Benjamin Myers

“Nobody does troubled figures in a stunning landscape like Ben Myers. He’s a major force in the English novel and he gets better with every book.” Max Porter, author of Grief is The Thing With Feathers and Lanny From a British literary sensation, the story of two rural outcasts and the crop circles they create over the course of a long, hot and very strange summer. Summer 1989, rural England, the tail end of long decade of mass unemployment, class war and rebellion, and the continued destruction of the English countryside. Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men - traumatized ex-soldier Calvert, and affable and chaotic Redbone - set out nightly in a decrepit camper van to undertake an extraordinary project. Under cover of darkness, the two men traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns, designs so intricate that they inspire the kind of awe that the ancient Gothic cathedral in nearby Salisbury once inspired. As the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation - and that an unlikely and beautiful friendship has taken root as the wheat ripens from green to gold. But as harvest-time beckons — and as media and the authorities begin to take too much interest in their work— Calvert and Redbone have to race against time to finish the most stunning and original crop circle ever conceived: the Honeycomb Double Helix. Moving and exhilarating, and recalling the apocalyptic visions of William Blake, Alan Moore and Cormac MacCarthy, The Perfect Golden Circle is a captivating, tender and slyly witty novel about the power of beauty to heal trauma and fight power.

The Perfect Golden Circle

Emma Cragg

Rain rattles the roof of Redbone's van, each drop urgent. It builds into a sustained military tattoo, and for two or three minutes the storm is a sustained attack of pure summer violence so vast and indiscriminate it appears it may never end. But it does, finally slowing to a meek and easy splatter, and pregnant droplets hang like tiny silver baubles from the branches caught in the white glare of the headlight beams.

The Perfect Golden Circle quotes

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