THE CORN MOTHER / AUTHOR: STEPHEN PRINCE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
1878: when their harvest fails, the villagers look for somebody to blame. Their scapegoat is Ms. Jessop, whose only crime is walking through the fields after dark. Still, that’s enough to convince her sadistic, backward-thinking neighbours that she’s responsible for cursing the crops. There’s also the added bonus that when Ms. Jessop’s frightened out of her home by a mob brandishing flaming torches, the scheming Mrs Wothword will take the cottage for her own. After all, Mrs Wothword has worked hard convincing the others that Ms. Jessop’s a witch. Why shouldn’t she get something out of it? But, the best laid plans…
1970: an ambitious young screenwriter develops a script based on this story. He calls it The Corn Mother and it quickly wins the interest of a producer. However, just as the script looks set to go into production, The Wicker Man is released and its similarity of theme sets everything back. Finally, in 1982, the producer finally manages to resurrect the production. But even though The Corn Mother is filmed, it disappears without trace. The production company collapses and The Corn Mother’s film reels, including the few promotional VHS copies that were made, are never seen again. In 1984, Andrew begins a lifelong quest to track the near-mythical film down. Does he succeed?
The Corn Mother is the latest offering from Stephen Prince’s A Year in the Country project, which is a fantastic undertaking and most of the previous entries have been very well received but, despite having a decent idea at its core, The Corn Mother doesn’t really work. The story is too slight, coming in at 52 pages/chapters with each chapter containing no more than 365 words. Each chapter is a first-person account told by a collection of different characters. The problem is, although the names change, the tone and vocal rhythms of the characters all remain the same. There’s no sense of individual personalities, and no emotional depth for the reader to enjoy. It quickly feels like reading a school report. Also, although the brief mentions of Thatcher’s Britain, three-day weeks, and the emerging popularity of video rental shops where the origin of the tapes you borrowed was dubious to say the best are all nice nostalgic touches (at least for those of us who remember them), it still feels like padding. There’s no heart here, no energy, and nothing new to say. That’s ironic for a project which, according to the author’s afterword, has been so carefully contrived to mirror the natural world and the cycles of the year. Unfortunately, despite being an interesting approach, it doesn’t work. The Corn Mother is an easy but instantly forgettable read. With a structure that’s so closely inspired by the changing tides of nature, it should be magical.
The accompanying CD, which is designed as both a soundtrack to the book and a standalone work, is a selection of ambient music that, like the novella, refuses to take hold. All in all, The Corn Mother has the seed of a promising idea that never quite manages to break through the soil.
