give the account backwards in my attempt to deliver Townshend from death..." Perhaps he does succeed.

Now I feel a little dissatisfied with this piece: it's not that I felt I couldn't comment on events without spoiling them, but that the book's concerns deserve much more discussion than I've given them. There's history, and the relevance of the setting in 1491 (I assume because in another year they were to discover the world was much bigger than they thought); politics, and the details of Newman's pilgrimages to Rome and elsewhere (one has to suspect some deliberate allegory regarding Britain's relationship with Europe, with the bridge as a symbol of how the village and by analogy Britain is being cut off from the wider world); and culture and religion. There's overt debate in the story between Newman who wants to communicate directly with God, and the Church in the persons of Reve and the dean, who insist on the position of the priest as intermediary. There of course you see the seed of the conflict in the next century and afterwards between Catholicism and Protestantism. And I haven't mentioned the 'monks from Bruton'! They don't even appear, but constitute another threat to the village, integral to the story, and again relevant to our own times if we reflect on our contemporary powerful economic forces taking control of more and more of our lives.

I think I've just persuaded myself that The Western Wind really is as good as all that book cover praise is claiming.