Foxash: 'A wonderfully atmospheric and deeply unsettling novel' Sarah Waters

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The story is set in the 1930's in England and starts with Lettie, a young married woman arriving to join her husband, Tommy, who has signed up for a government scheme ( that really did exist) to train unemployed men to farm with financial assistance and the lease on a small holding. There are hints that something happened beyond their descent into poverty after Tommy lost his mining job. Lettie arrives at Foxash farm to find their accommodation is joined to another house and set well away from the families with children in the central zone. Their neighbours are an older couple Adam and Jean who grew up farming and are seemingly in tune with the rhythms of nature. They set out to win over Lettie as they seem to have done with her taciturn husband. Jean gives Lettie a delicious lettuce and a green potion , to "build her up" which seems to have aphrodisiac and psychotropic properties. Like the Tale of Rapunzel, Lettie cannot resist Jean's lettuce and late at night is driven to steal from Adam and Jean's glasshouse.. The consequences of this theft reverberate throughout the story as the couples get to know one another better and attempt to bring forth "fruit from the land" and their characters start to be revealed.. I’m rating this a 4 star because even though I’m not crazy about it I think that’s because this isn’t really my preferred genre and it’s left me feeling a bit uncomfortable, but for lovers of this kind of thing I imagine that’s exactly the feeling they want to get from a book like this. Likewise to Sarah Waters, I would also compare 'Foxash' to Kiran Millwood Hargrave's writing for adults. There is that physiologic claustrophobia and shrinking-down of the female protagonist's world, as is experienced by Hargrave's Maren and Lisbet in 'The Mercies' and 'The Dance Tree' respectively. Here we have Lettie's body buffeted by her surroundings and her interactions with others. For instance, she struggles against ' sheets of crying; buffeting walls of it'. Every interaction with her immediate situation sees Lettie's five senses respond reflexively: ' [the] plants [...] sung to me.' Kate Worsley sets up all the themes solidly - growth, the land, the seasons, the cycles (both of woman and the earth) - but she definitely lets the reader make all the connections for themselves.

The Land settlement — Manningtree Museum

Whilst the story is a very human one, the land and the seasons play a major part in the plot development. I was reminded of Lolly Willowes (Sylvia Townsend Warner) and also All Among the Barley (Melissa Harrison), yet this is a new (to me) voice with an intriguing and addictive voice. Small-holdings were grouped in communities which were expected to run agricultural production as cooperative market gardens, with materials bought and produce sold exclusively through the Association. All applicants were interviewed and given agricultural training before being assigned a property. I found it to be actually a very claustrophobic, isolated and dark story, which I guess is where the gothic bit comes in. Several of the twists and turns are a bit predictable, although perhaps the final one is unexpected.Foxash' is the story of a body. Kate Worsley enroots the story in one woman's - Lettie's - body, and cultivates a form of high sensuousness full of the felt knowledge of the physical. Lettie tills on towards the novel's climax, experiencing every grain of the narrative as a bodily perception: '[my] body feels like syrup on a spoon.' Foxash Farm on the Harwich Road was the base for Central Services, including transport (tractors and lorries) and machinery such as the soil sterilizer. John Noy was transport manager from the 1960s until the closure, living in Foxash House. It's a story of growing: of growing crops on a smallholding (in the first year of production under the 1930s Land Settlement Association scheme) and the fertility of rural land; it's the story of growing sociality, co-operaton, neighbourliness and belonging; it's the story of a new life for a coalminer and his pitwife, growing seeds and plugs into cash crops of cucumbers and cane fruits. But more than that, 'Foxash' is the story of the female body growing; women's fertility; women's connectedness of spirit within the rural idyll. It's also the story of the growth of rot as collaboration breaks down; as decay grows within relationships; it's the chilling story of the insidious growth of spite, jealousy, and perfidy, and it all plays out in the media of what Lettie smells, tastes, sees, feels, hears. Foxash is a rather unusual novel, and all the better for it. The setting is interesting, and one I had never heard of - a 1930's British government scheme to get former industrial workers into agricultural work. Very interesting premise and vividly portrayed. Georgie is extremely proud that she has earnt the opportunity of a placement as a lecturer at two equine colleges and universities in the UK, with further lectures and clinics happening in many venues around the world. In addition, she is also a regular contributor to the Horse and Rider Magazine offering answers to help them with horse, saddle and rider issues.

