The Wilding

Reeling from my last literary encounter with Eimear McBride's lacerating stream of consciousness novel, I am relieved to move into more conventional Summer reading territory with Maria McCann's The Wilding.

This novel was long-listed for The Orange Prize for Fiction, and is McCann's second novel. It is endorsed as a riveting read by no less than Lionel Shriver herself who states that:"McCann has in buckets whatever mysterious quality keeps a reader wide-eyed well after he'd planned to turn out the light."

The front cover looks like it might be a Cider with Rosie, bodice-ripper type of novel, but I was won over by The Times' reassurance that it is in fact:"An absorbing drama of revenge, inheritance and danger." This is the point at which tonight's dinner scheduled to be a rather adventurous pork with Persian spices, might itself be in danger of never materialising! Should I batch-fry the marinaded meat, or should I turn over the first page? Mmmmmm..................... I turned over the first page.

Indeed, it was a very enjoyable, easy-reading, page-turning novel, and went down as satisfyingly as the Persian pork did, once I had wrenched myself away from the story to make it.

The narrator, Jon Dymond, is a young, itinerant cider-maker from a well-respected family, whose world is turned upside down when his uncle dies.  He discovers dark secrets, which have been buried deep, but which threaten to drag him down when he attempts to bring them into the light.

The rhythms of the countryside seasons and customs in the post Civil War era are skilfully evoked, and the process of cider making is covered in great detail. McCann sets the scene well, tells a great story, and fills it with intrigue, danger, superstition and a twist. What more can one ask of a good Summer read?

This is the Pork with Persian spices, which eventually got made, and fed to the family, despite Maria McCann's attempts to distract me!