All Entries in the "Native Rites" Category
Read Native Rites online
We’re continuing to experiment with new distribution mechanisms around here and as part of this we’re now making an entire novel available online. Click below to read (and download if you subscribe to Scribd) Native Rites, the fourth book I wrote. Let me be the first to say this is not typical of my work. By book four most authors are finding their feet; I was still trying to work out where I wanted to be.
That’s not to say I dislike this book, which is the only work of mine set entirely in my native England. In fact I’m rather proud of it. My then publisher wanted something set in the UK. I didn’t want to cover any of the obvious locations, such as London, so I set the book on my own doorstep, in rural east Kent. And no, it’s not like this really… honest. Though if you explore the countryside around the beautiful village of Stelling Minnis you will appreciate some of the fictional locations.
A tale of the English countryside
Native Rites is a book about a set of people who will do whatever it takes to safeguard their own, precious, privileged existences. A young couple move to a new rural home. Miles commutes to the city each day leaving his American wife Alison to get to know the locals.
One September day they both visit the ancient bonfire ritual. Maybe Alison was drunk. Maybe not. But she felt sure something terrible happened, and that at least some of those close to her knew it too.
Is she paranoid? Or is there really some dark conspiracy happening in this small piece of paradise? Alison is determined to find out, whatever the cost, however much the truth may shatter her illusions about the cosy, comfortable green heaven she’s found herself in.
Native Rites asks how far we would go to defend our notion of Englishness. Answer: as far as we need.
The landscape in which the book is set is still glorious, and hopefully a little too remote for the house builders and sightless urban politicians of England to despoil it soon. And you can visit without fear of winding up in the middle of some secret, sacrificial rite. Take a copy of Rites to the area of east Kent, between Wye, Folkestone and Canterbury, and you will encounter strange commons called Minnis, and beautiful remote villages that look as if they haven’t changed for centuries. You may even bump into the occasional author too.