Poppyland

Series

Name: Salt Modern Stories   Number: 15

Synopsis

On Stewkey Blues: ‘In his solid, grounded, entertaining collection of stories, DJ Taylor draws out the mythical qualities of East Anglia’s terrain, urban or rural or somewhere marginal in between.’ —Hilary Mantel

Most of the people in Poppyland are watching their lives begin to blur at the margins. From small-hours taxi offices, out-of-season holiday estates and flyblown market stalls, they sit observing an environment that seems to be moving steadily out of kilter, struggling to find agency, making compromises with a world that threatens to undermine them, and sometimes – but only sometimes – taking a decisive step that will change their destinies.

Reviews of this Book

‘There is an irresistible modesty to Taylor’s prose that makes his touches of humour leap out even more viscerally from the page. In “Special Needs”, he describes reality TV as a “spangled approximation” of life. I underlined bursts of brilliance like these throughout.

But something remains impenetrable about Poppyland; its figures remain attenuated, their motivations obscured. At the end of “Drowning in Hunny”, the narrator describes a look between two people as “not quite contemptuous, or kindly, but . . . something else altogether, that hung tantalisingly in the air between them, like the scent of the cooking oil”. It goes some way to capture what I felt as a reader. Leaving Poppyland, I was left with a curious aftertaste, of something rather sad and unknowable, but also moreish and nourishing — something remorselessly real.’ —Matthew Janney, FT

‘However varied (and variable) it may be in style, the book is a consistent source of mystery. Each story builds to "some gathering crisis" after which nothing can be the same again, whether that's a starched academic bursting into tears or a war games vendor rearranging his stock … Nor are the outcomes of Poppyland ever explicitly stated: we see these codes shatter under the tiniest deviation – from habit, from opinion, from behaviour – but are left to imagine how the pieces are picked up.’ —Harry Cochrane, The Tablet

‘Like much of Taylor’s fiction, most of the stories are set in his native Norfolk, which is rendered with picturesque lyricism: shimmering fields of poppies, crates of apples knocked over market pavements, the late-night glare of Norwich’s Prince of Wales Road. Smells of oil, burnt sugar and kebabs linger long after the plots have faded.’ —Hassan Akram, Literary Review

‘Written by author and literary critic D.J.Taylor, the collection explores the lives of people living in Norwich and along the Norfolk coast. Titled Poppyland, the stories are rooted in the "character, contradictions and quiet dramas" of communities Taylor knows intimately. The collection follows his 2022 book Stewkey Blues, which was inspired by his travels around Norfolk delivering food parcels during lockdown.’ —Robbie Bennett, Norwich Evening News

‘Norfolk life looks quietly bleak in these carefully worked short stories of broken homes, precarious employment, dwindling expectations and torpor.’ —George Cochrane, The Spectator

‘Norwich is the geographical setting for most of the stories in this wry, wistful, astutely observed collection, but its real territory is that liminal space where hopes and dreams are dashed against the disappointing realities of the present.’ —Eithne Farry, Daily Mail

Praise for Previous Work

‘Famed though it is for its flatness, Norfolk is a county of manifold aspects, many of which are captured in these sharp, subtle new stories by native son DJ Taylor. They all emerged from 2020’s lockdown, and together delineate the region’s geographical and social range, occasionally squinting back in time and tuning in to mythical echoes.’ —Hephzibah Anderson, Observer

‘There's urban ennui and dead-end lives in the suburbs of Norwich, loneliness in a caravan park outside Thetford; social codes traduced in a village near Shopham; and wild shotgun-toting lawlessness in the wilds of Breckland. Taylor has a gimlet eye for the telling detail and enjoys the oddity of Norfolk's eccentrics, those born and bred among its flat farmlands, and those attracted to the place like iron filings to a magnet.’ —Siobhan Murphy, The Times

‘The stories are subtly composed and elegantly written. The narrative voice is attractively wry, and particularly acute in its choice of telling detail. Its air of savouring diffidence, moreover, is curiously reminiscent of Anthony Powell, particularly in our sense that behaviour is being observed far more than judged. No one should be deterred by the Norfolk setting, for only in the most literal sense is this provincial fiction. After Stewkey Blues, I for one would happily read Taylor about anywhere: Swaffham and Snoring (Little or Great), to be sure, but also Timbuktu.’ —Andrew Rosenheim, Spectator