Writers are forever struggling to find new ways of telling stories. Most narrative techniques resemble most other narrative techniques. But occasionally something brand new turns up. It's a vast, complex story of three generations told in 114 pages. What's more, this tale about a man named Elwyn Farmer, his wife, sons, and grandchildren, stretching across a span of 35 years, has to share those few brief pages with a great deal of lore about bugs.
Farmer is an amateur entomologist.
The novel also contains some beautiful descriptive writing about the outdoors, light, air, beetles, terrain, a marvelous passage about a bee swarm. And with a skill that any writer worth his salt will envy, Brian Kiteley manages to bring his people to brilliant eccentric life, especially Elwyn himself, struggling valiantly to get over a nervous breakdown and the effect it had on the people around him. When the writer chooses to couch his narrative in the first person, the task becomes almost impossible. Kiteley makes it work by recognising that absorption in a science or craftsmanship or art can be a man's salvation even in societies that least value such disinterestedness. As Farmer's regard turns from the natural world to himself there is no alteration in that tone of cool observation which leaves no room for self-pity or falsity.