Property-owning and picaresque were once upon a time in opposition, but the new middle-class diaspora has changed all that. People want to put down roots where they wander, buy themselves a piece of the view and a share of the sky, a place of their own. Marvellous time. Wish I was here. We don't simply holiday and go home, we dream in brick and stucco and terracotta. Barry Unsworth's new novel is set in this DIY world inhabited by the suddenly self-made, the restless retired, the seekers of salvation in the soil - someone else's soil, however, some corner of a foreign field.

LRB 12 December 1996 | PDF Download