Modern (Ethnobotanical) Literary Delights
A Sunday afternoon bonus special - I could not resist sharing this
I found this in today’s Observer newspaper …
In article about events at the Hay Literary Festival, it was revealed that the AI program ChatGPT had been asked to produce a fictional set-up to suggest exactly the kind of novel most likely to win plaudits with British fans of literary fiction.
Synopsis
Author: Clementine Barchester-King,
Her debut novel, The Weft of Nettles, is set in a decaying Suffolk rectory where twin sisters, Honoria and Dido, have seen out seven decades of hard winters. Then, when a young ethnobotanist turns up unexpectedly with a mysterious VHS tape and a burning desire to catalogue invasive species, their family secrets unravel, one overgrown hedgerow at a time.
Extract
The house had long since given up. Its windows blinked at the garden with cataractal indifference, its chimneys wheezed like asthmatic vicars, and a thin trickle of something untrustworthy emerged from the scullery tap. Honoria sat at the oak table, buttering toast with the gravity of a person embalming a small saint. “There’s something dreadfully political in the yew hedge again,” she said. Dido did not look up from her embroidery. “So shoot it.”
– Someone needs to actually write this book - I want to know what happens next.
It’s either the mycologist in the solarium or the planter in the arboretum. Or, . . . The hedgehogs are not what they seem.