Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group

by Rebecca Gransden

A pilgrimage. An England in delirium.

In the midst of an apocalyptic event of unknown provenance – a mass of red spreading north from the southern counties – a young girl sets out on a journey. Along the way she encounters a series of eccentric characters, the few left behind in the wake of a widespread evacuation. Some of these individuals are ravaged and on the edge of death, while others are immersed in their own hermetic practices, be they solipsistic, nihilistic, or otherwise. None wish to engage for more than the brief time necessary to offer their meagre assistance. There is talk of ‘anti-spores’, pools of blood, and of a hum spreading through communication wires. The hum has altered the very appearance of written language, pushing words apart, leaving only single syllables behind. This constraint is present in the third-person narration we read but is removed during periods of dialogue. This results in a rhythmic, chantlike flow to the prose. As with the best of work that employs the tropes of apocalyptic fiction, Rebecca Gransden’s unusual novella ends with many of its questions floating in the scarlet haze it generates, leaving them for the reader to ponder in the wake of what is surely a singular literary experience.

HARRY ADAMS
Specially commissioned artwork by Harry Adams.

"Linguistically inventive, alert in every sense, and propelled with such narrative force that hairs burn on the unsuspecting reader’s neck."
—Iain Sinclair

Genres: Fiction

96 pages, Paperback

Published May 29, 2025

About the author

This author has always lived by the sea.

She tends to write about the edges of things so if you inhabit the fringes you may find something to like.

If you are interested in reading any of her books then send her a message and she'll get it to you in the digital format (PDF, MOBI, or eBook) of your choice.

Fellow indies - feel free to get in touch.

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the midst of an apocalyptic event of unknown provenance—a mass of red spreading north from the southern counties—a young girl named Flo sets out on a journey to search for her twin brother. As she travels, she encounters a series of eccentric characters, the few left behind in the wake of a widespread evacuation of the country’s population from the coast out to sea. Some of these individuals are ravaged and on the edge of death, while others are immersed in their own hermetic practices, be they solipsistic, nihilistic, or (in one unusual case) altruistic. None are of much help to Flo, other than the few who direct her vaguely toward the south and perhaps share a small amount of food or water. None wish to engage for more than the brief time necessary to offer their meager assistance. Society has come to resemble what one would expect in such a time: every person chiefly looking out for themselves, living in fear of the 'others' who have devolved into a brutish existence marked by mindless violence. Throughout the book, the nature and transmission of the pestilence remains vague. There is talk of 'anti-spores', pools of blood, and of a hum spreading through communication wires, possibly as a means of control. The hum has altered the very appearance of written language, pushing words apart, leaving only single syllables behind. This constraint is present in the third-person narration we read but is removed during periods of dialogue. Gransden uses the monosyllabic constraint to push her typically creative word use even further, resulting in a rhythmic, chantlike flow to the prose—entirely appropriate for conveying the visceral details Flo discovers as she moves through such a foreign, disrupted landscape. As with the best of work that employs the tropes of apocalyptic fiction, this unusual novella ends with many of its questions floating in the scarlet haze it generates, leaving them for the reader to ponder in the wake of what is surely a singular literary experience.

[Matthew Kinlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full review here: https://www.erratumpress.com/england-...

Gransden’s novel follows the journey of Flo travelling the English countryside looking for her twin brother, known simply as “bro”. Flo is like a flâneur drifting through a far more twisted version of W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, a psycho-geographical tour of the southern landscape filled with poetic horror akin to the work of Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen and Robert Aickman, offering haunting descriptions such as, “Glim glow flicks gold in the whole room, the place is a cloud dream as she wakes. It is as if the sun is a gem and she rests in the room that is its wood heart.” Gransden captures the bucolic sense of pastoral England, its tranquil, often tepid sense of safety, “Warm in the night. Soft in the night. The wood makes its dark, it stirs the black.” Flo walks under, “The sun a dull disc of pea soup.” However, Gransden sinks deeper into the unconscious English landscape and finds something older and far more troubling, as Flo encounters a series of ravaged strangers in this deserted wasteland. At one point she learns, “Those trucks, the ones outside. I watched them through the open door. They unloaded kids, lots of them. Took them off, holding hands. They were like dark shadows in the sun.”

[Jack Skelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

All narration is in monosyllables. Each word. This singularity chops into stylistic properties: It empowers the verb in each terse sentence; it deflowers Latinate diction in favor of consonant-tough Germanic; it creates its own vocabulary (kind of like Anthony Burgess’ Nasdat in A Clockwork Orange); and it achieves a stasis of hard horror-prose. A verbal aphasia. A stuckness, which is the post-apocalyptic wasteland that traps the protagonist. Grandsen’s freakoid book suggests Samuel Beckett plays which are all social and psychic paralysis, where all directions are a nightmare circularity.

[David Kuhnlein · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book shines like a yolk
In a sky with the shell still on it
So the sun will glow red through your palm.

Like the book’s front, the words in this slim text dot the page, and sound by sound they writhe from each gaze that tries to lay claim, words cooked down to their base. Speech, dreams, and the head of each piece seem to break the book’s rule. And, once in a while, a break is nice. Here’s a small key to the book, I think: “To find a way to go is a bet laid with chance, and she is a push fiend.” This could also be read as a phrase for the one who wrote the book: “she is a push fiend.” Yes, this book pushed and pushed at my head. And I am in luck as I like a hard read. Let’s let the book soak up the last word, like bread as it yanks the air from the air, left out on the stove: “A cold round moon is on the rise.”

[Thomas Kendall]

Written largely under an Oulipean-like constraint's Gransden's prose is studded with phrases of uncanny beauty. Occupying a mythic mode in which each character is fundamentally estranged from (and part-of, and accepting of) an incomprehensible reality Figures Crossing the Field is a tonally questing work in which the ambiguous relationship between 'bro' and 'sis' contains within it the lost melody of a civilisation and its discontents.

[Ben Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novella is a tapestry woven from threads whose exact makeup remains tantalisingly outside of our knowhow. Via staccato sentences, Flo and her twin bro embark on an adventure whose particulars are clouded in a kind of poetic grace.

[Ben Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strange, cryptic, and wonderful journey through the woods. The beautiful and the grotesque are weaved throughout the landscape, reminding me of Sea of Glass, but in nature. Each word is precisely picked and placed, resulting in a silvery, blissful experience. As someone who grew up in the middle of the woods, I loved this world.

“I wanted to be a vessel for new growth, so I kept still. That was all I needed to do.-“

[Duarte Cabral]

Realidade desrealizada de senso e direção, a necessidade de conexão a única bússola (por enquanto) funcional. Forma mais estranha de começar o ano em termos de leituras. A linguagem aqui é duma poesia disforme, palavras descolam-se dos seus sítios e colam-se noutros, ficam viradas do avesso e nós também, parecendo quase necessário ler isto diante dum espelho para lhe dar algum sentido ou nexo. Mas isto é bom — muito bom, excelente até, atrevo-me a dizer. Gransden tem uma voz ímpar, até me surpreende não ouvir falar dela em círculos underground.

[Andy Haddon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb from start to finish.