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Havergey
The search for an ideal society has intrigued us for thousands of years. Politicians, writers and philosophers of every generation have proposed their views, from Plato's Republic and Sir Thomas More's Utopia, to William Morris' News from Nowhere and H G Wells A Modern Utopia. In Havergey, the acclaimed poet and novelist visits the remote island and explores the idea of utopia through various objects in the landscape. Each of these human interventions, built by different generations of island dweller, provokes Burnside's thoughts on energy, agriculture and housing, forming an extraordinary and highly original book about place and how the physical marks we leave are often expressions of our own sense of utopia, in our private and public lives.
160 pages, Hardcover
Published February 1, 2017
3 people are currently reading
143 people want to read
About the author
John Burnside
96 books278 followersJohn Burnside was a Scottish writer. He was the author of nine collections of poetry and five works of fiction. Burnside achieved wide critical acclaim, winning the Whitbread Poetry Award in 2000 for The Asylum Dance which was also shortlisted for the Forward and T.S. Eliot prizes. He left Scotland in 1965, returning to settle there in 1995. In the intervening period he worked as a factory hand, a labourer, a gardener and, for ten years, as a computer systems designer. Laterly, he lived in Fife with his wife and children and taught Creative Writing, Literature and Ecology courses at the University of St. Andrews.
[Author photo © Norman McBeath]
[Author photo © Norman McBeath]
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 22, 2018
Echt jetzt? Ein Zeitreise-Roman? Ich? Hatte ich noch nie, hätte ich mir bislang nicht vorstellen können. Und jetzt schaue ich zu allem Überfluss auch noch eine Zeitreisenden-Serie. Aber der Reihe nach.
Bei John Burnside kann ich einfach nicht widerstehen. Selbst wenn ich mich an das englische Original wagen muss. Und schon bei der Aufmachung des Bandes bin ich hin und weg. Das wunderbare, in Grautönen gehaltene Cover, das Format, Satz und Schrift, und, zwar kein Lesebändchen, aber ein sehr hübsches Lesezeichen, das die Blackwell Buchhandlung in Oxford zeigt (ein Reprint von 1939).
Der Roman handelt von der Insel Havergey, wie uns bereits die Author’s Note verrät:
Though it does not feature on any map that have yet been drawn up, Havergey is, nonetheless, as real as any, and a good deal more real than some.
Utopia, on the other hand, is not a place at all. It is the sum accord of a community of human creatures: what they trust, what they believe, what they see, what they know.
Needless to say, animals have no need of Utopia.
Also eine Utopie? Das interessiert erst einmal garnicht, denn Ben lässt uns zunächst an wunderbaren Naturimpressionen teilhaben:
On these winter days, the harbour – the whole island – can be preternaturally serene, and I cannot help but wonder about the effects of place and weather and light (especially light) on the formation of people, and its sense of itself.
Natur ist überhaupt das große Thema des Romans.
Man erfährt dann schnell, dass wir uns in der Zukunft befinden – 2056 um genau zu sein –, nachdem die Weltbevölkerung durch zahlreiche unheilbare Krankheiten stark dezimiert wurde. Und dann landet ein Mann aus der Vergangenheit am Strand. In einer dunkelblauen Box, auf der „Police Public Box. Call“ steht. Als SciFi-Ignorant habe ich den Witz erst nicht verstanden. Für alle, denen es ähnlich geht: Das ist Tardis, die Zeitreisebox in der englischen Kult-Serie „Doctor Who“ (und Tardis B nennt sie auch John, der Zeitreisende in diesem Roman, der direkt aus dem Jahr 2017 kommt). Deshalb habe ich nun angefangen, diese immense Wissenslücke zu schließen und ganz ehrlich, ich finde die Serie ganz amüsant. Und wer und was sich alles auf diese Serie bezieht! Kann man die englische Popkultur verstehen, ohne diese Serie zu kennen?
