The Perfect Golden Circle

St Just Monday Morning Reading Group 31st March 2025.

The Perfect Golden Circle. Benjamin Myers.

Opinions of this book were varied: one reader disliked it altogether; two others thought it was readable though not a book that they would recommend; at least two more said they enjoyed it and thought it was a good book though they had reservations about it. One was undecided.

In general, those who liked the book saw it as a story about two men and how they handled their lives (a comparison was made with the TV series The Detectorists); how the design and construction of crop circles, in a clandestine fashion, became their primary interest and how this probably aided their mental health. A ‘different’ kind of story, humorous in parts and covering an interesting topic. Notable elements additional to the main story were observations about how wheat grows during the summer and is then used (in bread-making) to warm up the winter; and how a piece of land may be home to a number of stories, each placed on top of the other, forming layers which are pressed down in time like wood is pressed to form coal. It was also noted that the construction of the crop circles did not damage the wheat – it was squashed down temporarily but would stand up again within a fortnight. The attendant press and ‘experts’ who came to report on and analyse the circles, however, caused quite a lot of damage. The alternation of the narrative with the newspaper reports at the end of each section, was admired.

Negative criticisms centred around the language used in the narrative, which we generally thought was overblown and too flowery for its purpose, and was not always meaningful in any case. Some readers managed to bypass this, but others found it too intrusive. Also it was thought that the women in the book were not so well portrayed as the men, and often came out as stereotypes.

We spent some time discussing crop circles in their own right and as an art form, ephemeral like sand art; and why people make them – presumably to attract attention to the earth. We also thought it must be quite difficult to depict on the ground a pattern that can only be seen from above. In our memories from the time in which the book is set (the hot summer of 1989), crop circles were thought by some to be the work of extraterrestrials (presumably for the reason above).