Melissa Harrison

Melissa Harrison doesn't just write the English countryside, she decocts, extracts, distills and blends its essences into fiction so real-world adjacent it haunts. The Given World is a masterful portrait of our time and place, which like the unquestionably animate river running through it, will not be contained.

The Given World is a superb and timely novel, lit and linked by people, place and time. It sings with symbolism and beautifully reflects the frightening and uncanny transitions of our time – natural, personal, national, historical – through the microcosm of a village and landscape that comes to life spectacularly through Harrison’s brilliant mastery of description and detail. Spirited, spirit-filled, strange, resonant, heartbreaking and poignant, The Given World rings through the reader like a struck bell.

The Given World is a dark pastoral, deliciously laced with a hint of the supernatural. Through her nuanced characters, Melissa Harrison draws our attention to shifting political currents and contrasting ideologies. I’m full of gratitude for her gifts – she is a deeply sensitive and empathetic writer, even-handed about both rural and urban lives. That’s not something to be taken for granted in these polarising times.

Precious few writers can set a story in nature convincingly and nobody does it better than Melissa Harrison. A tale of honest rural intensity that grips and surprises.

April brings spring surging with it, giving rise, among many in the village, to a comforting illusion that all is somehow still right with the world, and that nothing will ever change. 
 
In the ancient Welm Valley, something is shifting: the river is behaving oddly, while the arrival of spring, with its familiar rhythms, is shadowed by an undercurrent of unease. 
 
A woman falls while out walking and hopes to be found before nightfall; a builder experiences sudden, overwhelming vertigo on a farmhouse roof; across the village, people are plagued by the same vast, strange dream. And alone in the converted priory, overlooking watermeadows unchanged for centuries, Clare Grey receives devastating news which will force her to reconsider her family’s past and the fresh weight of her solitary existence.

Melissa Harrison

Praise for The Given World

Melissa Harrison doesn't just write the English countryside, she decocts, extracts, distills and blends its essences into fiction so real-world adjacent it haunts. The Given World is a masterful por ...

The Given World is a superb and timely novel, lit and linked by people, place and time. It sings with symbolism and beautifully reflects the frightening and uncanny transitions of our time – natural, p ...

The Given World is a dark pastoral, deliciously laced with a hint of the supernatural. Through her nuanced characters, Melissa Harrison draws our attention to shifting political currents and contrastin ...

Melissa Harrison doesn't just write the English countryside, she decocts, extracts, distills and blends its essences into fiction so real-world adjacent it haunts. The Given World is a masterful por ...

The Given World is a superb and timely novel, lit and linked by people, place and time. It sings with symbolism and beautifully reflects the frightening and uncanny transitions of our time – natural, p ...

The Given World is a dark pastoral, deliciously laced with a hint of the supernatural. Through her nuanced characters, Melissa Harrison draws our attention to shifting political currents and contrastin ...

Melissa Harrison doesn't just write the English countryside, she decocts, extracts, distills and blends its essences into fiction so real-world adjacent it haunts. The Given World is a masterful por ...

The Given World is a superb and timely novel, lit and linked by people, place and time. It sings with symbolism and beautifully reflects the frightening and uncanny transitions of our time – natural, p ...

The Given World is a dark pastoral, deliciously laced with a hint of the supernatural. Through her nuanced characters, Melissa Harrison draws our attention to shifting political currents and contrastin ...

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter