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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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Dirt under the fingernails: an attachment to land

23/6/2014

21 Comments

 
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For most of my 20s I lived with a man who had spent his early years in a village in Punjab.  His father, despite being permanently settled in the UK and not having a huge amount of surplus cash, was determined to buy a house with a plot of land for each of his sons “back home”.  In his mind, it was worth going without in his current place of residence to invest in the place where his family had lived for generations. 

I was reminded of this on reading Johanna Lane’s debut novel, Black Lake.  An Indian immigrant might seem worlds away from of a country gentleman in Donegal, yet my ex-boyfriend’s father and Irish patriarch, John Campbell, shared a similar tenacious attachment to their ancestral lands.  While one moved thousands of miles away and the other made an uncomfortable compromise to enable him to stay, both their identities were rooted in the soil of their homelands.

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In our modern, urban communities, we often hold contradictory ideas about the countryside.  It’s both idealised and denigrated, considered empty space ripe for plundering or treated as a playground or rural theme park.  The Campbell family, choosing to live in a small dank cottage in order to remain on the estate, seem out of step with contemporary notions of connectedness and progress.  Beautiful as Dulough is, they’d have far easier lives in Dublin.

This novel made me reflect on my own attachment to soil and landscape.  I felt frustrated with John for abandoning his family to go rambling in the hills on the morning the removal men were coming to strip the great house of their possessions.  Yet I recognised something of myself in his desperation to get out on his solitary walk: lacing his shoes without socks in his rush to leave without waking his wife.  I too have days when it seems that only a walk in the countryside I know and love will restore me to myself.  Although, unlike John, I’ve never owned a chunk of the countryside (and, in terms of the battle for the right to roam, we’d have been on different sides), I do sometimes tramp the moors with a proprietorial air.

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Unlike John, his wife, Marianne, has grown up in the city, but she too comes to feel passionate about the land, especially after establishing her garden.  Tilling the soil, feeling the dirt under one’s fingernails binds one to the land more powerfully than merely admiring the view, and she’s devastated when the developers damage what she’s grown.

While the family don’t need Marianne’s garden for food, food security is often at the root of our psychological attachment to land.  John is horrified that his ancestor subjected his countrymen to hunger and starvation when he evicted his tenants from their homes.  As a former subsistence farmer, my ex-boyfriend’s father understood the value of safeguarding one’s rights to work the land.  The allotment movement satisfied a similar need for poor families in Britain in the last century.  With a supermarket just down the road, I’m not so dependent on my garden, yet I appreciate the ability to harvest fruit and vegetables from my soil. 

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A Thousand Acres is another novel about the tragedy that ensues when a man lets go of his land.  Here, Jane Smiley transposes Shakespeare’s King Lear to a farming community in contemporary Iowa.  Like John Campbell, Larry Cook fails to appreciate how much things will change when he retires and hands over his farm to his three daughters.  History catches up with Larry as it did with John, bringing about a crisis of his own making.

There’s a different, but equally disturbing, take on land ownership in The Cutting Season by Attica Locke.  Belle Vie is an antebellum plantation between Baton Rouge and New Orleans transformed into a tourist attraction complete with re-enactments and restored slave quarters.  The discovery of the dead body of a migrant worker and resulting investigation, both lay and professional, involves revisiting a history that the current owners would prefer to forget.

Not surprisingly, given my interests, a few of my published short stories focus on our attachment to land. Stealing the Show from Nature is the most recent; Plastic was the shortest till now. With Charli’s latest flash fiction prompt on getting stronger, I thought I’d try my hand at something a tad more optimistic. I was surprised where it took me; I’m not sure I approve:

The governor granted his permission, but nothing more. No budget. No staff. When she saw the wasteland he’d assigned her, she almost gave up. Brambles thick as trees. Boulders too heavy for a sole woman to lift.

The prisoners skulked in their cells, smoking. The screws laughed when they unlocked the door to let her out. Laughed when they let her in again, exhausted, caked in mud. Laughed when the slugs gobbled up her seedlings. Yet she and her plants were growing stronger. She smiled. Once she’d harvested the cannabis, there’d be a waiting list for the gardening class.

How attached to you feel to land and landscape?  Is this a theme in your writing?  What’s your take on the conflict between town and country?  Can you recommend any other novels where this attachment to land is addressed?

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
21 Comments
Quanie Miller link
23/6/2014 09:09:16 am

I can't think of any other novels (not off the top of my head) where attachment to land is addressed. I know it's important for to me to live where there's lots of greenery and space (a huge reason my husband and I moved across country), so I can definitely relate.The Cutting Season sounds interesting. I'm from Louisiana so I'll have to check that out.

Reply
Annecdotist
23/6/2014 01:41:14 pm

Thanks for commenting, Quanie, and welcome to my blog. Would be interested in what you thought of The Cutting Season. I'm not particularly into murder mysteries, but was intrigued when I heard the author talking about it on the radio. She'd developed the idea after attending a wedding in a mansion that had been in the centre of the former slave plantation. Weird.

