The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again: Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2020

A new M. John Harrison novel is always an event for me. It’s been eight years since his last novel and while we’ve had two chapbooks and a new story collection since then, it’s been a while since those came out. As great as they were, they just didn’t fill the need that a new novel fills. As it turns out, one of those chapbooks forms the basis for the new novel.SPOILER ALERT:Don’t read this unless you’ve already read the book and want to see what another reader thought. If you haven’t read it and think you need to look it up first, you don’t. Just buy it.*The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again* is the sum of two parts, equal in length and similar in intent. The two parts are the abovementioned chapbook story “The 4th Domain” (2014) and, as near as I can tell, an unpublished story (let’s call it “Deep Roads”) that Harrison decided to merge into an expanded “The 4th Domain” rather than publish on its own. In this, and in other important ways, it parallels Harrison’s earlier *Signs of Life* (Isobel vs. Victoria and Mick vs. Shaw). A serious critical review of the new work would probably go back and compare the two titles, but I won’t bore you with that here.If you’ve read “The 4th Domain” you know that it was supremely weird and even though it wrapped itself up on one level, it left you wanting more on another. The missing piece of the conclusion was a part of the story’s intended effect, of course, so the risk Harrison took was giving us the more that we thought we wanted. No one should be surprised that what we got was his idea of more rather than ours.“Deep Roads” also falls into the Weird Tales category and I wouldn’t’ve minded reading it by itself. A youngish woman moves from London to a small town to take possession of her late mother’s house. The town ends up being Harrison’s take on Innsmouth, with several glimpses of fishy hands and other hints of strangeness. We’re not sure at the end whether Victoria truly sees what she sees in her backyard or if it’s dream/delusion. Whatever it is, it’s an unexpected turn from what I expected. It’s a fantasy ending and if it was in the original, maybe Harrison felt it didn’t pack enough punch to stand on its own.Combining the two stories gives “Deep Roads” more depth but it also dilutes the weirdness of “The 4th Domain”. The result is still satisfying and while Shaw does get his act together by the story’s end, we are left wondering what he’ll find when he goes looking for Victoria. Remember, he also drove off feeling better at the end of “The 4th Domain” but his future seemed a little brighter there than it does in *The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again*.Harrison is at his best recording other people’s observations, no matter how inaccurate those observations really are. I believe many of these were collected from things overheard in public spaces, and they are great attention-getters when placed into their new context. I’m not sure I know people who actually talk about things this way but it makes for a great read. Victoria’s emails to Shaw were my favorite.

Have you ever read a book you found impossible to rate with conventional stars? You loved it but it irritated you. You couldn't put it down but you were reluctant to pick it up again. You know you'll think long about it but you really don't want to think about it anymore. You want to recommend it to your friends but you're afraid they'll hate you for it. It creeps into your dreams but it's rather like a dream itself--one of those clinging ones you're desperate to wake from--but once you do wake you can't wait to go back to sleep again. You give up and rate it five stars anyway because it's special and should be paid attention to but impossible to summarize with any coherence because plot happens but not in conventional ways and it really won't be everybody's cup of tea, although many cups of tea are consumed in the novel. It's a great swirling cup of many brews, many liquids, actually, that has you asking, "What the hell am I drinking?"

I just read M John Harrison's "The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again." It's like you're reading a book about two minor characters in some other book, and the other book has this massive amount of intrigue and a globe-spanning catastrophe, but this is just two depressed people who just barely appear in the first three chapters of that book, and then this book ends. Which is great. There’s a real avoidance of informative exposition but there’s tons of internal perspective on the characters, who can’t seem to form clear ideas of themselves because they’re both a bit detached and largely alienated from what they’re supposed to be. It’s pretty much an example of how all of us are experiencing things like global climate collapse, the failure of capitalism to respond constructively to catastrophe, the endless war against the equatorial regions by the north, etc. It’s a brief biography of bystanders with a few notes on the incomprehensible horror that is always building behind us.

I was expecting a weird fiction novel but received something no less magnificent: a book on innovative use of English language.It has already become a cliche that M J Harrison is the master of the sublime.That comes through the mastery of language.Sparse, measured, spot-on prose is a treat in itself.For weirder concepts, though, you are better to refer to his recent short and flash prose collection.

The title of this book is the best part, and that's a quotation. I did finish the book, so I can't say it's without redeeming value. The two main characters are fairly well drawn, and there are some insightful bits of social commentary scattered throughout. But the book was quite unsatisfying, and from shortly after I started until I felt I had gone too far to stop I was constantly debating whether I should continue. The book does get a bit better toward the end. Perhaps the author was trying to subvert readers' expectations, but, for me, that only works in service of a larger point, which I didn't see here. In the end, the novel doesn't seem fully formed.