Aber zurück zum Roman. Der Lyriker Burnside ist hier in seinem Element. Die Beschreibungen, die Bilder, die Ruhe, die seine Sprache ausstrahlt – das ist ein Genuss. Und doch weiß ich, dass viele Leser dieses Buch nicht werden zu schätzen wissen. Da stecken sozialistische Ideen drin, Umweltaktivismus und Taoismus. Oft auch relativiert, doch es handelt sich um ein gesellschaftskritisches Werk und manch einer mag dieses Moralisierende ablehnen. Mich hat es selten gestört. Manchmal dachte ich auch, uff, jetzt triftet es gleich ins Peinliche ab, aber für meinen Geschmack fängt Burnside es dann immer noch ab.
Eines der schönen Beispiele für diese gesellschaftliche Utopie gefällig?
No plan for a better world can be successful unless we remember the world that had to be replaced. Not just the grosser inequalities and political scandal, but the way such things affected our day-to-day lives. The fine grain of injustice. The pettiness, the dishonour, the ignoble behaviour. We do not live, much of the time, at the socio-political level. We live at the quotidian level, and it is there that we must look for symptoms of a bad system. It is in the way that a family has dinner together (or does not, but watches television, eating off trays in silence), the way a wife talks to her husband, the odd ailments we contract for apparently no good reason, and even the way two men regard one another, should they find themselves alone in a country railway station left to wait in – these are the indicators of a society’s health, not GDP, or any other statistics-based chimera.!
Alles was wir in diesem Roman über Havergey erfahren, resultiert aus den Gesprächen zwischen Ben und John und vor allem aus der Lektüre zahlreicher Dokumente, die in 'The Archive' aufbewahrt werden. Diese Dokumente liest John, während er in einer Art Quarantäne auf das Leben in Havergey vorbereitet wird. Das ist einerseits ein schöner Kunstgriff, weil uns so viele verschiedene Perspektiven, auch historische, zu Havergey vermittelt werden und weil Burnside die Möglichkeit hat, mit verschiedenen Stilen zu arbeiten. Wie gesagt, ich bin bei Burnside befangen, aber man kann ihm wohl zu Recht auch den Vorwurf machen, dass dies hin und wieder etwas sehr eklektizistisch wirkt und dass er diese Verfahren vielleicht auch wählt, um eigene (?) Meinungen zu verwursten und vielleicht auch bereits vorhandene Textentwürfe miteinander zu vermengen. Dass es auch in Havergey einst weniger idyllisch zuging, mag wenig überraschen, dass dabei aber auch verschiedene, verworrene Liebesgeschichten eine Rolle spielten, war selbst mir manchmal zu viel.
Dennoch: Selbst wenn der Plot nicht durchgehend überzeugt, die Sprache tut es – und damit bin ich im Gegensatz zu Ashland & Vine: Roman wieder ganz dabei.
Und jetzt muss ich weiter Doctor Who schauen…
Bei John Burnside kann ich einfach nicht widerstehen. Selbst wenn ich mich an das englische Original wagen muss. Und schon bei der Aufmachung des Bandes bin ich hin und weg. Das wunderbare, in Grautönen gehaltene Cover, das Format, Satz und Schrift, und, zwar kein Lesebändchen, aber ein sehr hübsches Lesezeichen, das die Blackwell Buchhandlung in Oxford zeigt (ein Reprint von 1939).
Der Roman handelt von der Insel Havergey, wie uns bereits die Author’s Note verrät:
Though it does not feature on any map that have yet been drawn up, Havergey is, nonetheless, as real as any, and a good deal more real than some.
Utopia, on the other hand, is not a place at all. It is the sum accord of a community of human creatures: what they trust, what they believe, what they see, what they know.
Needless to say, animals have no need of Utopia.
Also eine Utopie? Das interessiert erst einmal garnicht, denn Ben lässt uns zunächst an wunderbaren Naturimpressionen teilhaben:
On these winter days, the harbour – the whole island – can be preternaturally serene, and I cannot help but wonder about the effects of place and weather and light (especially light) on the formation of people, and its sense of itself.
Natur ist überhaupt das große Thema des Romans.
