The Testament of Yves Gundron by Emily Barton

The Testament of Yves Gundron

Emily Barton

What would you do if a person from an unknown, highly advanced culture knocked on your door wanting to study your primitive life? At the start, this novel offers you a sense of security. It begins like a good historical novel, but by Chapter 2 you feel like you've fallen off the edge of a cliff. What is implied is almost more powerful than what is written. There are lots of books about loss, but I never read one that is quite so unusual.

Extract
Of all the events to set the process of history in motion, mine was a realisation about my horse. Had I known then what terrors my invention would bring us along with its joys, perhaps I would have allowed the idea to drift off like a thousand other daydreams. I could not have envisioned myself, two winters later, spending these long nights writing in my barn, writing against what seems the inevitable outcome: that I, and all that I have wrought, will be forgotten utterly as the future gallops forth to devour us. At the time I knew nothing but the perfect beauty of what I imagined.
Parallels
  • The Gift of Stones by Jim Crace
  • Ulverton by Adam Thorpe