Ronald Blythe’s ‘Akenfield’ is a historical non-fiction recount of a Suffolk village in the 1960s, made up of testimonials from the villagers. ‘Akenfield’ is technically a fictional place whereas it is based on Blythe’s home village and interviews were likely with its inhabitants. This book has been the oldest on my physical TBR for about a year now and I could never bring myself to pick it up because it just seemed so dull, and for the most part I was correct in that assumption. ‘Akenfield’ was by no means exciting, it wasn’t particularly interesting either as the vignettes of each villager are short yet they do contain nuggets of wisdom at points and each being the story of a real person many feel very human and true. 

There is a lot of emphasis on the aftermath of the First World War which was interesting, however a lot of attention was also paid to the Christian church which was much less engaging for me. Being a Suffolk farming village inevitably there was a lot of discussion on this, and a recount of the purchase of a pig farm was oddly very engaging however reading this right after ‘Watershed Down’ made scenes of rabbit hunting pretty painful and other remorseless descriptions of battery hen farms and slaughterhouses were extremely uncomfortable to read especially with such a distanced lack of care from the speakers. 

Moments of interest as I have highlighted were however just that, moments, and the majority of the book was mundane and uninspiring. I am glad the burden of ‘Akenfield’ at the top of my physical TBR is now lifted at least.