Reply
Geoff link
23/6/2014 10:20:58 am

I'm not sure it is entirely on point but Daughters of the House by Michelle Roberts deal with issues around the family home and the attachment and detachment from it and why.
As for the flash, Anne, excellent twist. Reminds me of a trip to the Edinburgh Fringe a few years ago. We stayed in student accommodation run by Unite. Opposite our fourth floor room were the roofs of the other blocks. On each one was a grow bag with one or more sad looking cannabis plants. I'm not sure what I admired most. The authorities indifference or the students optimism that you can grow cannabis outdoors in Edinburgh.

Reply
Annecdotist
23/6/2014 01:47:27 pm

Thanks, Geoff, that title sounds familiar but I can't remember any of the story. She usually sets hers in France, doesn't she? Will have to look it up when I have more time.
Interesting story about the students – whatever gets them hooked on gardening, I'd say. But I was surprised when the stuff sneaked its way into my flash.

Reply
Charli Mills link
23/6/2014 05:03:14 pm

What really intrigues me is this idea: "Food security is often at the root of our psychological attachment to land." I had never thought of it before as I often romanticize land attachment. Food is so practical, but makes sense. the western genre deals a lot with land attachment--wars on the range ensue between natives and newcomers; ranchers and farmers; landowners and squatters. It still continues. Just this past April a Nevada rancher declared a range war on the federal government. Most ranchers graze on public lands out west and its a big controversy. As to the land, I love dirt under my fingernails and toenails too--I garden barefoot, tho no gardening pleasures this year. I sneak outside to weed, mow and water and I have berries to harvest so I'm cheating a bit! As to your flash, it's a great twist and I'm delighted that you experienced writing something unexpected. Great review, too!

Reply
Annecdotist
24/6/2014 09:09:50 am

Thank you, Charli, there's so much in your comment. I think I romanticise you out on your ranch, so glad you connected with this post. With so much less space in the UK, it's a long time since farmers could graze their stock on public land but it makes me think of a novel I haven't actually read yet but would have suited this piece: Harvest by Jim Crace which I believe is about the Enclosures Acts. Glad I'm not the only one with dirty nails; I do occasionally garden barefoot, don't mind the soil so much but there's lots of little stones on the path that can be painful underfoot.

Reply
Charli Mills
24/6/2014 02:34:14 pm

I romanticize it, as well, Anne! In fact, the entire western genre tends to be romantic. A craving for lost Eden, perhaps...and good food. Also, I wonder if those who came to America, dispossessed of homelands, brought with them a romanticized view of what it "should" be like to have your own land and be "free." Harvest might be a good book for me to read.

Annecdotist
27/6/2014 03:21:14 am

Good points, Charli. So many of our beliefs and attitudes that we take for granted are embedded in a history we can to easily forget. (And I love the way this theme has continued into your latest flash fiction challenge: http://carrotranch.com/2014/06/26/june-25-flash-fiction-challenge/)

Jenny Lloyd link
24/6/2014 12:53:03 pm

This idea intrigued me, too. I've always felt a strong attachment to the land and landscapes, and they are central to both my novels and my blogs. In the old days, before the Enclosures Acts, everyone had rights to cultivate common land. It was crucial to their survival. The Enclosures Acts were downright robbery of the poor by those who had the power and the means to pass acts of Parliament for their own ends.

Reply
Annecdotist
27/6/2014 03:16:55 am

Thanks for this contribution, Jenny, your attachment to land is very apparent in your beautiful blog posts. The Countryside and Rights of Way Act has reclaimed some access to the British countryside for walkers, but nothing like the grazing rights people had of old, except perhaps in some specific areas such as the New Forest. I suppose fracking will present a new challenge as people discover they don't actually have much right to the land on which their houses stand.

Lori Schafer link
23/6/2014 11:16:46 pm

I don't deal with this much in my writing, but I've had a difficult time adjusting to the difference in land between New England and here in the SF Bay Area. Where I grew up, where land is cheap, even the smallest house had a pretty big yard. Here, a standard $500K house barely has what I would even call a yard. It's a disturbing lack of space that I'm not sure I'd notice if I'd grown up here, but it really feels claustrophobic to me. But that has more to do with space than land, per se. I definitely know what you mean about being able to walk in the country, though. I used to be able to cross the street and almost be in the country - here even the suburbs are crowded!

I did write one flash fiction piece specifically about land called "State of Micronesia, 2016." It's about the sad state of those islands that are literally vanishing due to global warming. An entirely different conception of land as not fixed and stable, but fleeting and impermanent, which is perhaps not such a foreign concept to those of us who live in earthquake country.

