This book is a well written descriptive of the lives of three individuals who reside in an area called Elmet. They do not own the land on which they have built their home, but feel a connection to the land on which they live.
Daniel, Cathy and their Daddy are free spirits living a natural life in tune with nature.
But there are those that want something from them and those people intend to ensure that they get their own way.
Daniel is narrating the tale so everything is from his view. He describes his relationship with both his father and his sister, as well as the people in the surrounding area.
Some locals want to get all that they can from the small family and Daniel tells the story of how they all interact with each other. Finally coming to the end, where his story started. Full of sadness, violence, love, hope and despair.
This was a very detailed, involving story and I did get very engrossed with it. However, I did find that it was somewhat skimpy in how it portrayed some aspects of the tale and felt it left me wanting, particularly in the 'italics' part of the story. Nonetheless, overall I enjoyed reading it and read it very quickly and intensively, as it was an engaging read.
A good first novel and happy to see a local author nominated for the man booker prize.

I found this book to be atmospheric and compelling. I thought at first that it was set in the distant past, but soon realised that it was a group of people who live outside of the law, within present day society. The plot grew darker and ended in a violent and disturbing way, but the characters were strong and interesting. I too thought that the narrator was a girl at first, but this did not bother me. The faults for me came with the character of Mr Price who was irredeemably evil, and the lyrical prose went a bit over the top in places.

Elmet is a dark but beautifully written character-driven debut. Through Daniel's narration we learn about his family's attempts to live a traditional life in modern rural Yorkshire. The family build their own home, grow their own produce, catch, prepare and cook birds and animals whilst mainly keeping themselves to themselves. Their lives begin to unravel when a local landowner takes exception to the family's claim on the land they have decided to build on. The characters are well rounded and believable but the plot is a little disjointed and ultimately hard to believe. I enjoyed how I felt transported into the landscape of the story and the nods to Yorkshire dialect were well done. This is an atmospheric read with a strong sense of place, but I feel there could have been a stronger plot.

Substance and style at mismatch

Although the subject matter was interesting – society’s outcasts, I had certain reservations about a certain incoherence or contradiction in the voice (or, more properly, voices) of the first person narrator, Daniel. In dialogue, the character was fairly plain, given regional, almost phonetic dialect – rural South Yorkshire – and yet, somehow, despite being an outcast, not to mention school failure, though with erratic, though not advanced, home schooling, the internal first person voice was poetic, lyrical, sophisticated, erudite – and, moreover from the off felt like a female voice. Until the character was first named, I assumed that the narrator was a girl/woman. And although to a certain extend gender fluidity and sexual orientation was a partial subtext, the mismatch between the character voices felt far more a writerly mismatch because of the degree of verbal subtlety and nuance in thinking which can be expressed when there is a degree of linguistic sophistication. So I was constantly pulled out of reading by thinking ‘how does this character know these kinds of words and constructions – how can he have acquired this, given the history that we know’?

Daniel and his older sister Cathy – fiercer, more resilient, more secure of herself, far less emotionally sweet and dependent, have been brought up by their father, John ‘Daddy’ is tender with his children, but is someone who has made a living from his sometimes ferocious and violent physical strength – bare knuckle fighting. He exists in a modern kind of shadowy, subculture – a sometimes travelling, unskilled community. Livings are made through some shady dealings, gamblings, transient labour offered to wealthier, more organised, far more respected members of a community – sharkish property owners, exploitative employers of un-unionised unskilled labour, without the means and power to protect their own interests against rapacious and greedy beneficiaries from capitalism’s excesses. And, sometimes, John has provided muscle to enable those wealthier ones to further their bullying activities. He has though, by the time this story starts, seen the error of those ways, and is living as hidden as possible

He has built, without recourse to machinery, hired labour and the like, a house in the woods, mainly out of salvage, scrap, and fallen trees for his children. The mother is long vanished, somewhat mysteriously. She too was some kind of wilder child, coming and going, and her strayings and returnings – possibly linked with mental illness – accepted by John. The father and his son and daughter, at first pre-pubertal, and then into their early and midteens, are a tight knit family group, although despised to some extent by the more conventional, more settled community they sometimes integrate with – school, local shops for the things they cannot grow, forage for, kill or make. The times are more or less now, in a society as unequal as we know it is, though there is also a sense of the mythic and long ago, this-is-always-the-way-it-has-been-between-the-haves-and=the-have-nots, playing out

There are actually two time scales playing out. Time then is Daniel as a boy, then into his early-mid-teens, living with his father and his sister. Materially deprived, emotionally rich, loved and loving, connected to place, connected to humanity, meaning. Happy.