Man erfährt dann schnell, dass wir uns in der Zukunft befinden – 2056 um genau zu sein –, nachdem die Weltbevölkerung durch zahlreiche unheilbare Krankheiten stark dezimiert wurde. Und dann landet ein Mann aus der Vergangenheit am Strand. In einer dunkelblauen Box, auf der „Police Public Box. Call“ steht. Als SciFi-Ignorant habe ich den Witz erst nicht verstanden. Für alle, denen es ähnlich geht: Das ist Tardis, die Zeitreisebox in der englischen Kult-Serie „Doctor Who“ (und Tardis B nennt sie auch John, der Zeitreisende in diesem Roman, der direkt aus dem Jahr 2017 kommt). Deshalb habe ich nun angefangen, diese immense Wissenslücke zu schließen und ganz ehrlich, ich finde die Serie ganz amüsant. Und wer und was sich alles auf diese Serie bezieht! Kann man die englische Popkultur verstehen, ohne diese Serie zu kennen?
Aber zurück zum Roman. Der Lyriker Burnside ist hier in seinem Element. Die Beschreibungen, die Bilder, die Ruhe, die seine Sprache ausstrahlt – das ist ein Genuss. Und doch weiß ich, dass viele Leser dieses Buch nicht werden zu schätzen wissen. Da stecken sozialistische Ideen drin, Umweltaktivismus und Taoismus. Oft auch relativiert, doch es handelt sich um ein gesellschaftskritisches Werk und manch einer mag dieses Moralisierende ablehnen. Mich hat es selten gestört. Manchmal dachte ich auch, uff, jetzt triftet es gleich ins Peinliche ab, aber für meinen Geschmack fängt Burnside es dann immer noch ab.
Eines der schönen Beispiele für diese gesellschaftliche Utopie gefällig?
No plan for a better world can be successful unless we remember the world that had to be replaced. Not just the grosser inequalities and political scandal, but the way such things affected our day-to-day lives. The fine grain of injustice. The pettiness, the dishonour, the ignoble behaviour. We do not live, much of the time, at the socio-political level. We live at the quotidian level, and it is there that we must look for symptoms of a bad system. It is in the way that a family has dinner together (or does not, but watches television, eating off trays in silence), the way a wife talks to her husband, the odd ailments we contract for apparently no good reason, and even the way two men regard one another, should they find themselves alone in a country railway station left to wait in – these are the indicators of a society’s health, not GDP, or any other statistics-based chimera.!
Alles was wir in diesem Roman über Havergey erfahren, resultiert aus den Gesprächen zwischen Ben und John und vor allem aus der Lektüre zahlreicher Dokumente, die in 'The Archive' aufbewahrt werden. Diese Dokumente liest John, während er in einer Art Quarantäne auf das Leben in Havergey vorbereitet wird. Das ist einerseits ein schöner Kunstgriff, weil uns so viele verschiedene Perspektiven, auch historische, zu Havergey vermittelt werden und weil Burnside die Möglichkeit hat, mit verschiedenen Stilen zu arbeiten. Wie gesagt, ich bin bei Burnside befangen, aber man kann ihm wohl zu Recht auch den Vorwurf machen, dass dies hin und wieder etwas sehr eklektizistisch wirkt und dass er diese Verfahren vielleicht auch wählt, um eigene (?) Meinungen zu verwursten und vielleicht auch bereits vorhandene Textentwürfe miteinander zu vermengen. Dass es auch in Havergey einst weniger idyllisch zuging, mag wenig überraschen, dass dabei aber auch verschiedene, verworrene Liebesgeschichten eine Rolle spielten, war selbst mir manchmal zu viel.
Dennoch: Selbst wenn der Plot nicht durchgehend überzeugt, die Sprache tut es – und damit bin ich im Gegensatz zu Ashland & Vine: Roman wieder ganz dabei.