I loved your flash fiction piece this week - particularly the bite at the end :)

Reply
Annecdotist
24/6/2014 09:19:33 am

Thanks, Lori, I can see why you fixed yourself up with a writing shack on your roof. I had the opposite experience of moving from a city with no garden (although I did have an allotment) to a small town where prices were cheaper so we now have a lot of space.
Your flash sounds interesting – have you published it? I remember reading about an island that was under threat from rising seawater and the population having to be evacuated. Tragic to find your whole country disappear!

Reply
Gargi link
24/6/2014 03:31:28 am

V S Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas might fall under the category, though it’s not exactly an attachment to land. I think Jane Austen’s novels too touch on this theme, because the property is taken away from the daughters and given to the sons thereby maximizing the urgency with which the heroines need to be married to well-earning gentlemen of repute.

Reply
Annecdotist
24/6/2014 09:25:20 am

Thanks, Gargi, I loved A House for Mr Biswas, although I can't remember us much about the plot now. Oh, yes, and those poor Austen heroines – I can feel a post on women's enforced dependency coming on!

Reply
Teagan Kearney link
24/6/2014 01:42:42 pm

A thought provoking review (as always), Annie. Reminds me of going with a friend to Donegal and visiting the croft (10 acres of rock and mountain pasture) where her grandfather was born. It was stunningly beautiful and easy to romanticize til you thought about no electricity, no running water, the animals spending the winter in the small barn attached to the house, and what they did when the potatoes stored for the winter ran out before the new ones came in.
I think it's interesting to consider how the western attitude that land can be owned is in contrast to say the Native American view (& Australian, and even pre Augustine Celtic Christian Britain) where the land is held in trust for the people by the group/tribe rather than the individual.

Reply
Annecdotist
27/6/2014 03:26:30 am

Thanks, Teagan, Black Lake has some lovely descriptions of the Donegal countryside, to which Johanna Lane is so obviously deeply attached, even though she now lives in New York. But doesn't bear thinking about what you'd do when the stored food ran out.
Yes, it is quite odd really that we can think of land as something that we can own rather than having a duty to look after for the benefit of future generations. And it's really led to us messing up the environment.

Reply
irene waters link
24/6/2014 09:35:39 pm

Love the twist at the end of the flash Anne. A novel that deals with land and landscape is Journey to the Stone Country by Alex Miller.

Reply
Annecdotist
27/6/2014 03:27:27 am

Thank you, Irene, and another one for the TBR pile!

Reply
Norah Colvin link
25/6/2014 12:06:16 am

Hi Anne,
I love your flash. The chosen crop is so surprising. I'm wondering how she's going to manage that undetected. I guess no one will be interested - until the harvest, as you say.
The piece about land is interesting. My Dad was a farmer and farmed small crops until I was about 6. Then we moved to the suburbs and he didn't farm, but did have a well-tended vege patch which provided much of our needs and sometimes what was left went to neighbours. The green thumb seems to have missed me (I prefer cultivating minds?) but my daughter is very interested in growing her own food. She recently moved into a house with a small yard and is busily preparing gardens for edible crops.
When Charli wrote about the relationship of American pioneers to the land, it made me think of Australia. It is interesting that both Teagan and Irene alluded to different aspects. Teagan is right with what she says of the relationship of the Indigenous peoples of Australia to the land. A fabulous non-fiction book about this is The Biggest Estate on Earth in which Bill Gammage explains how the land was managed and cared for the Indigenous peoples prior to 1788. Irene mentioned the novel Stone Country by Alex Miller. It is certainly a great book about landscape. Much of Australian fiction deals with landscape in some way - surviving it, managing it, traversing it, overcoming it. One of my favourites is Voss, a story written by Patrick White and based on the explorations of Ludwig Leichardt. The Australian landscape can be as harsh as it is beautiful.

Reply
Annecdotist
27/6/2014 03:33:34 am

Thanks, Norah, and I also wonder how she'd get away with the cannabis! I wonder if it was a wrench or a relief for your father to give up the responsibility for farming the land. We have a big garden by English standards, which I love, but can be hard work, especially at this time of the year.
I do get that feeling from Australian fiction, going back to the time of Neville Shute, although I haven't read a great deal. Evie Wyld Is an English writer who writes about the Australian landscape but, never having been there, I'm in no position to judge how accurately she manages this.

Reply
Annecdotist
27/6/2014 03:42:31 am

Charli, Jenny, Teagan, Irene and Norah – just wanted to apologise for not responding sooner to your thoughtful comments.
Quanie, Geoff, Lori and Gargi, too: Mega thanks to everyone of you who has commented on this post. I'm overwhelmed by your generosity and erudition in widening my horizons by elaborating on this theme across the world and across history. There's a wealth of knowledge in these comments, to which I can't begin to do justice, and I'd be really interested if any of you were to expand on the issues you've raised on your own blogs. Thanks again.

Reply



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