At Hawthorn Time is a novel that builds slowly. The early chapters center on four strangers who share nothing but a common geography: the small town of Lodeshill in rural England. Howard and Kitty have just moved to the town after raising their family in London; Jamie, a local teenager, has lived there his entire life; and Jack, a migrant worker, has returned to the area to look for farm labor after being released from prison. Though many small-town stories revel in the unexpected ways the lives of strangers can merge and overlap, Melissa Harrison (Clay) takes a different approach: what is most astounding at the outset of her second novel is the sheer amount of time it takes for these characters to encounter each other, despite their living in close proximity.
By keeping these characters separate for so long--their stories do not appear on the same page until at least 100 pages in, and do not truly begin to overlap in any meaningful way for yet another hundred--Harrison brings to the forefront the extremely personal and private ways that we can live as individuals while simultaneously highlighting the impermanence of that individualism. Combined with graceful and delicate language about nature and the English countryside--which could in many ways be called a fifth, unnamed and ever-present character in the novel--At Hawthorn Time is a quiet meditation on the unexpected beauty of both the individual and the community, and the changing landscape in which the two exist. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm