Akenfield
Portrait Of An English Village

Imagine a monologue that takes you deep inside another person's skin, entertains, and imparts a great deal without any apparent effort. Now imagine that effect used on an entire community, set down in an entire book, and you have some measure of this book's peerless charm and wisdom. Neither Hardy n......more

I received an ARC from the publisher. This book is a history of the British village of Akenfield in Suffolk, England as told through the stories and narratives of its own citizens. Blythe interviewed 49 different people from all types of social backgrounds and occupations and recorded their words for......more

Their voices jump from the past into the present Anthropology grabbed me early and it has never let go. Why do people behave so differently from one another ? Why are they so similar too ? What would I have been if I had been born in Afghanistan instead of in Boston ? What would my life have looked l......more

I picked this up thinking it was a novel (the front cover suggests a quaint story of sleepy English village life). Instead, I found a work of non-fiction albeit with elements of fiction in some aspects of the presentation. In many ways, it's like a documentary but in book form. Ronald Blythe essenti......more

This book was recommended to me by a Goodreads friend. It is a sociological study of a small English farming village in the 1960s. It takes the form of interviews with dozens of residents of the village of Akenfield, along with some limited commentary by the sociologists. During the time studied, th......more