David Blackburn

In response to the Guardian’s top 10 novels on farming

Over at Guardian Books, Irish playwright Belinda McKeon has picked her top 10 farming novels. Here’s her list:

1. Stoner by John Williams

2. Tarry Flynn by Patrick Kavanagh

3. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

4. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans

5. That They May Face The Rising Sun by John McGahern

6. How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

7. Foster by Claire Keegan

8. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

9. God’s Own Country by Ross Raisin

10. The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker, translated by David Colmer   

It’s a provocative list and there are some notable exceptions, especially as numbers 2, 3 and 5 are, as McKeon herself implies with her accompanying blurbs, all fairly similar.

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