Title: The Singer
Author: Hûw Steer
Published: Nov 23, 2023
Pages: 151
Genre: Fantasy
My review:
We read books for many reasons, but one is to inhabit other worlds: to escape the monotony, chaos, or loneliness of everyday life and experience a place that's more exciting, more gentle, or more beautiful.
Some books make us feel as though we've lived in that other world for a time, granting us rest and rejuvenation, and when we emerge (if it's a truly good book), it's with a sense of greater reverence for the world we do live in, and a resolution to live more nobly in it.
Hûw Steer's novella The Singer is one of those books. It's short and sweet, but it's beautifully written and made me feel as though I had somehow escaped to a quiet countryside village where life is simpler, and where small things---a shared meal or a pint between friends, a much-needed rainstorm, a blossoming tree---are deeply treasured. It was, in short, a welcome break from 21st-century life.
At this point, I should probably note that I've read several books by this author (and given pretty enthusiastic reviews to all of them). While The Blackbird and the Ghost was probably my favorite thus far, I believe he's reached a new high with this book: The Singer just feels perfect from beginning to end. The writing is simple yet masterful, and it feels effortless.
The story is about a farmer who lives in Quern: a small, rustic village where you can patch someone's roof in exchange for a bunch of apples, where everyone knows everyone else's business, and where no one is ever too busy to lend their neighbor a hand.
Tom lives alone with his faithful dog, working to bring forth a crop of apples with the help of a magic song his mother taught him. He's the latest in a long line of men and women who have inherited this gift, and as the oldest child, it's his duty to move far away from home, find a barren patch of land, and make it grow.
Tom is quite happy tending his apples and occasionally walking into town to see Mary, the village apothecary he's very casually courting. But when a border war breaks out and soldiers come to Quern looking for recruits, the village's peaceful way of life is disrupted.
Though The Singer is ostensibly about a simple farmer working his land and courting the woman he loves, it's very engaging. And though it's only about 150 pages (it was actually closer to 80 in the pdf version I read), it's about many things.
Most of all (I think), it's about the importance of living a life that enriches the lives of others. Quern is a tightly knit community in which everyone helps each other out. And though Tom has an incredible gift that he could exploit for his own ends, he uses it to help his fellow villagers: always in secret, never for recognition.
Rather than force nature to yield before its time, he simply prods it along, gently inspiring it to grow. He sings down rain when a drought threatens Quern's crops, and he sings a dead, abandoned field into a beautiful, bounteous orchard. If everyone lived in such a way, it would be a merrier world indeed.
So what can we bring back into our world from Quern? I'd say, the resolution to try and sing the world back into tune, however we can, and however small and insignificant our efforts may feel. To paraphrase Miep Gies, anyone can turn on a small light in a dark room. And to quote from The Singer itself:
"There seemed just a little more hope than there had been before. And in the end, sometimes that was enough."
Rating:
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