Harris goes back to the future
THE YEAR is 1468 – or is it? – when a young cleric is dispatched by the Bishop of Exeter to an isolated village on the edge of the diocese where the parish priest has died in an accident.
Christopher Fairfax’s mission is to conduct a funeral service for the unfortunate man and bury him. Simple enough, he thinks; in and out in a day. Not so fast, Father. It’s not that simple.What he finds in the lonely Exmoor outpost of Addicott St George will shed light on Man’s greatest catastrophe, challenge Fairfax’s faith in his calling and change him forever.
But first let’s deal with the date.This story is set not at the tail-end of the medieval period but eight centuries in the future, by our Gregorian calendar. It is a post-apocalyptic world in which England has returned to simpler ways. Candles provide light and logs warmth.The people address each other using the pronoun “ye” and there seems to be nothing left of the ethnic mix that is present-day England.
The church has regained its power and science is viewed with scepticism.Anything less is regarded as heresy.
So in the parsonage once inhabited by Father Thomas Lacy, Fairfax is surprised to discover a library of books condemned as heretical and burned throughout England. His curiosity trumps his religious misgivings and he settles down to read them.
One contains a letter from an eminent scientist, Peter Morgenstern, warning of imminent risks to humanity – climate change, nuclear war and the catastrophic failure of computers – and proposing urgent contingency plans to the Government. Fairfax finds artefacts in Lacy’s study that date from the time of the catastrophe, which we learn was in 2025.There are plastic banknotes and “the pride of the collection: one of the devices used by ancients to communicate”.Turning it over, Fairfax finds “the ultimate symbol of the ancients’ hubris and blasphemy – an apple with a bite taken out of it”.An iPhone.
Was Morgenstern prophetic? Did one of his perceived threats devastate mankind? And what happened to poor Father Lacy? Was he really killed in a fall? Or, given his obsession with England’s erased past, was his death more sinister? Fairfax stays on to search for the truth, aided by Lady Sarah Durston, a widowed redhead and lady of the manor, who puts temptation in his way. This naturally sets Fairfax against her new fiancé, the earthy mill owner John Hancock. The more they uncover the past, the more Fairfax’s faith wanes.
Harris, left, is a fearless writer. The Second Sleep races along at breakneck speed.The prose is pure, elegant, never tricky and his imagination knows no bounds.
And yet I found The Second Sleep to be his least convincing tale, as though three-quarters of the way through he had turned up a cul-de-sac and couldn’t find his way out.Which is not to say it is a bad book. It might even be visionary. But it was less satisfying than his best novels.