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Summer 1989, rural England, the tail end of long decade of mass unemployment, class war and rebellion, and the continued destruction of the English countryside. As the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation - and that an unlikely and beautiful friendship has taken root as the wheat ripens from green to gold.
Moving and exhilarating, tender and slyly witty, The Perfect Golden Circle is a captivating novel about the futility of war, the destruction of the English countryside, class inequality – and the power of beauty to heal trauma and fight power. Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love. In Myers’s telling, the men responsible were no vandals. Redbone and Calvert are an odd couple; their names may suggest a Savile Row shirtmaker, but the pair are closer in spirit to centrifugal visionaries such as the KLF. Redbone is younger, has travelled Europe with various bands, and is popular with women; Calvert is taciturn, always wears sunglasses, and has PTSD after serving in the SAS during the Falklands war. For weeks on end, living in a battered camper van, they move through the English countryside. Their goals: to create ever more dazzling patterns, to stay anonymous, to not get caught. It will take you through the park’s greenery, passing by abandoned farmhouses, plenty of sheep and the main lake of Thingvellir.DNF'd @ 26% - Argh! I'm getting a bit angry lately, but I'm unsure if it's the books I'm angry with, or myself. It seems I've abandoned several books lately. I don't like doing that, but neither do I like to waste time with a book I'm not enjoying! So here I go again.😕 The glue that holds this story together is the relationship and development of our two protagonists. We're treated to a small cast, two ageing men. Calvert, who is a traumatized veteran and Redbone a chaotic, rogue who is troubled in his own way by the visions he has which they transfer to the canvas of the fields in their nightly raids. We get to know these characters over the course of the book, we walk alongside them as they chat the fat. They were strangers at the story's opening and by the conclusion, they have become dear friends and we are completely and utterly invested in their lives. During the winter months you could get as little as four hours of day light while in the summer you can get close to 24 hours! With that said though, you can really go around the Golden Circle at any time of year.
Their designs—which they craft without breaking a single stalk of wheat so that their guerrilla work is art, not destruction—attracts worldwide attention and the speculation of conspiracy theorists and UFO hunters, certain these crop circles are a sign that a life force from beyond Earth is trying to send humans a message. Benjamin Myers is in my opinion one of the greatest British voices in fiction. His previous works Beastings, The Gallows Pole, Male Tears, The Offing, Pig Iron showcase his vast talent and his continued development as a writer, each book is different and each contains lightning in a bottle - if you've not discovered Myers' work yet, I urge you to do so, he's a national treasure. What appears a simple tale of the two men striving for perfection, turns out to be far more complex. Told in gorgeous prose that brings the blistering, dusty summer heat and richly memorable characters to life, The Perfect Golden Circle was a perfect escape from the rainy Dutch fall days.Recipient of the Roger Deakin Award and first published by Bluemoose Books, Myers' novel The Gallows Pole was published to acclaim in 2017 and was winner of the Walter Scott Prize 2018 - the world's largest prize for historical fiction. It has been published in the US by Third Man Books and is currently in development for screen adaptation. People just want to believe in something bigger than all this. Something beyond. It takes them away from the mundane details of their tiny lives. You can’t blame them.’ I’m not even sure how to begin processing my thoughts about Benjamin Myers’, The Perfect Golden Circle. Suffice it to say, I want a friend like Calvert or Redbone. Another fella to share purpose and passion with. To believe in something worth doing and do it together, creating meaning and reason with, making sense of some of the conundrums that life throws my way. Calvert and Redbone - not bogged down in sentimentality, comfortable with the silences, kind of a ‘knowing’ that doesn’t need a lot of words. The novel begins portentously. The narrative invokes wolves stalking shrinking copses and fields that are full of bones, “rotting deep in the rich soil of a singular cemetery called England”. Throughout, there are echoes of David Peace, Gordon Burn, Stephen Barber – writers who render the recent past as occulture, hallucinatory. There are also spectres of other more politically fraught fields from the 80s: Goose Green, Orgreave, the Battle of the Beanfield near Stonehenge.
Though nature and the environment is a common theme to all Myers's work, there is more new ground embarked upon here than is retrodden. Humour has more of a place, though its foundations are deeply serious. It’s a quiet, odd kind of story. Their relationship is very endearing. Neither militant or full-on hippies, but more concerned with what the book feels to be attempting to convey: Anyone with a radical idea can add another layer of mythos to culture. In this case in a very literal sense, as they use the land in a harmless way to produce art that hopefully entices people to question the nature of their society, and what they think they know about the world. Hoping to unconventionally and originally revolutionary, leaving an indelible mark. An odd and winsome pleasure: a novel of friendship, collaboration, and environmental guerrilla art. Set in rural England, 1989, The Perfect Golden Circle tells the story of two men who set out over the course of a summer to form elaborate crop circle patterns in the wheat fields under the cover of darkness. As their circles become increasingly intricate, their work gathers an international cult like following, pushing them to further their designs beyond anything ever seen before. Calvert is a Falklands veteran, suffering post traumatic stress, whilst Redbone is a free-wheeling traveller of sorts, a musician who has wandered Europe with various small-time bands, living a life of protest and substance enhanced contemplation. Two vastly different men, the most unlikely of friendships.Here, Calvert is talking to Redbone about what an island mentality is within the context of British colonialism. His bitterness, as an SAS fighter within the British military is evident. What he gains from creating crop circles with Redbone in the dead of the night becomes more apparent as the novel progresses. It is a form of therapy for him, something to focus his traumatic mind upon, a way of setting that aside for this. It centres on the creators of the crop circles, quintessential odd couple Redbone and Calvert. Like the characters in the author’s previous work, which spans historical fiction and rural noir, and includes the 2021 short story collection Male Tears, these men are outsiders. While Redbone lives in an old camper van, is immersed in the crust punk scene and prone to visions hallucinogenic and otherwise, Calvert is a solitary SAS veteran, battle scarred inwardly as well as outwardly from his service in the Falklands. Bathed in moonlight, Myers’s land thrums with more ancient reverberations Der perfekte Kreis“ von Benjamin Myers ist ein ganz ganz leises Buch, das sich mühelos in mein Herz verpflanzt hat. Wieder einmal schafft Benjamin Myers hier Zeilen, in denen ich einfach so viel finden konnte und mit denen er all meine Sinne berührt hat!
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