Poppyland

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 *

A beautiful book. A gorgeous snapshot of Britain.

-- Rod Liddle * Times Rad