An Acre of Barren Ground

by Jeremy Gavron

At number 30 the victim of a savage serial killer is found, and Inspector Abberline wonders whether he'll ever find the murderer they're calling Jack. At number 41 a man tries to hide his family in the shadows of a ruined London; 1500 years later, a gangster plays out the same story. At 246 a mammoth dies, and long afterwards, a giant's thighbone is discovered. Bangladeshis, Jews, Huguenots, brewers, soldiers, farmers and medieval monks - men on the run and families determined to make a new home. Each has come to Brick Lane. Each has left its ghosts.

Genres: Fiction, London

341 pages, Hardcover

First published January 4, 2005

About the author

Jeremy Gavron is the author of six books, including the novels The Book of Israel, winner of the Encore Award, and An Acre of Barren Ground; and A Woman on the Edge of Time, a memoir about his mother’s suicide. He lives in London, and teaches on the MFA at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.

Reviews

[Tracey Wilde · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a really unusual book. Each chapter is totally different.Some are fiction, some are fact, some cartoon strips, some just photographs, some newspaper cuttings. Each one is related to Brick Lane in some way. They range from all periods in history.
It is absolutely fascinating.
Reading it is like overhearing snatches of someones conversation but not knowing the background or what happens afterwards.

[Vickie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book about Brick Lane.

Each chapter is a different story or presentation of historical facts. Occasionally, characters interlink (over generational gaps) as you build your own history of Brick Lane, from hundreds of years ago up to present day.

The area itself, is fascinating and wonderful and reading this book just made it more so.

[Siobhan Markwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

An utter delight, this is a series of fictionalised, historically researched accounts of lives lived around Brick Lane, one of the most renowned centres of immigrant settlement in London, which borders on Shoreditch and Spitalfields. Gavron's mini epics range from short state-of-mind accounts by Bengali farmers, through dot com bubble graphic novel chapters right through to portraits of medieval wood cuttings, inter-war photographs and archive pieces on specific, well-known local properties. The lives of Tudor widows rub shoulders with Huguenot weavers and Lithuanian Jewish refugees just as the architecture and style of the area is a composite of successive waves of inhabitants. We meet dark age pastoralists, medieval nuns and Lascar seamen, Roman soldiers, Inspector Aballine of Ripper fame and nameless poverty stricken survivors who eke out a living from the Victorian sewage system.

If you have any interest in the East End, memories of its Jewish community, a love of Hawksmoor's architecture or a fondness for the market, its modern trendy offerings or the Bengali restaurants that cling on in the wake of gentrification, you will enjoy a few hours in the company of this book.

[Claire Carpenter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Loved bits of this book, but found the many stories with no obvious link to Brick Lane quite frustrating. Also a very few subtle links between stories was great but would have enjoyed more of these.

[Linda]

I didn’t actually finish this - it got very obscure

[Ian Hampton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm familiar with Whitechapel having worked there for several years, this brilliant book took me back to places I'd forgotten and places I never even knew about.

[Michael Coleman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book before. I forgot what it was called! I can't wait to read it again.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gavron has painstakingly put together the story of a landscape - a chunk of modern-day London - from pre-history to its current, urban shape, tracing the different people that have arrived, left, lived on and altered its surface. As such, the reader is able to see contemporary Brick Lane as simply the latest layer of the land's narrative, this stretch of East London being storied by thousands who are variously migrants, workers, socialist campaigners, mothers, brewers, worshippers, shoremen, soldiers and fathers. What really sets An Acre of Barren Ground apart is that the way in which it is written means that the reader can't always place each chapter (historically) for a few pages, meaning that Gavron is able to emphasise the similarities in how people have lived over time - work, family, home etc. - as well as the space he gives to buildings, plants and animals as well as humans.

[Rose]

Rather an eclectic smorgasbord of genres: snippets of comics, stories, chronologies, and historical accounts. An interesting and varied read, but some of the stories left me a bit frustrated because they seemed more like sections lifted from a longer text than like complete short stories in themselves. I kept feeling both that I didn't know enough of the back story and that as soon as I had got into what was going on, I was rushed off to something completely different without the first story really reaching a conclusion.

[Katharine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some chapters I really loved and would have given them 5 * ie the ones set a long time ago, pre 16th C. Some of the more modern stories I found a chore to slog through and would only have given 2*or 3*. I loved the linkages between the stories, sometimes very subtle and the way the book shows how our environment is shaped by the past.

[Michele · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant ode to Brick Lane

[Ern Richardson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Acre of Barren Ground is a compilation of short stories tracking the rich history of London's East-End. The story hits the ground running in the first chapter though loses momentum throughout. Perhaps it is merely a consequence of some historical features not being as interesting as others.

The blurb is misleading as it seems to indicate that the book will follow the lives of a family through its family tree, or a related family all living on Brick Lane throughout history. That is not the case. There are multiple families involved and so you find yourself getting invested in one story only to have it cut short. In the case of one Pakistani family the story picks up on a non-linear narrative arc and I'm not convinced that this is an effective strategy on the part of the author. It requires the reader paying close attention to gain anything of meaning from this particular storyline and as it is the main storyline it is an unfortunate consequence of the author's choice to have structured their story as such. The effect is that upon the last mention of this particular family it seems as if the author has just forgotten about where he was going with that storyline.

That being said, I think the narrative was only ever intended to be a snapshot of the diverse culture and history swept up in Brick Lane. Perhaps I am being overly critical due to my own investment in the juicier aspects of the historical narratives. I think I would characterise the book as much like a dramatisation of history.