Author(s): Miranda France

Fiction

"Hill Farm" tells the story of what appears to be a perfectly ordinary farming family living in a perfect village in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It feels like a place that will never change. Its fields have been cultivated since medieval times, its farmhouse is crumbling and the same bric-a-brac has been circulating the village jumble sales for decades. But change does come, that summer. It comes in different guises: a handsome farm-hand, a death-watch beetle, a lavender-scented bosom, a lost hedgerow, a disused water tank. But finally it comes in the shape of an explosive argument in the tractor shed, after which nothing will ever be the same again. With gentle wit and sharp intelligence, Miranda France takes the rural idyll and shakes it right up. She finds there's quite another side to "The Hill Farm" story.