"They knew the intercourse between heaven and earth, sunshine drawn into the breast and bowels, the rain sucked up in the daytime, nakedness that comes under the wind in autumn, showing the birds' nests no longer worth hiding. Their life and inter-relations were such; feeling the pulse and body of the soil, that opened to their furrow for the grain, and became smooth and supple after their ploughing, and clung to their feet with a weight that pulled like desire, lying hard and unresponsive when the crops were to be shorn away." (Chap. 1)

"The women were different. On them too was the drowse of blood - intimacy, calves sucking and hens running together in droves, and young geese palpitating in the hand whilst food was pushed down their throttle. But the women looked out from the heated, blind intercourse of farm life, to the spoken world beyond. They...