MADELEINE BUNTING'S STORY OF ALL OF US

The Plot Madeleine Bunting “The Plot” is the third book from Madeleine Bunting, the Guardian op-ed columnist. The titular plot is an acre of Yorkshire moorland where her father built a chapel as a haven from modernity’s encroachments. The extended plot of this roaming narrative is nothing less than a sideways history of Britain—from stone age to ozone age—as seen and heard from the family patch.

Down the centuries drovers tread, sheep gnaw, Cistercians build and foresters plant, while the clank of the sword and the boom of the cannon make dread noises off. This would be no more gripping than a pleasing visit to a jam-packed local museum without Bunting’s own voyage round her father, a mystic sculptor, angry and unheralded, whose feel for earth and stone, for Yorkshire’s wind and water, outstripped his love for the fruit of his loins. Both intuitive and richly pedantic, Bunting’s cautionary "Plot" is the story of all of us, of a disinherited society sadly hankering for yesteryear’s stock of answers.

"The Plot" (Granta Books), by Madeleine Bunting, out now

~ JASPER REES