This is a could-be good book but it comes apart at the seams.Place is the theme with people a subsidiary part.Lots of water.And way too many references to USA Apple Computer, Inc. products; makes me wonder if the author is taking money under the table from them.

A subtle study of the dispirited, doomed, keeping-up-appearances bourgeoisie of "Brexitania" - a state and state of mind not restricted to the UK. The sci-fi/fantasy element, while engaging and suspenseful, functions like the guiding metaphor or a poem. Recommended.

Draws you into not only a set of characters but a geography, richly rendered and often wet. It’s a very English alternate universe, very very slightly sideways from our own. Or is it?

I'd argue that this novel concludes a loose trilogy of novels, starting with 'The Course of the Heart', moving on to 'Signs of Life' and now this. All three novels blend elements of fantasy, horror and a general sense of drift and malaise.It's not where I'd start with Harrison though, if new to his work. The two short story collections 'The Ice Monkey' and 'Travel Arrangements', along with the novel 'Climbers' represent (in my mind) his very best work. It seems telling to me that the trilogy of novels mentioned above all started life as short stories.'The Sunken Land' of course stands completely alone. I found it quite a nostalgic novel. The 1970s are mentioned a lot - one can almost smell the petrol fumes and see the swirling wallpaper patterns of that era. Moving back further, it struck me how Shaw and Victoria may easily have stepped from the pages of an Elizabeth Bowen novel. Neither seem to work a great deal and both swan - literally - around a fair amount.But I like - as with the above works - that not everything is neatly spelled out, threads tidily gathered together. You have to work a bit and the closer you get the more horrifying the reality becomes. Harrison cleverly puts his distracted characters into scenes of almost unimaginable terror and when you think about it later you breathe sigh of relief...then hear a strange sound out in the street, or overhear some seemingly odd conversation and bang - you're back in the novel.Recommended.

This book has been crafted by a master wordsmith. It has not however not been written by a master storyteller. Falling very much in to the furthest left field of literary fiction, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise is a book about…….sorry, I have absolutely no idea.This novel is not for everyone. If you want a quick fix from your reading, pass this by. But you want to luxuriate in prose and spend time mentally pondering the meaning of lines, chapters and in fact the whole book, then this will appeal. I found that the slowness of the book was initially being reflected in my reading speed and actually had to force myself to push on and read it in a couple of sessions. This helped me to gel with the characters (if not the story ((if there is one)). It also meant that I was able to compete the book. I feared that my deceleration in interest and time spent with the book would eventually bring me to a halt. I am glad I didn’t stop reading and saw the book through to the end, but I am still at a loss to explain what the book was actually about, even if I did thoroughly enjoy the artistry of the writing.

Reviews seem to range from people who get this book and people who don’t. I think I must fall into the latter. It’s like it’s written in a dream state, or one that’s narcotically influenced. Brilliant or not, even my English-degree-educated brain can’t decide, it lacks one crucial thing: readability. I wanted to read something literary; I think I overshot it. It depends what you want from a book I suppose. This doesn’t have the story to captivate or maintain interest. It’s just descriptions of the next thing that’s tenuously linked to the thing before. It’s hard work, it really is, and I didn’t want to pick it up to continue reading it. Reading this isn’t an enjoyable experience, at least for me. I’m sure it could be analysed or dissected to death for its descriptions by a book club or for an A-Level class, but for the everyday reader that wants a decently written book with an actual story that holds at least a bit of interest, this is not for you.

In fact it’s not a story like most books. This is the first book I have read by M John Harrison and I will certainly read more. I read a lot of books and was starting to find the neat story line that has a beginning, middle and conclusion too unrealistic. Maybe that’s why I enjoyed this one so much although as others say it’s baffling and the characters hard to understand. But isn’t that life? People and their motivations can be baffling and hard to understand.

This is a very odd book and while I can't say that it's as good as some of the reviews suggest, I have to admit it did intrigue me. I think it might have been improved by providing the reader with just a bit more of an idea of what exactly the mystery at the heart of the book actually entails, though I suppose the elusive, slippery nature of this mystery was something Harrison wanted to maintain without descending into exposition. While there is some good writing here, there is also some very bad, very effortful prose that, on closer inspection, turns out to be more or less nonsensical, the kind of writing that at first sight seems impressive but is really just a bit pretentious. I also found Harrison's weird and only very thinly veiled hostility to wealthy urbanites - he has a thing about compression tights/yoga pants and Marks and Spencer's - a bit tiresome to say the least. There's a good book in here somewhere, but it needed more work. I expected more really and don't think I'll be bothering with any more of Harrison's work. He seems one of those quite clever, but rather chippy outsider types that seem to frequent the world of sci-fi.