March 7, 2022
In this slight, low-key outing, Myers (The Gallows Pole) chronicles the efforts of two friends who conspire to make crop circles in Southern England in 1989. The empathetic Redbone and the traumatized Calvert, whose face is scarred, aim to create something worthy of a folk myth to enrich their otherwise unfulfilling lives as they work up to “The Big One,” the Honeycomb Double Helix. After their crop circles hit the news, some folks wonder if they were made by aliens. Myers keenly observes the men’s distant yet intimate friendship and working relationship as they abort one crop circle design and risk being caught creating another. They grapple with rain, drought, and fire, and even discuss climate change. The men also risk exposure: first by a strange old woman who lost her dog, then with Earl William Lachlan Alexander Bruce Lascar of Winchem. There are some clever descriptive passages and phrases—Calvert’s cooking “does not eschew palatability for sustenance’s sake”—and some nice imagery, and though the conversations between the two protagonists are illuminating, they don’t quite add up to a satisfying narrative. In the end, the meditative quest lands as too meek. Agent: Jessica Woollard/David Higham Assoc.
Starred review from February 15, 2022
A quiet, peculiar, and utterly charming novel about...crop circles. Myers' new book--brief though it is--contains a buzzing, busy multitude. It's part K�nstlerroman, part rural idyll, part environmental alarm, part picaresque about two outcasts, part philosophical novel. The setting is summer 1989, in southern England, and two men are embarking again on--trying to perfect--the work they began the summer before. Amid strict secrecy, and in accordance with an elaborate set of rules they've developed to keep themselves safe and anonymous, they steal off at sunset in a battered camper van, park along a verge, walk at least one mile to a field they have identified and scouted, and spend the long summer dark meticulously creating ever larger, ever more elaborate designs (all without breaking the stalks of wheat or rapeseed, so as to be committing acts of art and not vandalism, addition and not subtraction). The two men are Calvert, an anxious ex-soldier who wears dark glasses even at night to protect his eyes and his scars, and his friend Redbone, imaginative, unpredictable, and cheerful. The book consists of a brief chronicle of each of their summer exploits in the field, one by one, with quick news breaks between to record their rising fame as their work garners attention from tabloids, UFO enthusiasts, landowners, and others taken by this mysterious, gigantic-scale environmental art. They are moving always toward what they know will be their end-of-summer culmination, the Honeycomb Double Helix. Myers' newest is a lyrical novel, leisurely of pace and rich in nuance, that rewards the reader who slows to its rhythms. An odd and winsome pleasure: a novel of friendship, collaboration, and environmental guerrilla art.
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Starred review from April 1, 2022
Myers' sumptuous novel focuses on an odd couple, Redbone, an itinerant dreamer and antiestablishment drifter who lives in a van, and Ivan Calvert, who bears the physical and mental scars of serving in the special forces during the Falklands War. As in his last novel, The Offing (2019), the events take place over a single summer, here in 1989, and Redbone and Calvert do what they have done in previous summers, make crop circles of increasingly elaborate design in fields in southwest England. They are utterly dedicated to the practice, at the expense of all other things, and delight in both the noble silliness of their works and the conspiracies they inspire. While exploring many bleak topics--such as the pointlessness of war, the cruelty of Thatcher's Britain, and the ecological impact of industrialization--the novel is also full of evocative and awe-inspiring descriptions of the British countryside. Working tirelessly most weekends, the men create increasingly incredible designs that draw ever more attention from the global media, and in the process their touching friendship draws ever closer. Loosely based on real figures, this brilliant, funny, and delightful novel is about misfits finding purpose, and the redemptive power of artistic expression even in the bleakest of circumstances.
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