Of Love and Slaughter by Angela Huth
Upon
the death of his father, George Elkin decides to close down the family firm of
solicitors and to concentrate on his first love: the family farm. For a
long time, it looks as though he has made a good choice. The law firm
offices have sold for a good profit, and subsidies for farmers in the 80's are
high. His employees, Saul, and his son Ben, have long needed a third pair
of hands to help them on the farm. Prodge and Nell, George's neighbours
and childhood friends, also lend their expertise. Prodge has a
prize-winning herd of cattle, and Nell is forever popping in to help with the
paperwork. George's life continues in this same vein of happy exhaustion,
until he is bemused to find that an old acquaintance from university has
invited herself to stay. Lily, fired up by her grandmother's tales of
life as a Land Girl in the Second World War (surely a reference to Angela
Huth's most famous novel), has decided to find out what life in the country is
really like. George is somewhat beguiled and annoyed by her appearances
and disappearances. Lily is also on something of a mission , forever
instructing people on how they should look and observe (we're not talking about
'What not to Wear' here). Although this is derived from her background as
an art critic and writer, she seems to feel that she has some sort of
evangelical vocation to improve the perception of all those around her.
As time goes by, George finds himself more and more drawn to her, if only by
virtue of her close proximity. But even he is wary of telling Nell of his
relationship with Lily, for it has long been an unacknowledged truth that
Nell holds something of a giant torch for George.
Protective as he is of his sister's feelings, it is Prodge who falls head over
in heels in love, and with Lily, the one woman he can't have. Even though
he feels that Lily is somewhat out of place on George's farm, with
her impractical long skirts, Prodge cannot help but rue the irony that
it's George who's managed to find himself a wife when he
wasn't even looking for one. Despite his own admiration for Lily,
both Prodge and Nell hate change, and Lily certainly represents
that. Unfortunately for the Prodgers, there are a lot of
changes on the horizon, and most of them are for the worse. The village
Post Office closes down, due to the overwhelming competition from a
supermarket, and a couple from Reading buy the property at a hugely inflated
price, beyond the grasp of most local couples, only to leave the property
empty for most of the year. Prodge and Nell, unlike George, are only
tenant farmers and do not own the land on which they work. Their only
assets are Prodge's prize herd and a few bantams. The first bit of bad
news concerns the arrival of BSE, and it's not long before Prodge notices some
small signs that one of his cows may be affected. But a bigger body blow
hits George, as Lily, out of the blue, leaves him a 'Dear John' note. For
Lily, the joy of their marriage has been lost because she feels nothing
any more, a terrifying prospect for someone for whom the whole of life had
previously been all about feeling. So George and the Prodgers face
a bleak future, with more and more of traditional country life slowly ebbing
away. In the face of indifference and incompetence from government, the
few remaining farmers in the area become more and more militant, and a plan is
raised for a huge march in London to raise support, but this slim optimism is
only to be quashed by the worst disaster of them all...
As Angela Huth herself said at Words at Wavendon, in an interview about her
work with Bob 'Yer Holiness' Holness, she sometimes skimp on the research, and
this novel was overtaken by the catastrophic effects of Foot and Mouth.
Nowhere does this seem more evident than when she relates that George's father
bought the law offices in Exeter in 1927, which gives the impression that this
novel was first set several decades earlier. Lily, with all her emphasis
on "looking" (she sometimes sounds very much like Sherlock Holmes -
"You look, but you do not observe, Watson"), would appear to share Angela
Huth's approach to research. When she was writing 'Wives of the
Fishermen', Angela Huth says that she got several pages of the novel just
by describing the living quarters of a moored fishing boat in a Scottish quay -
and never actually went out to sea! Whilst there do seem to be
the odd mistakes here and there, Angela Huth's account of farming in the first
days of the twenty first century is nothing less than truly
authentic. There may be the odd telescoping of time, but Angela Huth's
best weapons seem to be her powers of observation and her ability to listen,
and this is where she gets her best research from: by talking to the people who
have actually experienced at first hand disasters such as BSE. Although
Angela Huth declared at Wavendon that very few novelists seemed to be tackling
modern day issues, she seems to have just been beaten in her choice of topic by
Sue Gee's Thin Air, and September 11th has made more of an appearance in
other more recent works than Huth's oblique reference to it. While Sue
Gee presents some of the complexities facing country life without really
presenting any solutions, Angela Huth is more overtly political and Of Love and
Slaughter is all the better for it. While the word 'slaughter', like a
theme in a Tony Blair speech, is repeated over and over again, Angela Huth is
eloquent in her defence of hunting and the rural economy. However, I
believe that the bleakness of the events in the novel does rather overshadow
the story that Angela Huth was originally poised to write, and that this
original story is diminished as a result. Of Love and Slaughter is an
important novel in that it will probably change your perception of the
countryside, and will make you realise how petty the banning of hunting really
is. The fact that George and the Prodgers only have limited means to
shape their own destiny, and are victims of history, means that they are not as
well-drawn out as characters as they could have been. While they never
wholly become victims, they never really have the capacity to be heroes either,
with the result that the characterisation of all the dramatis personae
seems blunted and diminished.
