A Novel of Short StoriesAdam Thorpe’s first novel Ulverton comprises twelve chapters. Each of these chapters is a short story set in the fictional English town of Ulverton. Ordered chronologically these stories span the last three and a half centuries of English history. It is the common factors of geographical location and shared historical events that bind the short stories, written in a variety of styles and expressed through a cross section of society’s viewpoints, into a novel. We are first introduced to Ulverton through the viewpoint of a local farmer. He narrates the consequences of a neighbouring farmer’s unexpected return from fighting for Cromwell in the English Civil War. This chapter is written in the first person. It sets up a local legend (Anne Cobbold the witch) that other characters in subsequent chapters refer to. This and other events establish a continuity of history throughout the book.Next we have the Vicar’s story set thirty-nine years later. On the walk home to Ulverton from a funeral in a neighbouring village the narrator and his party are overtaken by a snowstorm. The vicar narrates from the pulpit his version of the events that have been the subject of gossip in the community.It is early in the eighteenth century when we return to a farmer’s point of view in chapter three. Our narrator is concerned with improvements in husbandry and the continuation of his family name and he records his endeavours upon these topics in journal form. The fourth and fifth stories are written in epistolary form. A series of letters from a literate lady in confinement contrasts with the letters, of erratic spelling, written by the tailor for a favour, from a peasant mother to her wayward son.Early in the nineteenth century, looking back on his days as an apprentice carpenter, our narrator for the sixth tale relates in the first person the story of a practical joke upon his pious boss. This incident took place at the time of the previous chapter and is alluded to in one of the letters there.The industrial revolution provides the historical backdrop for the next era of Ulverton’s history. The courtroom depositions of members of the community show the troubles of the time as Luddites try to halt the march of progress these are interspersed with sections from the solicitor’s letters to his fiancé.Chapter eight is presented as the written notes to accompany a series of photographic plates. The pictures (not included) are being shown as a slide show and the photographer’s commentary covers images of Ulverton and an archaeological expedition to Egypt.The ninth chapter is Thorpe’s personal favourite story in the novel because it empowers a normally marginalized section of society and makes the reader work to understand it. Thorpe said: “I don't see much point in writing a novel unless the reader works.” Written in thick dialect as a peasant’s stream of consciousness the language is difficult, and a second reading may be necessary to capture the full gist of his story.As the world is beginning the Great War in 1914, we see Ulverton from the viewpoint of a retired colonial servant recently returned from India after the death of his wife. The first draft of this story appeared in New Writing I as a self-contained short story. The narrator is remembering the atmosphere of the period from a safe distance in 1928.The diary and some other papers of a famous cartoonist’s secretary bring the reader to Ulverton at the time of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. The cartoonist is planning to bury some artefacts and his own writing for posterity on the same day as the new monarch is crowned. The final chapter of this novel of short stories is set in 1988 and is written in another new form. It is the script of a documentary about a property developer’s plans for Ulverton. His encounters with the Ulverton Preservation Society bring him into contact with one Adam Thorpe giving the author a cameo role in his own novel. Ulverton won Adam Thorpe the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize when it was published in 1992. An extract from the novel was used by The Council for the Protection of Rural England in their publicity material promoting conservationism. It is a novel concerned primarily with location, the town of Ulverton itself is the novels main character. Using a variety of literary techniques Thorpe has created a fictional place that encapsulates the broad sweep of modern history across the English countryside creating a novel form of novel in the process. This book is an interesting read and provides inspiration for short story writers looking to move up in length to writing novels.
This is a remarkable evocation of the past in a cycle of twelve fragments, episodes, or stories spanning over 300 years and centred on the village of Ulverton, somewhere in the chalklands of the North Wessex downs. This is not some family saga dragged out over generations, nor is it an historical exercise thinly disguised as fiction; it's more like an eclectic mix of objets trouvés - documents and recordings, sermons, diaries, letters, depositions - rescued by some eccentric archivist. Adam Thorpe has a keen sense for the rhythms of period writing and dialect speech. "Stitches", an extraordinary stream-of-consciousness rant, is a bravura performance, but we also get an engaging series of semi-literate letters sent from an Ulverton mother to her son in Newgate prison, a collection of high Victorian photo captions which (between the lines) tell of a romance that never blossomed, and a 1950s diary that's all spam and drizzle and making do. The episodes are not closely linked, but local places, past events, and village surnames ("haaf witch an a quarter sheep them Walters") flow through the book, coming to an end in the inarticulate and destructive greed of the Thatcher years. Ulverton is bold, original, and full of vitality. Someday, I promise myself I'll read it again. Aye. I will an all.
Do You like book Ulverton (1993)?
Very good, if occasionally chewy; (which is why it got 4 rather than 5 stars). This series of interconnected short stories tells of life in a fictional English village over a period of 400 years. the stories are oftem quite grim and I wouldn't recommend starting this book if you are feeling a bit miserable! Spotting the links between stories is fun often the gaps in time are huge and rarely do characters appear in more than one story. The stories vary considerably in style and voice and that is part of its appeal although there is one in a stream of consciousness style with a high proportion of dialect which in the end I skipped. Others are told as photographer's notes, scripts, diary entries and in the end there is a neat tying back to the opening tale. Recommended as a slightly challenging but rewarding read.
—Johanne
This is a dense book. Takes some effort to get through it, but the effort is, in my opinion, well worth it. The book is stylistically brilliant. Comprising twelve different stories, told in a variety of formats, from letters to movie scripts, it provides a glimpse into the events that affected England in the time period of the novel. But these events are narrated only insofar as they affect the narrators. It's also interesting how narratives at the beginning undergo changes in later narratives.The major problem I had was with the blurb for this edition, which gave away what happens to the soldier in the first story. Poor bit of editing that.
—Neelakantan K.K.
The cover blurb has a Sunday Times reviewer declaring this "A masterpiece" and it... probably is. It is a powerful exercise in the taking on of different voices, without a doubt-- with each change of era, there is a different narrative point of view, and they are all indeed quite distinct-- but to my slightly low-brow tastes it is wanting in the area of plot. Stuff happens, yes, and there is a nice little quiver in the reader's bosom when events from earlier in the book are referred to later, frequently in a distorted form as if authentically passed along by word of mouth, but none of it really has any bearing on what follows. This combined with an occasionally painful patch of phonetic dialogue (the end of the 1800s is marked by twenty-eight pages of picturesque rural gibberish with but a single period for punctuation) makes it something of an up-hill climb for the reader. It is an impressive exercise, but I'm not sure it's an enriching one.As I say, I'm slightly low-brow in my expectations. One might point out that there is a good depiction of the futility of human ambition, of the ephemerality of human works, and of the paradox of "progress" (things get worse because things get better), and that's all true. If that's the sort of thing that you're looking for in a book, and you don't mind the substitution for plot by slices of life, you'll rate this book higher than I. What stars I've given it are mainly for the workmanship; the different voices also give an impression of authenticity to each era, and I do appreciate that.
—Dirck de Lint