Foxash by Kate Worsley | Waterstones Foxash by Kate Worsley | Waterstones

Professor Wise was appointed by the Government in 1963 to report on the LSA. His findings published in 1967, recommended that the number of LSAs be reduced to 10. What I loved most about Foxash is the way that the author weaves in rural lore, such as going to tell the bees about significant events, and the natural changes in the countryside as the seasons change. It is almost claustrophobic in its detailed descriptions of the countryside, the oppressive heat of the greenhouse and the chill of winter mornings with the cry of foxes. Lettie’s world was never vast, but it has become much smaller: she never leaves the smallholding and seldom meets anyone other than her neighbours. As compensation she learns to observe nature and how it behaves in a way that she hasn’t previously, and we seldom would today. We witness the growth and transformation that envelops everything, even Lettie herself. Oh and there’s quite a lot of information about lettuces! Foxash was one of the many small-holdings set up in the 1930s by the Government’s Land Settlement Association. The manager of the LSA, appointed by the government, lived in Good Hall House on Coggeshall Road. The adjoining farmyard was used for storing LSA machinery. Combining a gothic sensibility with a visceral, unsettling sense of place, Foxash is a deeply original novel of quiet and powerful menace, of the real hardships of rural life, and the myths and folklore that seep into ordinary lives - with surprising consequences.The first thing I noticed about Foxash by Kate Worsley is the stunning cover. The book definitely lives up to its promise but in a most unexpected way. But Kate Worsley doesn’t take the obvious or ‘easy’ way forward. This book is all the more haunting because there are no supernatural explanations. Foxash is dark without the need for any otherworldly bells and whistles. The story unfolds from Lettie’s perspective. She’s a young woman who has left her home and friends and all she’s known to travel to another part of the country to become a smallholder. She has no experience of farming, having only worked in a Tea House and being a miner’s wife. I really got behind Lettie and Tommy and really wanted them to make a success of their smallholding. I enjoyed following how despite all the odds they made their smallholding a success. They are placed next door to an established and capable couple, Adam and Jean Dell, whose apparent well-meaning advice and support turns ever more over-bearing as the book progresses. Georgie is first and foremost a horse lover. On top of that, she is one of the most highly qualified saddle fitters in the world. With a selection of saddles from a multitude of suppliers, she is not a sales rep nor a brand ambassador. In fact Elite has access to some of the most beautiful top quality saddles available on the market, offering a huge choice to ensure that riders get the saddle both their horse and themselves need.

Foxash Social Club Essex, England For Hire - Hallshire Foxash Social Club Essex, England For Hire - Hallshire

I would only recommend Foxash if you enjoy pain, misery and hopelessness. If you fancy that sort of thing, it’s a compelling novel. The allocation of smallholdings to the unemployed was suspended at the outbreak of the Second World War through the necessity of increasing food production; favour was then given to those already with horticultural skills. After the war the Association was incorporated within the 1947 Agricultural Act for statutory provision of smallholdings designed as a first step for those going into agricultural production. Something about the book blurb on NetGalley made me think I would enjoy reading this book, and my thanks to the publisher for providing an ARC. As it turns out, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting and I don’t know whether that’s because I misread the description or because it was, as it felt to me, a different book to what was described. The details of Lettie’s farmer’s wife lifestyle are often tedious, but they speak to her hardships, her determination to thrive amid diversity and her diligence and hard work. So much detail is given about the everyday things, but the unordinary things are left unsaid. Eventually, enough is said that we do guess. The outcome of this quadrangle relationship Lettie/Tommy/Jean/Adam will amaze you.Foxash LSA continued for another 15 years, until the closure of all remaining LSAs was announced in the House of Commons on 22nd December 1982. LSAs were encouraged to continue as independent companies and tenants had the right to buy their houses and smallholdings. The unease and darkness grows till about three quarters of the way through, the unease turns into an even darker feeling of dread.