Und jetzt muss ich weiter Doctor Who schauen…
April 8, 2017
Havergey used to appear on maps but has long since disappeared from them. Even though most don’t know it exists, it is home to the wanderers and dreamers from a shattered world seeking a new life in an ancient land still formed by its exposure to the elements. They rarely have visitors though, so when a guy appears the small community is naturally curious. He is slightly bewildered, claiming to have come from the past. They ask him to stay in a building near the shore as a form of Quarantine, and he is assigned Ben, the Watcher, to look after him and help him settle.
John is not going to be allowed out but will be fed and sheltered. In the same building is the community archive, a collection of documents and letters and other texts. As he sits and reads them during the day, John starts to get a feel for the way that the community has evolved to its present state. He is joined every meal time by Ben, who tells of the Collapse and the state of the world now from the one that he left and who asks his guest what he makes of their island and if he would be able to make his home here.
Reading this is a strange and almost surreal experience. It is full of subtle nuances as Burnside explores the concepts of utopia on an island that is a refuge in a dystopian world. He also uses it as way of making us the reader think just what we are doing to this world that we live on, not only in the obvious harm, but to consider the misguided good that some think is appropriate. There is not a huge amount of character development as the themes are the prominent way of getting us to think about the current state of the world. I did like it, in particular, the sparse but eloquent prose, but at times it was a bit too fleeting. The main points it is trying to convey dovetail in quite well with the Confessions of a Reluctant Environmentalist that I read recently. It is a book that I will read again and mull over with a glass of something. 3.5 Stars
John is not going to be allowed out but will be fed and sheltered. In the same building is the community archive, a collection of documents and letters and other texts. As he sits and reads them during the day, John starts to get a feel for the way that the community has evolved to its present state. He is joined every meal time by Ben, who tells of the Collapse and the state of the world now from the one that he left and who asks his guest what he makes of their island and if he would be able to make his home here.
Reading this is a strange and almost surreal experience. It is full of subtle nuances as Burnside explores the concepts of utopia on an island that is a refuge in a dystopian world. He also uses it as way of making us the reader think just what we are doing to this world that we live on, not only in the obvious harm, but to consider the misguided good that some think is appropriate. There is not a huge amount of character development as the themes are the prominent way of getting us to think about the current state of the world. I did like it, in particular, the sparse but eloquent prose, but at times it was a bit too fleeting. The main points it is trying to convey dovetail in quite well with the Confessions of a Reluctant Environmentalist that I read recently. It is a book that I will read again and mull over with a glass of something. 3.5 Stars
January 10, 2018
had to read this for uni and enjoyed it way more than expected
November 28, 2018
I have been trying to recreate my 'Glister' reading experience by dipping into some more of Burnside's books, but unfortunately have not yet been able to recreate the immersive reading experience that book gave me. That said, I should not hold the memory of one book against another, so here goes...
Although is set in the future, on an island known to be utopia, and although it involves time travel, I wouldn't really put this book into the scifi pile. Instead, Havergy is part environmental wake up call, part a collection of stories under the guise of a novel. A bulk of the text is in the form of a diary, written from different 'historical' perspectives which, pulled together, form the island's archive. I appreciated the author's use of references and 'quotes' which are flung in from all sorts of sources and oftentimes result in a cutting critique of our 'modern' way of doing things from a future perspective. Burnside is well known for his writing about the environment, and his knowledge and genuine feeling for this subject show in the book. However, even if the statement underlying the book gives it a clear purpose, I found the lack of character development rather difficult (even the main protagonist is distant and unreachable) and I missed any sense of a story that was actually going somewhere. For me, Burnside's perfectly formed sentences made these difficulties bearable.
Would I recommend it? I'm not sure: the slow pace, somewhat pretentious use of quotes, and lack of a gripping plotline mean it is certainly not for everyone. Would I read it again? Most probably, and I'm pretty sure I would get something more out of it second time round too.