Authortrek Rating:
7/10
Kevin
Patrick Mahoney
There
now follows a series of cultural links related to the novel:
The
Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith - is the poem that Angela Huth
chooses to open “Of Love and Slaughter”. Since this poem is more than 230
years old, it suggests that the fear of deserted villages is nothing new.
Goldsmith seems to have successfully predicted the migration of people to the
towns in the Industrial Revolution. However, the idea that the
countryside is a continually evolving place also suggests itself
Isadora Duncan -
Chapter 3 page 39 - a brief bio of this radical dancer
Exmoor Horns - Chapter
4 page 53 - a glimpse of what these sheep look like
Poll
Dorsets - Chapter 4 page 53 - really are remarkable sheep, as they can
breed at any time of the year
A Tribute to our Friends at
the Marriott World Trade Centre - Chapter 5 page 71 - contains an
extract from Wolf Solent, and a discussion of the work of Powys (and the work
of his brothers also)
all
rather Captain Livingstone, British - Chapter 7 page 112 - I presume
that Angela Huth is actually referring to Doctor Livingstone
The Maidservant pouring
milk - Chapter 7 pp. 122 -123 - is most likely the
Vermeer picture that Lily is referring to
BSE
lessons - Chapter 10 p. 168 - an overview provided by the BBC food
programme
The
Cypresses are always occupying my thoughts - Chapter 10 p.182 - these are
the Van Gogh paintings that Lily refers to in her 'Dear John' letter to George
“The
Land Girls” - Chapter 11 page 187 - the Angela Huth novel most famously adapted
for film, and alluded to in “Of Love and Slaughter”, since Lily is Ag's
granddaughter
As
high as we have risen in delight, in our dejection do we sink as low -
Chapter 11 page 189 - is a quote from Wordsworth's Resolution and
Independence
Countryside Alliance -
Chapter 12 page 210 - visit the movement's website
The
United Kingdom Parliament - Chapter 12 page 214 - discusses the
disposal of dead carcasses by local hunt kennels, as Peter Friel does. I
think this point, more than anything else, finally made me realise that the banning
of hunting would have far too big an impact on the rural economy, and is just
not worth pursuing
Hunt Supporters march
on Labour - Chapter 13 page 230 - The BBC account of the Farmers'
march at the 1999 Labour Conference at Bournemouth
Organophosphates
- Chapter 14 page 249 - the Mark Thomas Prrooduct view of pesticides
Moonlight
becomes you - Chapter 15 page 260 - is the old Bing Crosby song
Foot and
Mouth - Chapter 15 page 268 - the BBC overview of the 2001 outbreak
Prince donates £500,000 for
farmers - Chapter 15 page 272
Anger
grows on slaughter policy - Chapter 16 page 286
The
New DEFRA minister - Chapter 17 page 308 - is a reference to Margaret
Beckett. It's slightly unfair of Angela Huth to say that Margaret Beckett
has no love for the countryside - after all, she's the queen of caravanning!
Chapter
17 page 309 - I think Angela Huth shoots herself in the hoof with this
one. After all, if anyone thinks of otters, they recall “Tarka the
Otter” by Henry Williamson, killed by the local Devonshire hunt (Of Love
and Slaughter is set in the West Country). Find out more about the Otterhound and the
reason for banning Otter Hunting - the decline in the UK Otter
population was not totally due to the illegal dumping of toxic waste
Sheep BSE research flawed -
Chapter 17 page 311
Rural Crisis Romantic
novel - more than anything else, this website gives an indication of
how “Of Love and Slaughter” changed before publication, principally regarding
the names of the characters
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