Edric is one of the best, least famous contemporary British novelists. He is well published - Doubleday and Penguin - and well reviewed, but not adequately promoted. I found his London Satyr by chance (reviewed on this blog) and have been on the lookout for more ever since.
Mercury Falling from 2018 is another minutely characterised story - the story of Jimmy Devlin (29), dishonourably discharged from the army at the conclusion of hostilities in 1945, who has spent the last nine years on the tramp around his birthplace in the Fens. Fenland always floods but the floods of 1953-4 have been the worst in memory. Homes inundated, farms too wet to work.
We start with Jimmy being evicted from one such farm which he rented with the vague idea of becoming self-supporting. He finds work as a casual labourer on a government drainage scheme, lodgings with Ray Duggan, a farmer with a sideline in scrap, not necessarily legally acquired. He gradually involves Jimmy in his illicit business, which involves working with the Maguire family, gypsies who spend the winter repairing fairground equipment, building holiday camps, and (inevitably) stealing stuff.
Jimmy's life settles for a while. He re-establishes contact with his sister, and tries to avoid her husband. But his transgressions start to catch up with him. He tries to settle scores, finds there are too many. The police become involved. Jimmy is a gunman on the run...
It is masterfully done - one not especially likeable man's inexorable fate rolls out against a sodden, almost alien background. All utterly believable. Edric asks the question, how hard was it for the unskilled conscripts kicked out of the army en masse in 1945? Conscripts with skills, like my father, for instance, were kept on, promoted, their skills enhanced, so they were demobbed into a more settled economy with prospects. But for the Jimmy Devlins?
If you haven't already come across Robert Edric, I recommend you seek him out.
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