Intercut with this is the trajectory the book is moving towards, a definite casting out from a strange Paradise. The book opens with the Post Paradise section. The narrator is searching, and has been for some years, for his sister. Who may have fled North. Or South, The fleeing has clearly been from some deeply shocking, traumatic, violent event or series of events. The narrator, now a young man is powerless, traumatised, sometimes starving and clearly dependent of the kindness – not to mention at times, - the exploitation of strangers. He has little to sell except himself. As the search in ‘now’ continues, and some of the pitiful situations Daniel is currently in are revealed, the dark journey towards the casting out of Paradise scenario becomes clearer and not just violence itself, but the particular menace of the fear of its arrival, intensifies

I do think the author is definitely one to watch, there is a lot of really interesting matter for thought in here, but that first person narrator really jarred. A lot of substance, but, for me, style was an uncomfortable mismatch. And I am not someone who objects to first person narratives – it can be a wonderful device, as long as the reader believes ‘yes, this is this character’s voice’ rather than having a strong sense that the author has imposed their own voice onto their invention

I received this as an ARC from the publishers, via NetGalley

A well written debut novel from an exciting new author – thoroughly deserved of its place amongst the Booker Shortlist. The style of grammar of the narrator depending upon his place in time was very clever as was the juxtaposition of the family’s life in the woodland with the town and cities beyond. The glimpses of the past and the inevitable future repercussions proved compelling to read. It is a hard and violent story, but is highly recommended.

Really enjoyed this book and read it in lots of snatched moments during a busy week. The author managed to take you into the family dynamics painting a picture of past history and tensions running through the times. I wanted to walk through the countryside depicted and imagined the scene of gatherings. There were a few loose ends which I would have liked explained but very enjoyable.

This is a beautiful and lyrically written piece of Gothic Noir, drawing on the ancient area of Celtic Elmet, comprising West Riding in Yorkshire, Ted Hughes's 'badlands' providing sanctuary to those on the run, and the folklore surrounding Robin Hood. The narrative is from the point of view of a 14 year old Daniel. Daniel, his sister, Cathy and their larger than life father, John, referred to as Daddy, relocate to a rustic area that their mother had come from. They had resided with their grandmother, but were bullied at school. After Cathy took on the bullies, the school blamed her, and Daddy relocates them to land that had once belonged to the mother, but poverty led to its sale. Their home in a copse is built from scratch, and a living is eked out through hunting and foraging. This is a story of poverty, class, land ownership, family dynamics and relationships, justice, gender roles, revenge and history.

Daddy is a huge man with a fearsome reputation as an unbeaten bareknuckle fighter, with a simmering rage boiling just under the surface and fiercely tenacious in his belief in being independent. He places his trust on self reliance and family. Cathy and Daniel are close, but radically different from each other. Daniel takes after his mysterious mother, preferring to avoid conflict, taking over the domain of the home, cooking and cleaning, and growing fruit and vegetables. Cathy reflects her father more, she prefers the outdoors and prepared to fight for what she believes is right. Daddy wants them to receive some form of education and ropes in Vivien for this purpose. Daniel is drawn to Vivien, and the two develop a growing relationship. Daddy lends his menace and fists to locals for favours. He orchestrates and organises the community in rent strikes and withdrawal of labour in a challenge to the economic exploitation of the powerless workers. Price is portrayed as an exploitative rich landowner who bought their mother's land with no history, links or connection with the land. Both Daddy and their mother have a personal history with Price. The battlelines are drawn for an all out brutal outcome.

Mozley paints a bleak and atmospheric picture of desperate poverty, family and conflict. Daniel and Cathy challenge the gender roles that society expects, with Cathy continuing the fight right up to the end. The story strikes primal chords in its focus on home, identity and the issue of belonging. I loved this novel but found the storyline uneven in a number of areas, such as the questionable authenticity in the character of Daniel. This is no way diminishes Mozley's achievement in this, her debut novel. I cannot wait to see what she writes next. A great read! Many thanks to John Murray Press for an ARC.

Part lyrical homage to the old rural ways of life and part modern day fable, the story is narrated by the teenaged Daniel and set in the West Riding of Yorkshire, known as ELMET in medieval times. Faithful rendering of the Yorkshire dialect (from my perspective as a Yorkshire woman) lends authenticity, evoking the slightly archaic speech still used in rural parts.
Kill or be killed is the prevailing local culture for those surviving on their wits or brute strength in the black economy. And as in uprisings of earlier times, a dispossessed and exploited underclass is in confrontation with the corrupt local landowner (echoes of Robin Hood mythology here). Alongside dreamy descriptions of a pagan-like affinity with nature, the threat of bloodshed and violence pervades the mood throughout.

Elmet is an unusual and captivating novel about family and place and the boundaries of society. Daniel is trying to get north, having left the home in the woods he lived in with his Daddy and sister Cathy. Once, Daniel and Cathy went to school and lived with their Granny, but then they left for the woods, free to be their own people. Their sanctuary has turned hostile, with the house built for them by their Daddy’s own hands under threat from local landowners.

Mozley’s novel is embedded in the Yorkshire countryside, a place that is Daniel and his family’s home, sustenance, and friend. The descriptions of it are raw and breathing, presenting the land as something not romanticised or boring, but a place of hard life and toughly-fought reward. The majority of the characters are poor and often transient or avoiding the system, and the landscape is shown as a place that can offer if not neutral then less established ground. Though it is a novel about family and countryside, it is also highly political in a way and steeped in class issues, with unscrupulous landowners ripping off ordinary people, and it shows one family’s attempt to live outside the usual political and social system.

Elmet is a raw and exciting book that should be read even by those who don’t think they like novels set in the countryside. It is also an important reminder that books set in the England beyond London need to be written, ones that show rural issues whilst telling stories of varied characters and lives.