Although is set in the future, on an island known to be utopia, and although it involves time travel, I wouldn't really put this book into the scifi pile. Instead, Havergy is part environmental wake up call, part a collection of stories under the guise of a novel. A bulk of the text is in the form of a diary, written from different 'historical' perspectives which, pulled together, form the island's archive. I appreciated the author's use of references and 'quotes' which are flung in from all sorts of sources and oftentimes result in a cutting critique of our 'modern' way of doing things from a future perspective. Burnside is well known for his writing about the environment, and his knowledge and genuine feeling for this subject show in the book. However, even if the statement underlying the book gives it a clear purpose, I found the lack of character development rather difficult (even the main protagonist is distant and unreachable) and I missed any sense of a story that was actually going somewhere. For me, Burnside's perfectly formed sentences made these difficulties bearable.
Would I recommend it? I'm not sure: the slow pace, somewhat pretentious use of quotes, and lack of a gripping plotline mean it is certainly not for everyone. Would I read it again? Most probably, and I'm pretty sure I would get something more out of it second time round too.
October 28, 2018
This is a difficult one to sum up, in that it is so subjective as to whether this will be a whimsical yet sharp look at environmentalism or an unedited and disjointed collection of stories.
John Burnside has a way with words; he can bend them and mould them into fireworks and drop them into your brain. He can do much with so little and in some places, I found this book profound and enlightening.
As is sometimes the case with literary fiction, some parts went over my head. I couldn’t understand the use of some characters and the questions the protagonist tortured himself with. I was interested, but I’m a nosey way, not in a ‘captivated by the story’ way.
If you enjoy John Burnside’s other works, and themes of religion, love, loss, climate change, human geography and philosophy intrigue you, then I would heartily recommend.
John Burnside has a way with words; he can bend them and mould them into fireworks and drop them into your brain. He can do much with so little and in some places, I found this book profound and enlightening.
As is sometimes the case with literary fiction, some parts went over my head. I couldn’t understand the use of some characters and the questions the protagonist tortured himself with. I was interested, but I’m a nosey way, not in a ‘captivated by the story’ way.
If you enjoy John Burnside’s other works, and themes of religion, love, loss, climate change, human geography and philosophy intrigue you, then I would heartily recommend.
June 10, 2019
Very lyrically written, the best bits were the glimpses at the characters and stories that happened during "the Catastrophe". Unfortunately, I would have rather had a story detailing all that, rather than the ultra-leftist-agrarian-utopia future fantasy I get in the other half of the book...a green-crystal-dolphin-politics type of back-to-the-land fantasy that reads like an alternative version of Terry Nation's "Survivors" TV series from the 1970s. Definitely one of those novels that splits right in half for me.
March 16, 2018
This isn't what I was hoping it to be.
February 19, 2021
I liked the discussion of climate change, and utopia. Some of the story threads of the collapse felt unnecessary to me.
April 21, 2017
I was really happy when I saw this. It was a modern utopia and it was by an author I had heard good things about.
It was really sad to find out that this futuristic utopia was only made possible by the death of 90% of humanity (this isn't a spoiler, its on the blurb). Its sadder still to see that the society's claim to Utopian status is based on a really lazy understanding of Taoism. The societies claim to being a utopia in this book is never challenged, and the Taoist beliefs are represented in this book in away that reduces them to nothing more than verbal trickery.
The diatribe against wind farms at the end is just weird.
Don't bother with this book, read Ursula Le Guin.
The book gets on star because I think John Burnside can write (although it's hard to tell with this book because at times it has all the clumsiness of the classic Utopian texts) and gets another star because of some fairly good world building.
It was really sad to find out that this futuristic utopia was only made possible by the death of 90% of humanity (this isn't a spoiler, its on the blurb). Its sadder still to see that the society's claim to Utopian status is based on a really lazy understanding of Taoism. The societies claim to being a utopia in this book is never challenged, and the Taoist beliefs are represented in this book in away that reduces them to nothing more than verbal trickery.
The diatribe against wind farms at the end is just weird.
Don't bother with this book, read Ursula Le Guin.
The book gets on star because I think John Burnside can write (although it's hard to tell with this book because at times it has all the clumsiness of the classic Utopian texts) and gets another star because of some fairly good world building.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews