Midland: A Novel out of Time

An industrial accident in a wire factory and the chance discovery of a birth certificate. Church services held in a ruined swimming pool. An unidentified elephant skull. Midland tells the stories of three young women as they fight to find their feet amidst the accumulated rubble of the twentieth century. From the bombsites of the 1940s to the construction sites of the 1960s and the school halls and decaying tower blocks of the 1980s, Honor Gavin has created an ingenious narrative of one Midlands family that is also a startling, anarchic history of a city. Composed in electric prose that soars and dives, blending keenly observed dialect with urban theory, cinema, farcical digressions and surrealist timekeeping, Midland is a novel out of time but in the middle of everything.